Swindon in the Past Lane

There are two bus routes from the town centre to my neck of the woods, three if you count the number 19 whose destination is Sparcells.  The number 1A is the more direct route while the number 1 goes the wrong way or the long way home. Buses depart from the G stop on Fleming Way and take a left turn into Catherine Street.  From here both buses travel along Faringdon Road and past the Milton Road Baths on the left, the railway village on the right. A turn into Park Lane and under the railway bridge, making a left turn into the Churchward estate built on the site of the former railway factory 'A' Shop.  We're now on the Wootton Bassett Road approaching Mannington Roundabout and West Swindon. At the West Swindon centre the two routes part company.  The 1A travels up Tewkesbury Way while the number 1 goes the wrong way home, the long way home, travelling through first Grange Park and then the Prinnels. The western development of Swindon began in 1975.  Altho...

By the bandstand in Town Gardens is the perfect place to play, as the children pictured here reveal.  Following heavy early morning rainfall the sun came out and turned the bandstand into a shimmering playground for young and old alike. Three friends attract an admirer as they sit and eat their packed lunch and trade at the kiosk is brisk - no brown bread left when I order my cheese and onion toastie. In 1892 the Old Swindon Local Board paid £700 for a seven acre plot of worked out Purbeck limestone quarry between Bath Road and Westlecot Road owned by the Goddard family, long time Lords of the Manor.  Designed by local architect W.H. Read work was completed within 18 months and Town Gardens opened with a flourish in May 1894; the inaugural ceremony an exercise in Victorian pomp and self congratulation. Led by the 2nd Wilts Volunteer Band a procession of 19th century Swindon worthies marched from the Market Square to the new gardens by way of Newport Street and Springfiel...

Welcome - sign in to bid or buy.  Oh that invitation. I'm certainly not in the market for the Jimmy Choo ankle boots, a snip at £400 or the diamond studded white gold Rolex retailing at a cool £3,182.63. So what am I looking at amidst the secondhand and second best items for sale online. For me the attraction on the popular online auction website is always the photographs.  Not the film stars and celebrities, but those classified as Antique (Pre 1940): People and Portraits - carte de visite and cabinet photographs produced in their thousands in the late 19th century.  Today there are 59 pages and some 2,923 images for sale online.  'Vintage housemaid in vintage Victorian uniform' taken in a Kentish Town studio, probably on the girl's afternoon off - a gift for her mother?  Occasionally they come complete with family album, the details meticulously recorded by the seller - Uncle West, Auntie Annie Eplett, Poll and Rosie West - buy now £59.99.  But...