It wasn’t that unusual in Victorian Britain for a woman to head a family firm, which is exactly what Susannah Phillips did after the death of her husband John. Susannah was born in Chatham, Kent on January 21, 1816, the daughter of George Reynolds and his wife Zipporah. Susannah married John Phillips, a carpenter, on December 25, 1845 at St Nicholas’ Church, Rochester. By the time of the 1851 census the couple were living in a house next door to the Victoria Inn on Victoria Street, Swindon with their two young daughters. John’s building projects in Swindon date from about 1852 and the census of 1861 records him as employing 27 men, so a not inconsiderable size business. As well as houses in the Quarries and King Street, John's firm built some significant and sadly now lost buildings. In 1866 he built not only the Congregational Church on the corner of Bath Road and Victoria Street, demolished in the 1940s for road widening purposes, but also the now derelict Corn Exchange ...