Malmesbury is a community and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. As a market community it ended up being noticeable in the Middle Ages as a centre for learning focused on and around Malmesbury Abbey, the mass of which forms a rare survival of the dissolution of the abbeys. When the site of an Iron Age fort, in the Anglo-Saxon period it became the site of an abbey well known for its learning and also one of Alfred the Great's fortified burhs for protection against the Vikings. Æthelstan, the first king of England, was hidden in Malmesbury Abbey when he died in 939. In 2011 the population got to 5,380 living in 2,280 residences. The added figures are given for The Abbey, the supplemental clerical parish included in that of St Paul when this existed. Numbers from 1911 are for city district as well as after 1961 for ward. For 1901 the area was split into three respective parishes, St Paul Within, St Paul Without as well as Abbey.