a market-town in the hundred of Calne, Wiltshire, 87 miles west from London. It stands in a valley intersected by the little brook of Calne, and is surrounded by the high table-land of Marlborough Downs and Salisbury Plain. The town is clean and well-paved, and contains an ancient church with a tower by Inigo Jones; besides a fine new church in the neighbourhood, and several dissenting chapels. Its educational establishments include a grammar-school, founded in 1660, to which two exhibitions in Queen's College, Oxford, are attached; national and infant schools; and a school for training female servants. It is a vicarage in the archdeaconry of Wilts and diocese of Salisbury. It is also the seat of the county courts, and returns one member to parliament. The municipal borough is governed by a mayor, four aldermen, and twelve councillors. The principal trade of Calne is in corn, although formerly it carried on a considerable manufacture of cloth. Pop. of the municipal borough (1851) 2544; of the parliamentary borough (1851) 5195.

From the remains found in the vicinity, Calne seems to have been an important Roman station. It was the occasional residence of the West Saxon kings; and is celebrated in legendary ecclesiastical history for the miraculous escape of Dunstan at the synod held there in 997.