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...