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...

Following the initial building boom during the 1840-60s, development of New Swindon pretty much ground to a halt.   The reason given was a slump in the railway industry in the 1870s and the scarcity of building land in the centre of town due to the Goddard’s reluctance to sell their land. Another area of prime building land, the Rolleston estate, owned by William Vilett Rolleston, was tied up in the Court of Chancery for more than ten years.  It was not until 1885 that parcels of land came onto the market and were rapidly snapped up. Old Swindon jeweller Hubert J. Deacon bought the area on which Deacon Street was built and named in his honour.   Construction began in 1890 when builders William Crombey, a former engine driver from Durham, and John Horsell, who lived in neighbouring Commercial Road, got the ball rolling.   They soon began work on streets that would eventually be named Curtis, Crombey and Deacon Streets. At the time of t...

Although he died in 1894, examples of William Affleck's Work can still be seen on the streets of Swindon today. William was born in Gateshead in 1816, the son of engineer Robert Affleck.  He served his apprenticeship at Hawkes & Son, a large engineering works and iron foundry at Gateshead before joining the prestigious Lambeth based engineering firm of Maudsley & Field.  He left Maudsley's to take up an appointment with the GWR in Paddington and in 1842 moved to 33 Exeter Street and a job at the Swindon Works. In 1853 William struck out on his own, establishing a foundry and engineering works in Prospect, Old Swindon on land previously owned by James Strange.  The business flourished and the 1861 census records William 45, a machinist and coal merchant, employing 17 men and 3 boys.  William and his wife lived alongside the works in Prospect Place with their growing family - Ann 16, Robert 15, William J. 6, Frederick 2 and four month old Frank. Willi...