Swindon in the Past Lane

Having wondered how I would get a photograph looking down busy Commercial Road, it turned out to be quite easy. A gap in the traffic, hold your nerve and hey presto. A photograph of Commercial Road today is far removed from those taken during the late Victorian period when it was a tree lined vista of elegant, red brick villas. However, as it's name suggests Commercial Road was always intended to be at the heart of Swindon's growing commercial centre, an important highway linking Old and New Swindon and a busy shopping street to rival Regent Street. Central to the development of Swindon, Commercial Road was constructed in the late nineteenth century and heralded the first phase of development on the valuable Rolleston Estate. The Rolleston Estate, a large land holding that originally belonged to the Vilett family, was crucial to the development of New Swindon. In the 1880s the vast area of prime building land was held in chancery following the bankruptcy of it's the...

In 1870 William Vilett Rolleston inherited an estate worth an estimated £20,000 (today approximately £2.3 million). By 1874 he was declared bankrupt and you have to ask the question – where did it all go wrong? The Vilett presence in Swindon is believed to date back to the sixteenth century when the family were among those who snapped up local properties during that great land dispersal event at the dissolution of the monasteries. But where did William's Vilett connection come from? The eldest son of George and Mary Augusta Rolleston, William Vilett Rolleston was born in Leamington Priors, Warwickshire in 1842. William's father George was the child of Samuel Rolleston and his first wife Elizabeth Herring. In 1827 the widowed Samuel married Harriet Vilett but there were no children from this second marriage. When  Harriet died in 1870 William Vilett Rolleston inherited the estate left to her by her brother Thomas Vilett. What became known thereafter as the Rolleston...

Every Summer Sunday we went to the south coast for the day. Mum, dad, me and Shandy, the dog. Our regular haunts were Eastbourne, Brighton and Southend-on-Sea. I think we went out because if we stayed home there would have been a row, or maybe worse.  In the Autumn we returned to Southend to see the lights,  a special treat as the dark evenings drew in. A walk along the sea front, oohing and aahing at the decorations strewn between lamp posts, displays that winked on and off, a happy clown, a sad clown.   Although not on the scale of Blackpool’s famous illuminations, Southend enjoyed a considerable popularity in its own neck of the woods and many thousands of people thronged along the pier and promenade to marvel at the sights.   Along the cliff face various tableaux were arranged and it was here I remember the shock of grasping a hand I thought was Mum’s only to discover it was that of a stranger.   The moment was only fleeting as Mum w...

Are you enjoying ‘Gentleman Jack’ the story of Anne Lister a nineteenth century woman who dared to be different? The BBC1 Sunday evening drama written by Sally Wainwright and starring Suranne Jones is based on the diaries of Anne Lister, an extraordinary Yorkshire woman born in 1791. Anne Lister left an account of her life in a journal numbering more than twenty volumes and some four million words, most of it written in code. For more than thirty years Helena Whitbread has been decoding, researching and writing about the woman who took control of her life and broke social conventions, sometimes at threat to her personal safety. Finding the diary of one of the Swindon women I have researched is the stuff of my dreams, but unfortunately ordinary, nineteenth century, working class women didn't tend to leave an account of their life. The closest I have come to such a find is a collection of letters held at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre in Chippenham, wr...

A book launch in a cemetery chapel may sound a bit bizarre to you, but to me it makes perfect sense. For ten years I have been a member of a small, but perfectly formed, group of cemetery enthusiasts. We research and write about the people buried in the cemetery and throughout the summer months conduct guided cemetery walks. In 2015 we re-enacted a Votes for Women campaign March and Rally complete with a choir singing The March of the Women and an Edwardian policeman trying to keep order. So, as you can see it is perfectly fitting to hold an event celebrating the lives of Swindon's women in Radnor Street Cemetery chapel. Join me for a short, informal book launch on Sunday June 23 at 1.45 pm followed by a guided cemetery walk with Andy and Noel.  Edith New Old Town Belles

The railway factory dominated life in Swindon for close on 150 years. When the Works closed in 1986 a raft of skills were lost, consigned to history, and a way of life ended. But are we guilty today of preserving a nostalgic and sentimental view of life in the railway factory, especially as it existed back in the good old days? Last month I attended a talk by Graham Carter about Alfred Williams who worked in the railway factory as a steam-hammer man for 23 and a half years. In 1912 he wrote a warts and all book called Life in a Railway Factory. It wasn’t published until 1915, three years after Alfred had left the factory, his own health compromised by years of back breaking labour. His book didn’t sell well in Swindon. You could say that with the vast majority of men employed in the Works they didn’t need or want to read about life ‘inside’ but was it more to do with fear of sanction by the GWR foremen? A less than favourable review appeared in the February 1916 edition o...

It wasn’t that unusual in Victorian Britain for a woman to head a family firm, which is exactly what Susannah Phillips did after the death of her husband John. Susannah was born in Chatham, Kent on January 21, 1816, the daughter of George Reynolds and his wife Zipporah. Susannah married John Phillips, a carpenter, on December 25, 1845 at St Nicholas’ Church, Rochester. By the time of the 1851 census the couple were living in a house next door to the Victoria Inn on Victoria Street, Swindon with their two young daughters. John’s building projects in Swindon date from about 1852 and the census of 1861 records him as employing 27 men, so a not inconsiderable size business. As well as houses in the Quarries and King Street, John's firm built some significant and sadly now lost buildings. In 1866 he built not only the Congregational Church on the corner of Bath Road and Victoria Street, demolished in the 1940s for road widening purposes, but also the now derelict Corn Exchange ...

The friendly face of Savernake Street encourages the flagging walker up the steep hill and tomorrow there will be a particularly warm welcome at the Eastcott Big Lunch and Neighbourhood Party .   In 1900 the Ordnance Survey map shows the area as undeveloped, possibly due to large sand and gravel pits indicated on the site.  In his book A Swindon Retrospect published in 1932 local historian Frederick Large recalled how Wombwell, Bostock and Sangers circuses were regular visitors to this area, something the Eastcott Community Organisation continue to celebrate with their circus themed  Big Lunch and Neighbourhood Party. Building work on what was then known as the Globe Field estate began in 1905-6 when Bishop & Pritchett ‘valuers, house agents and architects, agents and surveyors to the Rolleston Estate’ started work. The four streets of red brick houses were eventually named Savernake Street, Pembroke Street, Brunswick Road and Globe Street. Most...