Devizes Road was a
late starter getting on the property ladder.
Building along Nyweport Street had begun nearly five hundred years
earlier while on Wood Street and High Street documents detailing 16th century property deeds survive.
In 1773 Devizes
Road was still an unnamed, rural lane known locally as Short Hedge or Edge
after the hawthorn hedges that lined its route.
By 1841 there was little change with only twelve houses built along the
lane, also known as Horsefair as this was the site of regular horse fairs where
the animals were tethered along the hedgerow for inspection.
Properties on the
west side of the road date from the second half of the 19th century where
the stone built terraced houses at 43-45 Devizes Road retain their original
sash windows.
Built in about
1830, Canford House was a private dwelling before it became home to Swindon’s
early police force in the mid century.
With accommodation for a police superintendent, an inspector and a
couple of constables there was still room to spare for a rogue or two.
In 1861 Henry Haynes
was the resident Police Superintendent.
Inspector Joseph Millard and his wife Jane shared the property with PCs
Henry Townsend and John Britton and on census night 22 year old Mary A. Chilley
bedded down in the cells where it was said there were metal rings in the cellar
walls to restrain the prisoners.
In A Swindon
Retrospect 1855-1930 printer and local historian Frederick Large recalled how
prisoners were paraded through the streets handcuffed in twos and threes on
their way from Canford House to appear before the magistrates at the Town Hall
in the Market Square.
With the building
of a new Police Station on Eastcott Hill in 1873, Canford House returned to a
private dwelling and in 1891 was the home of William A. Godwin, brewer and
maltster who owned the Belmont Brewery behind his home. Bought by his father William Godwin in 1871
the brewery remained in the family until William Arthur Godwin’s death in 1937.
Canford House
retains its links with the law and today provides office space for legal teams
Winton Rayne & Co Inc and Warren-Green and Broughton.
In recent years
the former Belmont Steam Brewery has been used as a nightclub venue. Today the Grade II listed building with its
distinctive tower is described as being central to new plans for the historic
Old Town site.
Widow Anna Bendrey
lived across the road in Myrtle Villa with her daughter Alice 29 and son Ernest
24. Described as ‘living on her own
means,’ Anna’s husband Richard Tooth Bendrey, a tea dealer, had obviously left
her well provided.
Neighbouring
Stanley House was home to farmer’s son and butcher John King Smith and his
young family while John H. Chandler, who had a large drapery business on the
corner of Wood Street, lived at 1 Strathearne Villas alongside draper’s assistant
John Gardner, auctioneer Tom Deacon and schoolmistress Mary Riley.
Today the ever increasing
flow of traffic is of major concern in this historic thoroughfare, as in other
areas of Old Town. However, many of the
properties have retained distinctive original features and along with the
historic laneways of Britannia and Phillips Place, Devizes Road comprises one
of Swindon Borough’s twenty eight conservation areas.
Canford House - former police station
The former Belmont Brewery
Myrtle Villa
Stanley House
1905 William Hooper photograph of Devizes Road is published courtesy of Swindon Local Studies
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