Skip to main content

15,000 views

A big thank you to followers and history fans as Swindon in the Past Lane notches up 15,000 page views.

So what has everyone been reading?  Top views include a post about Swindon Central Library when their online photographic archive topped two million views back in January.  If you haven't taken a walk down memory lane yet visit this website on http://www.flickr.com/photos/swindonlocal

Swindon firm Garrard has also proved to be a popular post.  The precision engineering manufacturer moved to the town in 1919 and for the first time since the 1840s Swindon was no longer dependent on the railway works for employment.



With dramatic photographs taken at the scene by William Hooper, the 1906 Tram Disaster also ranks with some of the most visited posts on Swindon in the Past Lane.


And the Looking Down on ... series continues to grab the imagination with 1950s aerial photographs of Park South and Walcot getting regular views.  Keep looking as there are still a few more posts to come.





Anne Leighton, one of the Ladies who lived at Lydiard Park received so many visits there has been a spin off!  For all things Lydiard Park themed visit Status, Scandal and Subterfuge.  But if you would like to know more about the aristocratic St John family pay a call on Good Gentlewoman.


Swindon's Suffragette, schoolteacher Edith New, continues to receive regular visits.  Born in 1877 at 24 North Street, Swindon, Edith joined the Pankhurst led Women's Social and Political Union in 1908.  She was imprisoned on several occasions and a miniature pair of stockings knitted from fibres she unpicked from her prison uniform in Holloway Gaol are held by the Museum of London.  Edith continues to be a work in progress.





As Swindon in the Past Lane passes 15,000 page views read again about the great and the good, beautiful buildings and brave women.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My neck of the woods

Did you know that our neck of the woods was once just that - part of a wood, a very big wood? And not just any old wood but a Royal forest no less - Braydon Forest. The origins of Braydon Forest date back to the 9th century and a belt of woodland stretching from the Thame Valley to the Vale of Blackmore and known to the Saxons as Sealwudu. The Saxon lords were pretty easy going, it would appear, and then along came the Normans with their system of forest law, courts and officialdom. Braydon became a royal forest by 1135 and in the 13th century it contained an area of some 46 square miles. The forest bounds included not only woodland but fields of arable, meadow and pasture and even villages such as those of Lydiard Tregoze, Lydiard Millicent and Purton. In 1256, during the reign of Henry III the king gave Robert Tregoze 3 bucks and 8 does from Braydon to restock his park at Lydiard Tregoze and in 1270 John Tregoze obtained a royal licence to 'inclose and impark' his woo...

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again ...

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again … Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Actually, it was the rooms of the Mechanics’ Institute Trust once based at No 1, Milton Road, Swindon, where Mark Sutton, Graham Carter and I first produced the blue print for the Swindon Heritage magazine in 2011. In my dream I was attending a shambolic meeting that roamed across the spacious office accommodation. There I met some of the key characters of this story, although not all of them. Paul Gregory, or was it Noel Beauchamp, it could have been either, Julie Carter and a hot dog vendor (so vivid was the illusion that when I awoke, I had the taste of onions in my mouth). Then there was an on-going, ambulatory talk about saving the Mechanics’ Institute reminiscent of the famous ‘Save the Clock Tower’ scene in the 80s film Back to the Future. This account is rather rambling, isn’t it, but isn’t that the nature of a dream – making perfect sense when you are in it and none at all when you wake up? ...

Edith New - Swindon Suffragette

In 1906 the suffragette campaign entered its most violent phase. Over 500 women had been imprisoned by 1909 and right up there among the militant activists was a Swindon schoolteacher. Edith Bessie New was born 17th March, 1877 at 24 North Street, Swindon, the fourth of Frederic and Isabelle New's five children. Frederic worked as a railway clerk at the GWR Works and Isabelle was a music teacher. An assistant mistress at Queenstown Infant School from 1899-1901, Edith subsequently left her Swindon home to teach in the deprived areas of Deptford and Lewisham. It was after hearing the charismatic Emmeline Pankhurst speak at a meeting in Trafalgar Square that Edith joined the Women's Social and Political Union. In February 1907 a deputation of suffragettes marched on the House of Commons in protest at the omission of votes for women from the King's speech. What had begun as a peaceful demonstration ended in a violent confrontation with police. Edith was among those arr...