"There is very little architecture in Swindon and a great deal of building," wrote poet laureate John Betjeman in 1950. This aerial view of the Faringdon Park area taken around the same time shows some of the many rows of Victorian terraced housing to which Betjeman, somewhat unkindly, referred. With an influx of Welsh workers moving to Swindon when the GWR Rolling Mills opened in the 1860s, additional housing had to be built, and quickly. Initially accommodation was found for the Welsh families in the Barracks, a former lodging house for single men, but this proved both unsuccessful and inadequate and an alternative had to be found. The first stone cottages along Cambria Place were built in about 1864. The 1871 census records forgemen, iron rollers and rail roughers from Llanelly, Tredegar and Ebbw Vale among those living in the canal side properties. A Baptist Chapel seating 250 was built in 1866 where for many years the sermons were preached in Welsh. ...