Malmesbury is a town and also civil parish in Wiltshire, England. As a market community it became noticeable in the Middle Ages as a centre for learning concentrated on and also around Malmesbury Abbey, the mass of which forms an uncommon survival of the dissolution of the abbeys. As soon as the site of an Iron Age ft, in the Anglo-Saxon duration it became the site of a monastery renowned for its discovering as well as one of Alfred the Great's fortified burhs for defence versus the Vikings. Æthelstan, the very first king of England, was hidden in Malmesbury Abbey when he died in 939. In 2011 the population reached 5,380 living in 2,280 residences. The added figures are provided for The Abbey, the additional clerical parish included in that of St Paul when this existed. Numbers from 1911 are for urban district and after 1961 for ward. For 1901 the area was split into 3 particular parishes, St Paul Within, St Paul Without as well as Abbey.