Newport Street is probably the oldest recorded thoroughfare in Swindon and was first mentioned in documents dated 1346. In 1874 Thomas Hooper Deacon and his business partner Thomas Edmund Liddiard signed a lease on the mansion house, garden, yards and stables on the corner of High Street and Newport Street, formerly occupied by John Harding Sheppard. Under the same agreement they also acquired various other properties in the area behind the two streets to further extend their VWH Horse and Carriage Repository. The business flourished and in 1879 1,872 horses were entered for sale across the year. Today Thomas Hooper Deacon is commemorated in the naming of Hooper Place, a lane close to the site of the Newport Street entrance to the former Vale of White Horse Repository. This 1950s photograph shows Newport Street almost unrecognisable today with the Co-op Store occupying the former corner site of Sheppard’s mansion house. Upham Road marks the divide between old ...