Nestled up against the Goddard family's secluded parkland, the Hermitage was an apt name for Charles Anthony Wheeler's house. Along with neighbouring Redville the entrepreneurial Wheeler built both properties in the early 1840s. Documents indicate that Bank Manager William Brewer Wearing lived there in 1859 and for the next thirty years the Victorian tenants came and went as revealed in census returns throughout the 19th century. By the 1890s the Kinneir family owned the property, but it was with the death of J. L. Calderwood in February 1960 that the house passed out of private ownership and into the public sector. Among documents held at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham is a schedule drawn up by Swindon Corporation on August 30, 1960 concerning The Hermitage and three cottages in Dammas Lane. A stone and brick building with slated roof, The Hermitage contained five bedrooms and four attic rooms with extensive cellar space in the basement. Rooms...