Swindon in the Past Lane

Last year an exhibition of Ken White’s work opened at The Post Modern, Theatre Square, Swindon to celebrate the artists' 70th birthday. In the 1980s Swindon boasted a fine collection of Ken's murals - one at Cambria Bridge, the famous ‘Swindon Personalities’ in Union Street/Prospect Place, the King Class Locomotive Passing Through Swindon Railway Works at Henry Street, to name just a few. Sadly today just one mural now remains - the Golden Lion Bridge looking down Fleming Way. And even more disgraceful is the fact that Swindon does not own a piece of Ken White’s art.  Now how on earth can that be? In 2003 Advertiser journalist Shirley Mathias was asking exactly that question. Shirley wrote: ‘But the closest Ken has come to recognition by the borough was an invitation to hang two works in a display which is part of Think Art, an event sponsored by the borough’s Swindon Arts project together with, among other supporters, Nationwide, Westfield who own the Br...

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...

Ken White’s Golden Lion Bridge mural is a focal point in Swindon town centre, just as the bridge itself once was. Local artist Ken White first painted the mural on the side of a terraced house in Medgbury Road in 1976 as part of a job creation scheme for Thamesdown Arts.  Based on a 19 th century photograph, Ken added his own touch with representations of hammerman poet Alfred Williams and bridge builder Brunel.  Repainted in 1983, Ken spruced up the mural in 2009 and with the recent demolition of the Whalebridge Roundabout in Fleming Way it is once again on full view. The elaborate iron lift bridge depicted in the mural was built in the GWR works in 1870, replacing the original wooden swing bridge over the Wilts and Berks Canal.   Its neighbouring pedestrian footbridge, paid for by public subscription, was added in 1877. Once a farm track leading from Upper Eastcott, the main road through New Swindon, soon became known as Bridge Street whi...