Swindon in the Past Lane

The November speaker at the monthly Monday lunch time talk at Swindon Central Library was archivist Robert Jago from the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham. Robert’s subject was Churchwardens’ Accounts and he described the many and varied tasks performed by the churchwarden, charting a role dating back to medieval times. The oldest surviving churchwardens’ accounts are those of St. Michael’s in Bath which date from 1349. The main duty of the churchwarden was to keep the fabric of the church in good repair and to attend to the fixtures and fittings, although he also had to sort out any unruly sexual behaviour in the parish especially when it involved the vicar! Pest control also took up a fair bit of the churchwardens’ time and account books list payments for song birds found to be depleting the local crops. Foxes presented a big problem as well and the accounts for Brinkworth reveal regular payment for foxes heads, a wily solution to parish enterprise where the ...

With residential car parking at a premium in Old Town today, there was no such problem for the 1900 owner of 31 Wood Street. The sale catalogue of 1903 advertises a carriage entrance at the rear of the property leading from Devizes Road with a coach house, stable yard and stabling for two horses. A Grade II listed building, 31 Wood Street dates from the late 18th century to early 19th century. Described as a 'commodious family residence' the property belonged to John Chandler, a successful local businessman. At the time of his death in 1902 Chandler owned fourteen other properties on Eastcott Hill and stocks and shares in numerous local businesses including the Swindon United Gas Company and the Swindon Central Market. He also owned an impressive five bedroomed house, The Lime Kiln, standing in over an acre of land in Wootton Bassett, let to solicitor Harry Bevir. Born in Pewsey, by 1841 John Chandler was already working as a draper in Swindon and in 1844 he married...

As electronic communication takes over, it has to be asked - what has happened to the love letter? When Judy Rebbeck Watten of California began investigating her family history she discovered 32 letters written by her grandfather James Knight Rebbeck to his fiancée Lili. Born in 1848 in Lockeridge, near Marlborough, James Knight Rebbeck, the eldest of Cornelius and Caroline Rebbecks's nine children, was raised by his maternal grandparents. By 1851 two year old James was living with James and Caroline Knight in a house described in the census of that year as Near Assize Hall in Devizes. In 1863 James, 15, was sent to his Uncle James Knight in Calcutta where he studied mechanical engineering. James junior worked as a superintendent in the railways workshop of the Howrah Foundry in Calcutta until the beginning of the 1880s when he was seconded to Hong Kong. By the mid 1880s James was based at the Victoria Foundry, Hong Kong, employed on the ambitious Peak Tram project, a cable railwa...

'She found the wide open prairies a big change and was very afraid of the howling coyotes,' writes Pat Psooy, a Canadian Swindon Advertiser reader. A far cry from Park Ground Farm in Wootton Bassett, part of the extensive Meux Estate sold in 1906, where Pat's grandmother, Daisy Eleanor Tuckey spent most of her childhood. Reading Remember When articles about Robert Ernest Plummer Tuckey who set sail for Australia in 1877 and the Rev. Henry Edward Tuckey who took his bride to New Zealand in 1859 set Pat wondering if these adventurous Tuckeys might be connected to her own Canadian explorers. The prosperous Tuckey family arrived in Swindon from Gloucestershire in the mid 17th century and figured prominently in local affairs. Through carefully negotiated marriages and shrewd property deals the family held considerable influence in the small market town. Robert Thomas John Bailey Tuckey, Daisy's father, born in 1856 at Shaw House in the former par...

Today the infamous Magic Roundabout is probably one of the busiest junctions in Swindon. At the beginning of the 19th century a different method of transport stopped close by at the site of the Swindon wharf, although this traffic was considerably slower. In 1826 William Cobbett, 19th century radical politician, travelled through Swindon on one of his famous fact finding journeys across Britain. Surveying the Wilts and Berks Canal, Cobbett remarked on the 'gentleman's house, with coach house, stables, walled in garden, paddock, and the rest of those things, which, all together, make up a villa,' and supposed that the canal earned prodigious profits. In fact the canal was never particularly successful and was at its busiest, somewhat ironically, during the 1830s when it conveyed vast quantities of materials to build the Great Western Railway. The GWR itself once considered buying the canal for £20,000. In 1894 the United Commercial Syndicate was another possible ...

1912 William Hooper photograph of United Gathering of Band of Hope at GWR Park With the party season getting into gear, no doubt few people will be paying much heed to their recommended units of alcohol consumption, despite the continued warnings of health experts. Mid 19th century social reformers also attempted to tackle the problem as concern grew over alcohol and its effects upon the working class.While the drinking habits of the middle class were largely a private affair, those of the working class tended to be more public. With the cost of picking up the financial pieces falling upon rate paying businessmen and traders, it is hardly surprising that the temperance movement was initially led by middle class social reformers and philanthropists. The original tenet of the movement was that alcohol in moderation was acceptable and members continued to imbibe wine and beer, abstaining only from spirits. Out of the early temperance movement evolved the hard line teetotalism ...

Panto season in Swindon gets off to a swinging start with Keith Chegwin starring as Buttons in the Wyvern Theatre's production of Cinderella, opening on December 10th. But more than fifty years ago Mollie Tanner's dance troupe was left waiting in the wings when a production of Aladdin at the Empire Theatre was blighted by a wage dispute and eventually cancelled. Let's hope the current financial climate doesn't cast a malevolent shadow over this year's festive season. With a seating capacity of over 1,000, the new Queen's Theatre on the corner of Groundwell Road and Clarence Street opened on Monday February 7, 1898 with a production of Dick Whittington and his Cat. In 1906 the theatre changed its name to the Empire. One of the characters closely associated with the Empire was rag and bone man James 'Raggy' Powell. During the First World War Raggy organised free shows and refreshments for the families of men in the armed forces. His philanthropic...

The Apprentice Registers of the Wiltshire Society 1817-1922 will be of particular interest to local researchers, especially if your Swindon ancestors moved to London. Established in 1654, the Wiltshire Feast was a county organisation of merchants, traders and gentry who annually convened to London for some 17th century networking. The visit included the placing of children of the deserving poor with Wiltshire links in apprenticeships to city traders and concluded with a feast, hence the name. The society can be traced to around 1776 when it appears to have experienced a hiatus. However work began again in 1817 when it was remarketed at 'a public meeting of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Wiltshire' held at the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate Street in the City of London. The registers, published by the Wiltshire Record Society in 1995 include entries such as that of Frederick Newcombe and his sister Phillipa, two orphans living in London whose mother was from Swindon. Frederick w...

If your family worshipped at either the Baptist Tabernacle or the Cambria Place Chapel you stand a good chance of finding them in one of the church's Year Books. Those for 1895-1938 are held at Swindon Central Library and contain a fascinating amount of information. With just 24 members, the Swindon Baptist community had their beginnings in Prospect Place under the ministry of Rev. Richard Breeze, but by 1849 the congregation had moved into a new chapel in Fleet Street. In little over 35 years this also proved too small for the growing Baptist following and Swindon architect W H Read was commissioned to design a new chapel. Built to classical proportions, the Tabernacle certainly made a statement and soon became a focal point of Regent Circus, originally destined to be named Trafalgar Square. More than 1,000 people attended a tea party at the official opening and twenty years later membership stood at 780. Each Year Book contains a list of church members, among th...

"All the approaches to the Town Hall were densely packed with people," reported the Swindon Advertiser at the unveiling of the cenotaph on Saturday October 30, 1920. "Especially touching was the scene when the relatives of the fallen came forward to deposit their floral tributes at the base of the memorial," the front-page account continued. In his dedicatory speech, Alderman S.E. Walter, Mayor of Swindon, spoke of how "upwards of 6,000 men went out from their homes in Swindon to fight for what they believed to be the liberty and salvation of the world." Anxious to create a lasting memorial to those men, Swindon dignitaries perhaps failed to appreciate the post war hardships families continued to endure. An ambitious scheme launched by the then Mayor, Alderman C.A. Plaister in May 1919 was for a memorial hall. A public appeal was announced and a donation of £100 was made by both Alfred Manners and Major F.P. Goddard to get the ball rolling. Fun...

As local and national plans to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War are discussed, here is a look back at how Swindon marked the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War, a war to end all wars. More than 3,000 people visited the BBC Wartime Discovery Day at Swindon's STEAM museum on Saturday November 8, 2008. With more experts under one roof then you could shake a stick at, there was plenty of advice on what records are currently available and how to access them. One of the highlights of the day was a talk given by local historian Mark Sutton who has set himself the task of commemorating the men of Swindon who fought in the First World War. Mark, who grew up in Redcliffe Street, has a breathtaking knowledge of his subject and quoted facts and figures with effortless ease. "The BBC have asked me if I would talk for about half an hour but I've got enough here for three hours," he joked. With a wealth of personal detail, the slideshow pre...

Formed when the wartime National Fire Service was denationalised, 2008 marked the 60th anniversary of the Wiltshire Fire Brigade. Today the county fire service has around 600 fire fighters on roll, a far cry from when a Volunteer Brigade was formed in Swindon in 1879. With William E. Morris, son of the Swindon Advertiser founder, as Captain, A.H. Meadows Deputy Captain and William Affleck, engineer, the total force numbered just 14. In 1864 Old Swindon's horse drawn Shand Mason manual pump was housed in Newport Street. Keys to the building were kept at the police station with another set at the Wood Street home of Swindon surveyor William Read. Meanwhile in New Swindon the GWR Company made their steam pump, used in the works, available for any incidents in the railway village. However by the 1870s with the old fire engine in a poor state of repair, fire fighting provisions were woefully inadequate. A proposal to institute a fire fighting force was made at a meeting of ...

Nestled up against the Goddard family's secluded parkland, the Hermitage was an apt name for Charles Anthony Wheeler's house. Along with neighbouring Redville the entrepreneurial Wheeler built both properties in the early 1840s. Documents indicate that Bank Manager William Brewer Wearing lived there in 1859 and for the next thirty years the Victorian tenants came and went as revealed in census returns throughout the 19th century. By the 1890s the Kinneir family owned the property, but it was with the death of J. L. Calderwood in February 1960 that the house passed out of private ownership and into the public sector. Among documents held at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham is a schedule drawn up by Swindon Corporation on August 30, 1960 concerning The Hermitage and three cottages in Dammas Lane. A stone and brick building with slated roof, The Hermitage contained five bedrooms and four attic rooms with extensive cellar space in the basement. Rooms...

In the mid 19th century Cricklade Street was still referred to by its older name of Brock Hill. Once so steep extra horses were added to carts and carriages to pull heavy loads up to Old Swindon The magnificent 18th century town house on the east side of Cricklade Street was once known as Vilett House. Built about 1729 and once the home of Old Swindon aristocracy Thomas Vilett and his wife, the former Mary Goddard, it is thought the first occupier was local landowner William Harding. In 1770 another member of the family, wealthy Robert Harding was living there. A memorial in the old parish church of Holy Rood records that Robert was the husband of Mary, daughter of John Tubb, formerly of Goosey in Berkshire, Armiger (a person entitled to bear heraldic arms). Mary died in 1759 and when Robert made his will in 1770 he was 'under a Treaty of Marriage' to Miss Philippa Hughes. Built on the site of a former inn, there is an elaborate system of brick vaulted cellars beneat...

The front page of the Swindon Advertiser dated Friday May 4,1900 described the event as “one of the most attractive Sales of this class of Property ever Held in Swindon." Twenty two houses and a shop in Birch Street were among other town centre properties to come under the hammer of auctioneer Mr Ernest Bishop at the Regent Circus Sale Room of Bishop and Pritchett on May 21, 1900. With a yearly income of over £945 in rents (worth about £73,300 today) it was anticipated that the properties would sell easily. Birch Street was named after Henry James Birch, an accountant at the GWR Works during the late 19th century and was built in several phases during the 1890s by at least three builders, including Arthur Colborne. Arthur Joseph, born in Midsomer Norton in 1870, was the son of Thomas Colborne, also a builder and timber merchant who by 1873 was established at the Cross Roads, Stratton St. Margaret. From 1876-1940 the Colborne family built a staggering number of propertie...

Swindon has enjoyed a long history of educational excellence and was quick to establish a Local School Board following the 1876 Education Act. With the old GWR School bursting at the seams, the School Board rapidly set about building new ones. Queenstown Infants' and Girls' and Gilbert's Hill Girls' and Infants opened in 1880 with Westcott Infants' and Primary Mixed the following year. However the Westcott Street Infants School log book reveals that the school actually opened at the Drill Hall in March 1878. 'I, Jane Harrison, Certificated, took charge of this school on Monday last,' wrote the newly appointed schoolmistress in her first entry. Miss Harrison admitted 24 new children in the morning with a further 21 in the afternoon. Meanwhile eight school board officers trooped through the schoolroom to see how things were going. With her assistant mistress Miss Robson and two monitresses, Alice Turner and Albinia Dowling, Jane Harrison was pl...

Today a leafy, post war suburb of Old Town, Hesketh Crescent stands on the site of The Croft, an impressive house once modestly described as merely a large villa! The property appears on the 1841 census, then relatively newly built and occupied by Alfred Southby Crowdy, an Old Swindon solicitor with offices in the High Street. By 1861 another Swindon solicitor, James Copleston Townsend was living in the house on the hill, but probably the person most closely associated with The Croft was Levi Lapper Morse, owner of the Regent Street department store, politician and devout Methodist. The Morse commercial empire began in Stratton St. Margaret in the 1830s where Charles Morse had a drapers and grocers shop. Levi, eldest son of Charles and his second wife Rebecca Lapper, was born over the shop at Stratton Green in 1853. In 1875 Levi married Winifred, the daughter of Isaac Humphries, a farmer from Broad Hinton. By 1881, with the town centre store up and running, the young couple wa...

Those who stayed behind recall food shortages and deserted streets, just some of the memories recorded by Rose Matheson, not of wartime Britain but TRIP week in Swindon. Railway historian Dr. Matheson paints an evocative portrait of holidays past in TRIP - The Annual Holiday of GWR's Swindon Works when the Great Western Railway ruled in Swindon. From the first one-day sightseeing trip to Oxford in June 1848 when a group of 500 Swindonians were guests of the Oxford branch of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Matheson charts the phenomenon that was TRIP week. Between the 1860s and 70s the holiday increased first to three days and by 1874 a nine day break during early July. Whilst the train journey may have been 'free' to members of the Mechanics Institution, families made considerable sacrifices both before and after the event. Today trip week has entered the realms of affectionate nostalgia but Dr Matheson points out that until the 1938 Holi...