Swindon in the Past Lane

Yesterday evening I attended a very interesting meeting chaired by Robert Buckland MP for Swindon South. The purpose of the meeting was twofold – to discuss how to better protect and use buildings central to Swindon’s heritage and the subject of the new Swindon Museum and Art Gallery. Those present spoke with passion, although it has to be said, sometimes without good manners or respect for opposing views. The new museum and art gallery is planned for a large, empty site between the magistrate’s court and the Wyvern Theatre in Princes Street, the designated Cultural Quarter of the Council’s regenerated Town Centre.  Some felt it should be situated in the former Carriage Works on London Street. So that was the gist of the meeting … No one questioned that the town needs a new art gallery to better showcase the acclaimed modern art collection, acknowledged as the best outside London. No one doubted that the town needs a new museum to better tell the story of S...

So what is The Big Draw? It's  the world's biggest drawing festival from The Campaign for Drawing and on Wednesday it came to the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery courtesy of the artists from Artsite.  Whilst in the art gallery I took the opportunity to talk to the conservators working on more than 30 paintings by Kate Tryon, an American devotee of Richard Jefferies. I was interested to learn that many of the frames were originally gilded but sometime in their history they had been painted over. A similar story to some of the portraits in Lydiard House whose frames received a coat of white paint, which has since turned grey from the smoke from open fires. I very much enjoyed the ceramic exhibition From Where I'm Standing inspired by the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery collection. I found the work by Keith Varney reminiscent of Edmund de Waal's only to be told that SM&AG holds work by this prestigious ceramicist too. Is there no limit to the treasures contained in A...

Nicki Western, Marketing, Events and Premises Manager at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, arrived at the Swindon Heritage History Day weighed down with some extremely heavy bags. Among the museum artefacts she had brought with her was a selection of the ever popular Alfred Beaney photographs. Here's a blogpost I published in December 2012 about the Beaney archive. Swindon Museum and Art Gallery has possibly the largest family album ever - and they want to know the names of everyone pictured in it. The albums contain 40,000 photographs taken in the 1940s-70s by local man Albert Beaney.  Alongside his commissioned work Albert would travel the streets of Swindon on his motorbike, taking photographs of the children at play.  He would then return with his prints in the hope of selling them to the childrens' parents. Consequently only addresses and street names were recorded in his notebooks - the names of those pictured remain unknown. In 1998 the collection, a priceles...

Swindon Museum began life in the Victoria Hall on Regent's Circus in 1920 when geologist Charles Gore offered the town his collection of archaeological specimens and became the museum's first curator. However the collection rapidly outgrew its accommodation and by 1932 had moved to the imposing stone built property on Bath Road called Apsley House. Built in 1830 the first leaseholder of Apsley House was surgeon Charles James Fox Axford. No mention is made of the property in Axford's will written in July 1845, shortly before his death and the next occupier was another surgeon, Frederick H. Morris. The third resident was Richard Tarrant, a prosperous coal merchant whose coal yard stood at the rear of the house, on the area now occupied by Paxton House. But it is with another coal merchant that the house is most closely associated. Apsley House was business headquarters and home to the Toomer family for over fifty years. Born in Hampshire, John Toomer mov...

Albert Beaney Swindonians of a certain age might remember Albert Beaney.  With his camera and his notebook he was a familiar figure on the streets of the town. Albert George Beaney was born in Swindon in 1913.  He worked in the Post Office for many years, but photography was always his first love and he advertised the photography business he ran from his home at 50 Beatrice Street.  When the customers didn't come to him, he took to the streets for inspiration. According to anecdotal memory he would take photos of children in the streets and parks, sometimes individually, sometimes in groups of friends - difficult to imagine in today's more fearful climate.  Having recorded their addresses he would return at a later date with the prints to sell. Many of the photographs taken between 1945-1970 went unclaimed and in 1998 the Swindon Society helped towards the purchase of 40,000 of Albert's prints and negatives now held by the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery. ...