Swindon in the Past Lane

Plans for the Medical Fund flagship building had been in the pipeline for a number of years.  The committee paid £999 for a plot of Rolleston estate land when it came on the market in 1885 but it was another six years before construction began. Built in 1891 and opened the following year, Milton Road Baths soon became the hub of the Medical Fund activities. With a grand, glass covered entrance in Faringdon Road, the red brick building was designed by Swindon architect J.J. Smith at a cost of £10,000. Keeping up with the times, the Medical Fund committee installed both Turkish and Russian baths.  The Turkish bath with dry air heated rooms, followed by a full body wash and massage was seen as being ‘of great value as a sanitary and cleansing agent.’  The Russian baths were a variation on this theme, a vapour bath created by the throwing of water on hot stones, followed by a massage that involved being hit with a besom made of birch twigs and leaves. ...

Built in 1862 as a drill hall and armoury for the XI Wiltshire Volunteer Rifle Corps, the cottage hospital building in Swindon’s railway village began life designed for a completely different purpose. However, by the end of the 1860s the pressing need in the railway community was for a hospital.  The armoury was selected as being suitable for conversion and new premises was built for the Rifle Corps in the GWR Park. Accidents in the GWR Works were an everyday occurrence.  A gravestone in St. Mark’s churchyard records the death of 19 year old Frederick James Tucker ‘killed by burst boiler at Swindon works’ on June 18, 1855. A decade later and safety precautions had improved little.  Robert Hanks, 71, a fitter at the works, was crushed to death when a truck he was working under collapsed on top of him. Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Superintendent Joseph Armstrong proposed that the GWR Company pay for the conversion of the armoury property and that additional costs be me...