Swindon in the Past Lane

At the turn of the second millennium the future was looking bleak for the abandoned Groundwell Farmhouse.  Left to stand empty for several years, it looked as if time was up for the Grade II listed building, which had once served as both farmhouse and arts centre. Elements of the coursed rubble stone house date from 1660 and during a survey made by the Wiltshire Buildings Record in the 1980s a 17 th  century fireplace was still in situ in the west bedroom.  The building was then described as typical of a late 16 th  or early 17 th  century Wiltshire Manor House.  But records for the Groundwell estate go back much further.  This des res was already on the up and up in 1086, appreciating from 40s to 70s at the time of the Domesday survey where it was recorded that ‘Hugh and Girald hold Grendewell from Humphrey.  Ordulf held it before 1066.’  However, even earlier than this, the Romans had appreciated the sheltered aspect of Go...

Was Richard Woolford motivated by criminal intent or poverty when he picked up his gun and headed off for Lord Bolingbroke’s land one winter’s night in 1834? Records show that Richard was charged with ‘having in the night together with a great number of other persons armed with guns, and other unlawful weapons entered a certain coppice belonging to the right honourable Lord Viscount Bolingbroke for the purpose of destroying game at Lydiard Tregoze.’ At the time of Richard’s arrest, Robert Hiscocks was the gamekeeper at the Lydiard Park estate, a position subsequently filled by his son Harry who worked alongside him in the second half of the 19 th  century.  Sporting rights across the estate were protected in the farm leases and the duties of the Lydiard Park gamekeeper included the rearing of his lordships pheasants.   Victorian gamekeepers were known to shoot at anything that threatened the birds under their protection. Richard, a 21 year old labourer ...

Last year an exhibition of Ken White’s work opened at The Post Modern, Theatre Square, Swindon to celebrate the artists' 70th birthday. In the 1980s Swindon boasted a fine collection of Ken's murals - one at Cambria Bridge, the famous ‘Swindon Personalities’ in Union Street/Prospect Place, the King Class Locomotive Passing Through Swindon Railway Works at Henry Street, to name just a few. Sadly today just one mural now remains - the Golden Lion Bridge looking down Fleming Way. And even more disgraceful is the fact that Swindon does not own a piece of Ken White’s art.  Now how on earth can that be? In 2003 Advertiser journalist Shirley Mathias was asking exactly that question. Shirley wrote: ‘But the closest Ken has come to recognition by the borough was an invitation to hang two works in a display which is part of Think Art, an event sponsored by the borough’s Swindon Arts project together with, among other supporters, Nationwide, Westfield who own the Br...