Frederick St John and George Stubbs

The Favourite Hunter of Henry Viscount Bolingbroke - a copy of this painting hangs in the library at Lydiard House

As Swindon Borough Council agonizes over what to do about Lydiard House, who would have thought that Frederick, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke and 3rd Viscount St John might have been its saviour!

This is 'Bully' who famously divorced Lady Diana Spencer, sold the family pile at Battersea, spent a fortune on Sevres porcelain and bought more than 90 thoroughbred racehorses during a ten year period. "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast horses. The rest I just squandered," he might have said to the press of the day.*

Along with the horses he bought, raced and sold in the 1760s, Frederick also became the patron of a Lancashire born artist specialising in painting horses.

The first of Frederick's horses to be immortalised in oils was 'Lustre, held by a groom.' Next came 'Tristram Shandy' followed by a bay filly called 'Molly Long Legs.'

Frederick had a group of his brood mares and their foals painted, most probably in the Lydiard parkland. The title for this atmospheric painting is 'Mares and Foals disturbed by an approaching storm.'

In 1765 Frederick had the celebrated 'Gimcrack' painted following his win on Newmarket Heath. And to complete his gallery of equine portraits Frederick had painted 'Turf,' a bay who earned him around 2000 guineas, a 'Favourite hunter of Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke' and 'Hollyhock.'

In 1943 things were just about as bad as they could get at Lydiard House. With the Palladian mansion house falling down about his ears, Vernon, 6th Viscount Bolingbroke, moved into Brook Cottage, the home of his own great grandfather, one of the gamekeepers once employed on the estate.

Up at the mansion house he had the mother of all clear outs - donating 2 and a half tons of historic documents to the wartime paper salvage scheme. Furniture was burned on the front lawn and in December of that year he dispatched four paintings for auction at Christie's; two fetched £4,410 each, a group of mares and foals made £1,365 and a fourth, the 'favourite horse of Henry Viscount Bolingbroke standing by a river, the family seat and church seen in the background' made £787.

These were just four of eight pictures Frederick had commissioned in the 1760s, painted by George Stubbs, the most famous painter of horses this country has ever produced. The painting of Hollyhock was given to M. Monet in 1766 who obviously thought it needed livening up and had a couple of figures and a flock of sheep added to the background. The painting was later bought by the Prince of Wales in 1810 and now hangs in Windsor Castle, part of the Royal Collection.

Today the whereabouts of 'Tristram Shandy,' which sold at Christie's for £2.3 million in 2000, is unknown, but 'Molly Long Legs' hangs in Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery.

And in 2011 one of George Stubbs's works fetched a cool £22.4 million, making it the third most valuable Old Master ever sold. And what was this painting? It was Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath with a trainer, a stable lad and a jockey, one of the paintings Vernon sold in 1943.

Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath with a trainer, a stable lad and a jockey

Mare and foals disturbed by an approaching storm

Turf with Jockey up at Newmarket

Molly Long Legs

Hollyhock

Lustre held by a groom

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...

Commercial Road

What a difference a few months make. For too long the dark empty windows of number 66-68 have stared out forlornly at the busy traffic along Commercial Road, but not any more. Today the windows shine brightly with the arrival of the Prospect Charity Shop selling a wide range of good quality items from books to comfy sofas to curl up on and lamps to read them by. For more than thirty years the Prospect Hospice in Wroughton has provided specialist end of life care. Today this service is also available at the Great Western Hospital and to people in their own homes. The Prospect Hospice is close to the hearts of the people of Swindon, particularly Swindon Society member Martin Vandervelde who has cycled many thousands of miles, raising more than £90,000 for the charity. Construction along Commercial Road dates from around 1890 with local builders Joseph Ponting, James Hinton, Charles Williams and Joseph Williams quickly getting in on the act. Today Co...

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...

Swindon in the Past Lane

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