Swindon in the Past Lane

It is difficult to believe that at the time this aerial photograph was taken in the 1950s, the railway industry was officially in decline. Visiting Swindon Junction in 1840, Brunel and his superintendent of locomotives, Daniel Gooch decided this would be an ideal place to establish a repair and maintenance depot.  The works opened in January 1843 with 423 men on the pay roll. Today the Churchward estate occupies what was once the site of  'A' Shop completed in 1920 and reputed to be one of the largest covered workshops in the world.  These were the heady days of the GWR when more than 14,000 worked 'inside' the vast railway factory complex. The railway industry was nationalised in 1948 by the post war Labour government and the 100 year old GWR works was renamed British Railways Workshops.  In 1960 the Evening Star was the last steam loco built for BR at Swindon and three years later a large part of the Carriage Works closed.  The end came at 4.30 pm Mar...

It was railway engineer Daniel Gooch who identified Swindon as the most suitable site for the much debated principal engine establishment in a letter to Brunel dated September 13, 1840. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Chief Engineer at the Great Western Railway, and Gooch worked on the design for a substantial engineering works for the maintenance and repair of locomotives. The land, approximately a mile to the north of the small market town of Swindon, was somewhat unprepossessing. 'The poorest in the neighbourhood; low lying, shallow soil on top of an endless depth of stiff clay, worthless for arable purposes, of small value for pasture, covered with furze, rushes and rowen,' according to local writer and naturalist Richard Jefferies. Once the workplace of boilermakers, brass finishers and toolmakers today 'V', 'O' and 'E' Shops are Grade II listed buildings and a modern day monument to merchandise.  The historic buildings built during the 1870s reign...

When the Sir Daniel Arms opened its doors in June 2007 it wasn't for the first time. A public house of the same name had stood in Fleet Street for around 140 years, which is somewhat surprising given a clause in the original deeds. Old Swindon brewer John Harding Sheppard made sure he protected his business interests when he sold land called 'Upper Ground or Fosters Upper Ground' in 1848. George Selby, a tea dealer from Eastcott, bought a piece of the land on 'the Highway called Fleet Way,' agreeing as part of the sale that he would not 'carry on or permit or suffer to be carried on ...the Trade or business of a Brewer, Publican, Beer House Keeper or Dealer in or retailer of beer or other Malt Liquor Wines or Spirits or any offensive Trade or calling whatsoever.' By 1851 George had opened a grocer's shop on the site but the property soon changed hands. In 1858 new owner William Henry Warner drew up a seven year lease with Charles Lea, a New Sw...