Swindon in the Past Lane

The Apprentice Registers of the Wiltshire Society 1817-1922 will be of particular interest to local researchers, especially if your Swindon ancestors moved to London. Established in 1654, the Wiltshire Feast was a county organisation of merchants, traders and gentry who annually convened to London for some 17th century networking. The visit included the placing of children of the deserving poor with Wiltshire links in apprenticeships to city traders and concluded with a feast, hence the name. The society can be traced to around 1776 when it appears to have experienced a hiatus. However work began again in 1817 when it was remarketed at 'a public meeting of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Wiltshire' held at the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate Street in the City of London. The registers, published by the Wiltshire Record Society in 1995 include entries such as that of Frederick Newcombe and his sister Phillipa, two orphans living in London whose mother was from Swindon. Frederick w...

If your family worshipped at either the Baptist Tabernacle or the Cambria Place Chapel you stand a good chance of finding them in one of the church's Year Books. Those for 1895-1938 are held at Swindon Central Library and contain a fascinating amount of information. With just 24 members, the Swindon Baptist community had their beginnings in Prospect Place under the ministry of Rev. Richard Breeze, but by 1849 the congregation had moved into a new chapel in Fleet Street. In little over 35 years this also proved too small for the growing Baptist following and Swindon architect W H Read was commissioned to design a new chapel. Built to classical proportions, the Tabernacle certainly made a statement and soon became a focal point of Regent Circus, originally destined to be named Trafalgar Square. More than 1,000 people attended a tea party at the official opening and twenty years later membership stood at 780. Each Year Book contains a list of church members, among th...

"All the approaches to the Town Hall were densely packed with people," reported the Swindon Advertiser at the unveiling of the cenotaph on Saturday October 30, 1920. "Especially touching was the scene when the relatives of the fallen came forward to deposit their floral tributes at the base of the memorial," the front-page account continued. In his dedicatory speech, Alderman S.E. Walter, Mayor of Swindon, spoke of how "upwards of 6,000 men went out from their homes in Swindon to fight for what they believed to be the liberty and salvation of the world." Anxious to create a lasting memorial to those men, Swindon dignitaries perhaps failed to appreciate the post war hardships families continued to endure. An ambitious scheme launched by the then Mayor, Alderman C.A. Plaister in May 1919 was for a memorial hall. A public appeal was announced and a donation of £100 was made by both Alfred Manners and Major F.P. Goddard to get the ball rolling. Fun...

As local and national plans to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War are discussed, here is a look back at how Swindon marked the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War, a war to end all wars. More than 3,000 people visited the BBC Wartime Discovery Day at Swindon's STEAM museum on Saturday November 8, 2008. With more experts under one roof then you could shake a stick at, there was plenty of advice on what records are currently available and how to access them. One of the highlights of the day was a talk given by local historian Mark Sutton who has set himself the task of commemorating the men of Swindon who fought in the First World War. Mark, who grew up in Redcliffe Street, has a breathtaking knowledge of his subject and quoted facts and figures with effortless ease. "The BBC have asked me if I would talk for about half an hour but I've got enough here for three hours," he joked. With a wealth of personal detail, the slideshow pre...

Formed when the wartime National Fire Service was denationalised, 2008 marked the 60th anniversary of the Wiltshire Fire Brigade. Today the county fire service has around 600 fire fighters on roll, a far cry from when a Volunteer Brigade was formed in Swindon in 1879. With William E. Morris, son of the Swindon Advertiser founder, as Captain, A.H. Meadows Deputy Captain and William Affleck, engineer, the total force numbered just 14. In 1864 Old Swindon's horse drawn Shand Mason manual pump was housed in Newport Street. Keys to the building were kept at the police station with another set at the Wood Street home of Swindon surveyor William Read. Meanwhile in New Swindon the GWR Company made their steam pump, used in the works, available for any incidents in the railway village. However by the 1870s with the old fire engine in a poor state of repair, fire fighting provisions were woefully inadequate. A proposal to institute a fire fighting force was made at a meeting of ...

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...

In the mid 19th century Cricklade Street was still referred to by its older name of Brock Hill. Once so steep extra horses were added to carts and carriages to pull heavy loads up to Old Swindon The magnificent 18th century town house on the east side of Cricklade Street was once known as Vilett House. Built about 1729 and once the home of Old Swindon aristocracy Thomas Vilett and his wife, the former Mary Goddard, it is thought the first occupier was local landowner William Harding. In 1770 another member of the family, wealthy Robert Harding was living there. A memorial in the old parish church of Holy Rood records that Robert was the husband of Mary, daughter of John Tubb, formerly of Goosey in Berkshire, Armiger (a person entitled to bear heraldic arms). Mary died in 1759 and when Robert made his will in 1770 he was 'under a Treaty of Marriage' to Miss Philippa Hughes. Built on the site of a former inn, there is an elaborate system of brick vaulted cellars beneat...