TOWNS throughout Wiltshire are discovering the benefits of recovering their historic past but few have done so as successfully as Devizes with its superb Old Swan Yard development.

The White Swan was a coaching inn which was virtually lost to the town over the years.

The last record of the White Swan as a public house is about 1766, after which it changed hands and was split into a substantial house, smaller dwellings and a workshop.

In August 1798 the London Evening Mail reported that the stabling at the Swan Inn in Devizes was struck by lightning, "the flames communicating with the extensive warehouses and workshops of Mr Knight, cabinet maker and upholsterer, the whole of the latter was consumed".

Subsequently, the High Street frontage was owned by a succession of tradesmen. At one point it housed a Temperance Institute reading room and, in 1881, it became home to Walter Budd, an engine turner, his wife and five children.

The Budd family business was bought by Court Brothers (Furnishers) Ltd in 1962 and continued to trade until purchased by the developers of Old Swan Yard in the mid-1990s.

The development team of the Wyvern Partnership, the Clarke Bond Partnership, Fitzsimmon and Partners and the Demaus Partnership, led by local developer Peter Triggs and his Trimac Properties Ltd, carried out a sympathetic conversion which returned the site to how it might have looked in the 18th Century, but without the straw and hay for the horses.

Now it offers a wide range of excellent independent specialist businesses where Christmas present buying can be carried out in comfort.

Toys are the priority in gift buying at this time of the year most toys are bought at Christmas time.

Honeychurch Toys of Devizes has just changed ownership, and it is now run by Andrew Farrow, who used to work for the Millennium Commission. The shop offers traditional, unusual toys handmade by local craftspeople.

Children are relatively easy to buy for but Old Swan Yard offers ideas for grown-ups too.

Spirit Clothing offers ladies designer clothes and accessories and the staff are on hand to offer suggestions and advice for gentlemen looking for something special for the women in their lives.

On the other hand, Rick Kibby and his staff at Detour will be able to recommend purchases by ladies looking for something a bit special for their husbands and sons with an excellent range of men's designer clothes and shoes.

The idea of buying a work of art as a Christmas present may conjure up the kind of money that Charles Saatchi pays, but at the Bluestone Gallery you can pick up a beautiful piece of jewellery, glass pottery, woodwork or print for about the same price you would pay for a mass-produced electronic gizmo at a national chain.

For as little as £2 on colourful acrylic rings or you could spend hundreds on silver and gold the choice is yours.

Urban Rustics affords the opportunity to buy a household gift not normally found outside London among its wide range of fabrics and soft furnishings.

Feeling tired and ready for a cup of coffee and a little something to go with it? Devizes is fortunate to have one of the best Italian restaurants and coffee bars in the county in Dolcipani and Ristorante Franco, also in Old Swan Yard.

What better way to reward yourself for doing all that shopping than a cappuccino and a pastry?