Swindon in the Past Lane

In 1948 Aneurin Bevan, Labour's Minister of Health, rolled out the revolutionary National Health Service, a cradle to grave safety net of state health and welfare care. Something GWR employees at Swindon had enjoyed for over 100 years. The World War II Coalition government had debated the whys and wherefores of creating a National Health Service but it was the radical Welsh MP Aneurin Bevan who masterminded the plan having been inspired, it has been said, by the GWR Medical Fund at Swindon. He had urged members of Clement Attlee's post war Cabinet to visit the town and see just how an employee's contributory scheme could, and did work. "There it was," Bevan is reported as saying, "A complete health service, all we had to do was to expand it to embrace the whole country." Daniel Gooch, Locomotive Superintendent at the railway works is acknowledged as being the initiator of the GWR Medical Fund. As men were dismissed or put on short time workin...

The Highworth and Swindon Union Workhouse at Stratton St. Margaret was built in 1845-6 in the wake of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. With outdoor relief - payment in cash or kind - now restricted to only the deserving poor, the workhouse was the destiny of those down on their luck. At the time of the 1881 census the workhouse at Stratton contained 206 people. Among them was Charles Marlow, a man who had enjoyed both fame and fortune. In the 1840s Marlow was ranked as one of the top jockeys of his day. It was his association with the Earl of Eglinton and his horse The Flying Dutchman that secured Marlow's place in horse racing history. Marlow rode the Dutchman to an exciting win in the 1849 Derby. After three false starts Hotspur with George Whitehouse onboard stole the Dutchman's early lead. But as the runners and riders turned into the home straight Marlow struck his horse with the whip and the Flying Dutchman won by a short neck. Marlow was in the saddle a...

Today Wick Farmhouse is a substantial six bedroom house overlooking the Prinnels housing development in West Swindon. Once part of the extensive Bolingbroke estate, the former 150 acre dairy farm dates back to the medieval period. Aerial photographs taken in the 1970s clearly show the ridge and furrow pattern of open field farming. During the 19th century Wick Farm was home to Jonas Clarke senior for over 26 years. The Clarke family were pretty unconventional by Victorian social conventions. Although married in his late twenties, Jonas soon began an alliance with a servant girl called Alice Pinnell. Thirty years and seven children later they eventually married at St. Mary's Church, Lydiard Tregoze in 1853, after the death of Jonas' first wife. After Jonas senior's death in 1862 the tenancy at Wick Farm passed to his son, Jonas Clarke junior. A desirable property, the Clarke family obviously wanted to keep their stake in the farm, resulting in a Victorian mystery ...

Nothing much out of the ordinary ever happened in the small Victorian village of Hook, Lydiard Tregoze. Until 1854 when an event occurred that shocked the small community to its foundations. William Wright had only lived in the village a few months. No one knew much about him or Ann Collins, the woman who sometimes lived with him. Wright had served in the navy but after his discharge had adopted a nomadic lifestyle, travelling the country, staying in one place only as long as the work lasted. He told how he met fellow traveller Ann Collins some three years previously. By the summer of 1854 the couple and Ann's young daughter were staying in a lodging house in Wootton Bassett. Wright obtained a job as a blacksmith in nearby Hook where he rented a cottage in the village. However Ann was reluctant to join him and when she did she stayed but a short while. She told him she was going to Lancashire to visit her family but Wright soon discovered she had returned to the lodging...

published courtesy of wiltshirelady Local newspapers make interesting reading for the family historian, especially if your ancestor had criminal tendencies. Court cases were covered in great detail, often including asides made by the defendant in the dock. However, the case that appeared before magistrates at Cricklade Petty Sessions was no laughing matter. A report in the North Wilts Herald in June 1881 tells how a husband and wife both appeared on two different, but related charges. John lles, an agricultural labourer from Pavenhill, Purton appeared accused of failing to send his two sons to school, thereby breaching a previous order. lles blamed the neighbours, saying they encouraged the boys to work in the fields, paying them in food. As the story unfolded it seems likely this might have indeed been the case. Meanwhile his wife Sarah faced a prison sentence for an assault on her thirteen-year-old stepson George. On the day in question Sarah had been beating the y...

James Drake, a schoolteacher from Wootton Bassett, is another unsung hero of Victorian account keeping. In 1836 Drake was appointed Deputy Clerk by the newly founded Monthly Market Committee. His duties were to take the minutes of meetings, record the sales and names of the Christmas Show winners, and most importantly for the family historian, make full lists of those who were employed at the Hiring Fairs. Hiring or mop fairs as they were sometimes called, were events where job seeking labourers and servants presented themselves for hire. Traditionally the servant wore clothing or carried an implement to advertise their trade. A shepherd wore a lock of wool or carried a crook, a maid might carry a mop, hence the name 'mop' fair. Potential employers browsed the ranks, asking questions and stopping just short of testing muscle strength. It was the demeaning nature of these events coupled with improved methods of communication that eventually saw the end of the hiring fai...

One of the earliest trade directories was Samuel Lee's list of the City of London merchants published in 1677. It wasn't until 1800 that directories for cities and large towns began to make an appearance and it is Frederic Festus Kelly that we have to thank for the most comprehensive of all directories. The former Inspector General of Letter Carriers took over publication of the Post Office London Directory in 1835 and by 1845 was producing provincial directories for just about everywhere. Until the incorporation of the borough in 1900, Swindon received two entries for the old and new towns. The format for these publications was pretty standard with a general description of the place and a little local history followed by a list of the notable inhabitants followed by commercial enterprises. Kelly's Directory of Wiltshire dated 1899 describes Lydiard Tregoze, now pretty much absorbed into Swindon, as 'a village and parish, 3 miles south east from Wootton Bassett s...

So you've bought the certificates and tracked your family through the census returns back to 1841. Next stop is the parish registers. The keeping of parish registers began in 1538 on the orders of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's Vicar-General, although you will be fortunate if you manage to trace your family back that far. Few of the earliest registers survive, subject to nearly 500 years of the ravages of mice, mould and mayhem. If you are not living in the area where your family hails from this is where the hard work begins! Tracing ancestors in large cities involves dogged determination. My Ruthven ancestors lived in the City of Westminster, but with 11 children all born at different addresses and thirty-eight parish churches in the immediate vicinity, they took some finding. While the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives at Cocklebury Road, Chippenham holds the parish registers for all of Wiltshire, Central Library has microfiche copies of those within the Swindon area, incl...

Today a trip to the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office couldn't be easier for Swindonians on the trail of their family history. Gone is the long trek down to Trowbridge where for over 35 years Wiltshire's historic records were housed in a former mattress factory. Opened in October 2007, the state of the art Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre is now a short drive away in Chippenham - and just 13 minutes by train. Wiltshire's much-needed new archival repository has been a long time in the coming. When an inspection in 1998 declared that the Trowbridge building had failed to meet the British Standard 5454, falling below standard on fire and flood defences, action was urgently required. If fire and water didn't attack, the Public Record Office might, removing Wiltshire's heritage to the National Archives building at Kew, so the rumour circulated. Fortunately Wiltshire County Council and Swindon Borough Council rose to the challenge and an agreement to develop ...

I think it's about time I gave Duncan and Mandy Ball another mention. I originally wrote this blogpost more than five years ago and I now have to revise the paragraph on statistics. So, that would be a lot more pages, thousands more photographs and a much larger index.  Probably without exception the ambition of every family historian is to visit the places with which their ancestors are most closely associated. As few of us have a baronial home, and castle fortresses are pretty thin on the ground, for most researchers the ultimate destination is the parish church where their forebears married, brought their babies to be christened and eventually were laid to rest. For the lucky ones there may even be a memorial or a gravestone providing additional valuable information in the quest to piece together a family history. For those researching their origins in the North Wiltshire area there is a real treasure trove to be found at www.oodwooc.co.uk. Duncan and Mandy Ball began re...

  When brick and tile manufacturer Thomas Turner wanted to advertise his wares he certainly thought of an eye-catching method. In 1889 he built two properties known as the 'catalogue houses.' The two cottages along with Jessamine Cottage, were 19th century show homes, built to display every brick and tile, every finial and moulding, made in Turner's works. The properties were constructed at the front of his manufacturing site in Drove Road, one of around nine brick works operating in boomtown Swindon in the late 19th century. Topped off with terracotta acorns, crests and rosettes and even a pottery portrait, said to be that of Daniel Lynch, master potter at the Stratton works, they are unique examples of Turner's expertise. Turner's own home, Grove House, a substantial Victorian villa stood slightly removed from his worker's houses, perhaps better known today as the Miller & Carter Steakhouse, Drove Road. Thomas was the son of another potter a...