Swindon in the Past Lane

When Swindon Corporation bought the old Goddard mansion house and 52 acres of parkland, it also acquired the ruins of Holy Rood Church, the town's original parish church.   In 1947 the borough surveyor reported to Town Clerk, David Murray John on the sorry state of the burial ground and chapel at The Lawn.  Many of the tombs had been vandalised with the coverings and side slabs removed while the sheet lead covering on the Goddard family vault had been taken. "In the chapel itself, a number of plaques have been wrenched from the walls and a hole has been cut in the outer wall on the North Side," wrote the inspector.  Sadly even the stone font had been smashed and scattered around the Chapel. It is believed that a church had stood on the site of Holy Rood since Norman times but the earliest mention of one dates from the 12th century when it was given to the Augustinian priory of Southwick by the Pont de l'Arche family. Alongside the burials of Swindon worthi...

It is difficult to believe that this town centre parkland oasis was once a brown field site. Queen's Park is a twelve acre beauty spot with a Victorian industrial past, the site of builder Thomas Turner's brick works -  examples of his artistry stand close to the Drove Road entrance. Today the former derelict claypit, once popular with zoologist Desmond Morris and his girlfriend Diana Dors, is an award winning park and garden. The park was developed between 1947 and 1962.  The first phase - a Garden of Remembrance to the fallen of the Second World War - was opened by Princess Elizabeth in 1950, the year of Swindon Borough's Golden Jubilee.  The second phase was opened by Sir Noel Arkell, Sheriff of Wiltshire, on May 30, 1953. Unfortunately the glass Show House was dismantled following storms in the early 1990s.  Designed by Borough Architect J. Loring-Morgan and opened in 1964 a brick wall is all that remains of the structure that once boasted a...

Restoration Man - George Clarke Channel 4’s George Clarke was up in Cumbria visiting a project on a 19 th century church in this week’s episode of ‘Restoration Man’ (Thursday Jan 19). Phil Evans and his partner had paid £128,000 for a dilapidated church in the picturesque village of Gamblesby in the North Pennines. Built in 1868 St John’s had stood empty for eight years when the young couple took on the challenge of converting it into a family home.  The church was built in a mixture of architectural styles and loosely based on the Victorian Gothic Revival.  George took time out from the build to visit the Chapel at Exeter College, Oxford designed by the doyen of Victorian Church architects Scott, but he could have just as easily popped into Swindon to see more examples of the great man’s work. George Gilbert Scott was born on July 13, 1811 at Gawcott, Buckinghamshire, the third son of Rev Thomas Scott and his wife Euphemia Lynch.  Scott moved to London ...

In 1881 the population of New Swindon stood at nearly 20,000 and was rising. In just forty years building had spread out of the railway village, first along Westcott Place and then beyond the railway line to the north of the town. With the parish church of St Mark's struggling to meet the spiritual needs of its ever increasing congregation, another church was desperately needed, but the coffers were empty. Undeterred Canon Maurice Ponsonby stepped into the pulpit to give an inspirational Whitsunday sermon on June 9, 1889. Taking as his text Genesis Chapter 6, verse 14, he told his congregation to 'build me an ark' - and that's exactly what they did. Meetings held on two consecutive Wednesdays in June soon saw a band of sixty volunteers step forward. The men were rapidly organised into three groups headed by Cresser, Hayward and Wager, three carpenters and joiners employed in the GWR works. Work began immediately on a plot of land in Ashford Road gifted by...

I think it's about time I gave Duncan and Mandy Ball another mention. I originally wrote this blogpost more than five years ago and I now have to revise the paragraph on statistics. So, that would be a lot more pages, thousands more photographs and a much larger index.  Probably without exception the ambition of every family historian is to visit the places with which their ancestors are most closely associated. As few of us have a baronial home, and castle fortresses are pretty thin on the ground, for most researchers the ultimate destination is the parish church where their forebears married, brought their babies to be christened and eventually were laid to rest. For the lucky ones there may even be a memorial or a gravestone providing additional valuable information in the quest to piece together a family history. For those researching their origins in the North Wiltshire area there is a real treasure trove to be found at www.oodwooc.co.uk. Duncan and Mandy Ball began re...