Swindon in the Past Lane

One of my favourite TV programmes on air at the moment is Secret History of Our Streets ,  a six part series showing on BBC 2 on Wednesday evening. Participants in the Secret Streets of London In 1886 Charles Booth, businessman, social researcher and philanthropist began work on a survey of London’s life and labour, a project that would occupy him for the next eighteen years.  As part of his research he produced coloured coded street maps indicating the status of London residents.  Streets were classified from black – lowest, semi criminal; through the blues – poor; to yellow – upper classes, wealthy.  These maps have provided the starting point for The Secret Streets of London. Charles Booth and the programme makers more than a hundred years later observed the changing fortunes of London streets such as those in Camberwell Grove.  Built for prosperous merchants in the 18 th century, these Georgian villas became multi occupancy properties in l...

With just a week left to complete his term of office as Mayor, Councillor H.R. Hustings died suddenly at the Victoria Hospital on Sunday, October 27, 1940. A tough speaking, no nonsense Labour politician, Henry Russell Hustings, Swindon's 40th successive Mayor, took office on Thursday, November 9th 1939 as the town got to grips with the black out, air raid warnings and wartime restrictions. A former trade union organiser for the National Union of Vehicle Workers and the Transport and General Workers' Union, Henry had enjoyed a varied working life and the Swindon Advertiser styled him as the 'Jack of All Trades Mayor.' His first job was with a firm of agricultural engineers in Dorset followed by stints as a traction engine driver, shop assistant, porter, engine driver in a laundry, miner, stoker, baker and in 1939 he was a window cleaning contractor. Henry was born in 1883 in the Dorset village of Hilton to John W. Hustings and his wife Susan. In 1903 he marr...

I blame the butterbeer for my public display of emotion! Do not read on if you plan to visit the Harry Potter Studio Tour as this may spoil some of the surprises. I'm not a Harry Potter obsessive - yes, I've seen all the films and I've watched Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint graduate from cute kids to accomplished adult actors.  And I've wowed at the special effects, supposing most of them to be computer generated images.  But I always felt I'd rather missed the Harry Potter boat -  with teenage children when the first books were published, I was too old to be trendy. However, a tour of the studio has transformed me into a born again Harry Potter nerd - hell bent on reading all the books whilst simultaneously watching the films, pause button at the ready. It's only on the studio tour that you fully come to appreciate the huge talents of the designers, set builders, artists, craftsmen and women, make up artists - the list goes on and o...

During the nineteenth century the Great Western Railway in the rapidly expanding town of New Swindon attracted workers from far and wide. Robert Wattleworth from the Isle of Man worked as a railway labourer before becoming licensee at the Falcon Inn on Westcott Place, his wife Jane was born in Carlisle.  But the Falcon Inn was a mere stopping off point for the wandering Wattleworth family.  Of the seven Wattleworth children who grew up behind the bar at the Falcon Inn, five went to the USA.  Sister Esther also did her share of globetrotting, working as a governess for a military family and living in India.  In 1903 Esther joined her brother Charles in Akron, Ohio but returned to England in 1910. The couple’s youngest daughter Charlotte sailed from Southampton on the St. Louis in the summer of 1900 to join her sister in Querida, a gold mining town in Colorado. In 1959 Charlotte, then aged 83, made a return visit to Swindon for the first time...

In 2012 Penhill celebrated it's own Diamond Jubilee along with the Queen.  In 1952 Swindon was designated an overspill town and this aerial view shows the estate still under construction. The estate was built on the American Radburn lines in superblocks with houses grouped in small cul de sacs around areas of park or open space. Several features are missing from this 1950s photograph; the Royal British Legion Club in Downton Road has yet to make an appearance along with the block of high rise housing in Seagry Court, built in the 1960s.  Building stops at Latton Close at the extreme left of the photograph with the broad sweep of Leigh Road in the foreground. A hundred years ago Francis Hoddinott was the farmer at Penhill Farm, part of a small settlement just outside the Swindon borough boundary in Stratton St Margaret.  In 1951 Swindon Corporation acquired the farm with around 250 acres of building land and by 1965 there were 2,000 houses.  The ...

At the outbreak of war in 1914 the Great Western Railway employed about 80,000; 25,479 men enlisted in the services with 2,436 losing their lives by the end of the four year massacre. Throughout the war the Great Western Railway Magazine published details and photographs of the men who had lost their lives, which are now available to view on the Swindon Local Studies flickr page www.flickr.com/photos/swindonlocal Inspired by this project, family historian Ruth Wood decided to launch her own.  “ It just came to me that it would be so helpful to others, like me, researching their family history, if they could do a keyword/surname search for their GWR relative,” Ruth said. Now living in Durham, Ruth grew up in a Swindon ‘railway,’ family with several generations of engine drivers, boiler makers, electricians and engineers; her brother was one of the last intakes of apprentices at the Swindon Works. Liaising with staff at Swindon Central Library, Ruth launche...

Children as young as five will be expected to learn and recite poetry by heart if a major overhaul of the national curriculum in England's schools goes ahead.  Education Secretary Michael Gove would like to see a new focus on the traditional skills of spelling and grammar of which the study of poetry will become an important part.  And as any student of history knows, there is nothing new under the sun. In March 1884 Francis William Drew, master at Lydiard Millicent Church of England School, was preparing his pupils for the annual inspection.  As a large portion of the school’s funding rested on a pass or fail, and with it Mr Drew’s salary, the inspector’s visit was an important one. The village school at Lydiard had an average weekly attendance of 139 in the spring of 1884.  Divided into standards according to ability, children enrolled aged five and worked their way through Standards I to VI if their parents could afford to keep them in school that ...

The Battle of the River Plate in the South Atlantic on December 13, 1939 was the first significant naval battle of the Second World War.   The German pocket battleship the Graf Spee, engaged in ambushing merchant ships en route for Britain, was attacked by three cruisers, the Ajax, the Achilles and the Exeter.  However, prior to this battle, 300 British seaman, already taken prisoner by the Graf Spee, were transferred to the Altmark, a German fleet tanker. The men should have been released into Norwegian custody when the Altmark sailed past Bergen, but in direct contravention of international law the prisoners were hidden below decks in storage lockers. Despite two searches by Norwegian officials, the whereabouts of the men was only detected when prisoners released from the scuttled Graf Spee informed the British government. Among those on board HMS Cossack engaged in a daring raid to rescue the prisoners was a Swindon man, Edward Albert Head, the son of Francis ...