Swindon in the Past Lane

As the industrial  revolution and the coming of the railways transformed the Wiltshire countryside Swindon women were on the front line of change, shaping the new industrial town and transforming the old market one. Incomers arrived from the great railway centres across the country to create a welcoming, tolerant and creative community with women's contribution at its heart. Following the incorporation of Old and New Swindon in 1900 innovative women stepped up to the plate; women like Swindon born suffragette  Edith New who challenged political conventions and Emma Noble, Swindon's first female councillor, who campaigned to improve living conditions in the town. The story of Swindon women includes artists and actresses, political activists and social reformers and the ordinary women who worked in the factories, raised their children and made a difference. Discover how development at the Great Western Railway factory almost stalled due to a lack of female empl...

In 1900 the separate towns of New and Old Swindon were incorporated; Swindon Town FC were beaten two goals to nil away at Portsmouth in a Southern League football match in front of a crowd of 7000 and there were acting jobs going at the Queen’s Theatre for ‘Gentleman to play Responsible Parts; also Lady for Light chambermaids, to Open immediately.’ And apparently Swindon boasted ‘some fine specimens of manhood’ within the 30 strong police force based here. The average height of the police officers was 5ft 11ins with twelve men standing over 6ft while Superintendent P.C. Millard stood 6ft 2ins in his stockinged feet. So, what was it like to live here in Swindon in 1900? Call in at the Railway Village Museum, Faringdon Road this Saturday, and you’ll get a pretty good idea. Last month I took my granddaughter Maysie and Desmond, the Year 2 class mascot at Westlea Primary School. It was the first time I had visited the cottage since it opened to the public again in rece...

History is all around us here in West Swindon and just up the road from Lydiard Park is a survivor from the ancient forest of Braydon. Back in the day our neck of the woods was the property of the King. The ancient woodland at Braydon had become a royal forest by 1135 and in 1228 enclosed an area of around 46 square miles.  While the forest was the playground of the privileged, for the ordinary folk it provided vital resources and the right to common pasture to graze their animals. In 1270 Robert Tregoze received a royal licence from Henry III to create a deer park at Lydiard but the march of progress had already begun. By 1300 several of the local woods had been disafforested including those owned by John de Clinton and Robert Russell of Lydiard Millicent called ‘Spersolt’ (Sparcell) and William de Grandison’s wood at Lydiard Tregoze. Thankfully Peatmoor Copse was preserved during the 1980s development when sensitive planning  saw the copse and the newly con...

If you haven’t got around to visiting the Richard Jefferies Museum yet this spring, then Sunday June 2 is the perfect time to do so. Take a trip on the Coate Water Miniature Railway , making sure you alight at the Richard Jefferies Halt. Visit the museum, enjoy a walk around the grounds and partake of a cream tea in the Mulberry Tearoom, but make sure you are present for the unveiling of the Swindon Heritage blue plaque at 3 pm. This will be the 8 th Swindon Heritage blue plaque erected to mark significant people, places and events in the history of Swindon. The first was installed in May 2016 at 24 North Street, the birthplace of militant suffragette Edith New who campaigned for women’s suffrage alongside Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters and engaged in innovative and dangerous methods of protest. The second and third blue plaques were installed in a double event to honour the bravery of Squadron Leader Harold Morley Starr and his brother Wing Commander Norman J...

Multi-talented Graham Carter, journalist, artist, drummer, cyclist and DIYer extraordinaire, will be talking about Alfred Williams: Our Forgotten Local Hero this Thursday, May 30, 7.15 pm at the Central Community Centre in the railway village. It's easy to see why Graham is so inspired by polymath Alfred Williams, the South Marston boy who left school at the age of 11 and spent more than 20 years working in the railway factory; who taught himself Greek and Sanskrit, studied nature and wrote poetry and books about the Wiltshire countryside. The Central Community Centre, the setting for this  talk hosted by Swindon Civic Voice, has itself a multi faceted history. In 1862 the building began life as the armoury for the XI Wiltshire Volunteer Rifle Corps.  Then in 1871-2 it was converted into the GWR Medical Fund Hospital with one of the adjoining cottages made into nursing accommodation and later converted into a dispensary for the hospital. A temporary extension was add...

If you enjoy local history books that are full of fascinating facts and amusing anecdotes then you are going to love Swindon Photographers & Postcard Publishers. Co authored by Local Studies librarian Darryl Moody and local historian Paul A. Williams, this compendium contains details of the numerous photographers who have recorded the people and places of Swindon since the photography craze took off in the mid-nineteenth century. Darryl freely admits he has become obsessed with the weird characters and their strange lives. Most of the photographers had second jobs, many employed in the railway works, but apparently taxidermy was a popular side-line as well. Paul Williams is related to ‘Wiltshire local history royalty’ with a family connection to William Hooper (see the book for more about Hooper) and Hammerman poet Alfred Williams.  Paul brought along some of Hooper’s photographic artefacts to the book launch held yesterday at Swindon Central Library including...

Continuing my walk from Old Town to West Swindon  I cut through the underpass beneath Great Western Way and emerge at Mannington House. Today Mannington Lane is a bus lane, which seems pretty fortunate as back in the day this route appeared to cause a lot of problems. In 1884 summonses were issued at Cricklade Petty Sessions on behalf of Miss Julia Strange, tenant at Mannington Farm, against William F. Large, Walter Ody, and John Knapp to show cause why a road leading from the Swindon and Wootton Basset Road towards Purton, should not be declared a public highway, and repaired as such. Miss Strange was responsible for the repair of a half mile length of road on her land for which she received an allowance of £14 a year so to do. However, there was growing pressure for an end to this ‘anomalous state of affairs’ and bringing responsibility for the road under the control of the Highway Board. Other farmers in a similar situation had already complied but like her father, Ju...

You might think it would be difficult to miss the black and yellow warnings on the railway bridge over the road but still lorry drivers frequently get their vehicles stuck, causing delays on the road and railway. An inn has stood on the site of The Runner, formerly known as The Running Horse since the eighteenth century, but it didn't get its equine themed name until the 1820s. Formerly known as the Royal Oak, some sources claim that the pub was renamed after the circus carousel horse ride which visited the nearby Westcott Recreation Ground during the early nineteenth century. A water mill once stood on the River Ray just south of the road. Mills were an invaluable source of income for the local Lord of the Manor and appear in that all important property inventory, the Domesday Book.  In 1086 Swindon, then five separate estates, boasted two mills each valued at 4s.   Records of a mill and land in an area called Eastcott and Nethercott, later known as Westcott, date...

In which I continue my Swindon pilgrimage ... I cross busy Bath Road at the traffic lights by the Monkey Puzzle tree and begin my descent down the hill. Today the former market town has a number of routes down the hill, but back in the day shopping in Old Swindon involved a trek across muddy fields up Eastcott Hill for the housewives in New Swindon. My regular route is Kingshill Road, considerably easier walking down than climbing up. The Kingshill area is named after the medieval, landowning King family. The earliest surviving registers for Holy Rood, the original parish church in Old Swindon, contain numerous references to the King family. 'Elinour King widdow' was buried in the churchyard at Holy Rood on March 24, 1681 and her will was published the following year. Elianour's husband Stephen died in 1667 and at the time of her death 14 years later the couple had four surviving children, sons Henry, Stephen and Bartholomew and a daughter, Mary. Elinour divid...