Malmesbury is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. As a market town it became famous in the Middle Ages as a centre for learning focused on and also around Malmesbury Abbey, the mass of which forms an uncommon survival of the dissolution of the monasteries. When the site of an Iron Age fort, in the Anglo-Saxon duration it came to be the site of an abbey famous for its knowing and also one of Alfred the Great's fortified burhs for protection versus the Vikings. Æthelstan, the initial king of England, was buried in Malmesbury Abbey when he died in 939. In 2011 the population reached 5,380 living in 2,280 residences. The extra figures are provided for The Abbey, the supplemental clerical parish added to that of St Paul when this existed. Figures from 1911 are for metropolitan borough as well as after 1961 for ward. For 1901 the area was divided into 3 particular churches, St Paul Within, St Paul Without as well as Abbey.