Swindon in the Past Lane

"There've been Odys farming in North Wilts for five hundred years," local resident Harold Ody proudly told Elspeth Huxley when she was writing her book  Gallipot Eyes – a Wiltshire Diary,  about Oaksey village in 1975. With such well established roots, Swindon based Ody family historians have a head start with local parish registers available on microfiche at Swindon Central Library and the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham. Early parish records for St Mary's Church at Lydiard Tregoze reveal Richard Ody confirming the appointment of the churchwardens in 1742.  It was his descendant Noah Ody, who with the help of his wife Sarah, populated many of the local farms. Noah and his sons were tenants, at various times during the 19th century, at Hayes Knoll and Bagbury Farms in Purton, Haxmoor in Purton Stoke, Braydon, Marsh, Flaxlands and Glebe Farms in Lydiard Tregoze and Lower Shaw Farm in the parish of Lydiard Millicent.  It was the couple's ...

This aerial shot of Swindon fifty years ago shows Headlands School which opened in 1952 as Headlands Grammar. In 1959 T.S. Magson was the Head Teacher. Part of the parish of Stratton St Margaret was added to Swindon by Local Government Board order number 25.937 on September 30, 1900.  What had once been a rural area on the outskirts of industrial Swindon would soon become engulfed by the encroaching town. The original Boundary Cottage stood on the Highworth and Swindon parish boundary.   It is said that the new Boundary House, built in 1894, was modelled on the owner’s home in Bayswater, but frustratingly little is known about the impressive four storey building that once dominated the former Kingsdown Road. During the early 20 th century Boundary House was occupied by the coach building King Brothers, Henry Charles and Joseph and their two families.   Listings in modern directories prove patchy but the Boundary House maintained its conn...

The Victorians knew a thing or two about retail therapy and might well have coined the phrase 'shop till you drop.'  The advent of mass production saw an explosion of 'must have' commodities for those fortunate enough to have a disposable income. By the 1860s Swindon's Regent Street, named after the famous London shopping precinct, was moving with the times as former worker's cottages were converted into shops. Swindon's first department store was opened in 1875 by Reading retailer William McIlroy, but the town would soon boast it's own home grown enterprise. Levi Lapper Morse was the eldest son of Stratton shopkeeper Charles Morse and his second wife, Rebecca Lapper.  The Morse family were prominent members of the Primitive Methodist movement in Swindon and financed the building of the Regent Street Church in 1849. Born over the shop at Stratton Green, Levi had retail in his blood.  In 1878 he acquired premises at 10-12 Regent Street and announc...

Throughout the 1930s the British government made preparations for war as the aspirations of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler became increasingly more menacing.  It was anticipated that this conflict, when it eventually began, would not be confined to the battlefield but would extend to the Home Front. Experts predicted that bombing raids would kill hundreds of thousands of people and the provision of adequate protection for the civilian population was top of the government's list of priorities. In November 1938, ten months before Hitler's invasion of Poland, British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain placed Sir John Anderson in charge of air raid precautions.  The air raid shelter he commissioned would become a household name. Issued free to householders on a yearly income of below £250, the Anderson shelter consisted of galvanised corrugated steel panels which had to be sunk into the ground to a depth of 4ft and covered with at least 15 inches of earth.  No easy t...

Designated a Conservation Area by Thamesdown Borough Council in 1990, Rodbourne Cheney can boast St Mary's, a Grade II listed church and a late 16th century Manor House with stables - and apparently several ghosts including a spectral coach and four horses. The parish of Rodbourne Cheney once included a village originally called Hreod Burna and Moredon, Haydon and Haydon Wick hamlets.  When the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086 the name had become Redbourne, a corruption of 'reedy-bourne.'  Finally a 13th century lord of the manor, Ralf Chanu added his name to complete the modern appellation Rodbourne Cheney. Early Ordnance Survey maps show just a handful of houses along what was once known as Telford Road, renamed Cheney Manor Road in 1929 when Rodbourne Cheney became part of Swindon Borough. In 1900 Bessemer Road, named after Victorian steel maker, Sir Henry Bessemer who invented a process for converting iron into steel, contained just ten properties. The i...

With the arrival of the smart phone and the digital camera, it has never been easier to take and share photographs. Having one's portrait preserved was once the prerogative of the wealthy.  But with the advent of photography in the mid 19th century, all but the very poorest could afford to leave their photographic image to posterity. The carte de visite, a small visiting card portrait, was patented by Parisian photographer Andre Adolphe Disderi in 1854 and made photographic images available to the ordinary person.  Soon the whole family was getting in on the act and photograph albums were produced with cut out slots to accommodate the 4.5 x 2.5 inch images. The carte de visite was particularly popular during the 1860s but these four photos of Swindon babies probably date closer to the beginning of the 20th century when Henry Hemmins had a studio at 16 Victoria Street.  George E. Stone was based at 25 Faringdon Road where both he and his wife are described a...

Newport Street is probably the oldest recorded thoroughfare in Swindon and was first mentioned in documents dated 1346.  In 1874 Thomas Hooper Deacon and his business partner Thomas Edmund Liddiard signed a lease on the mansion house, garden, yards and stables on the corner of High Street and Newport Street, formerly occupied by John Harding Sheppard. Under the same agreement they also acquired various other properties in the area behind the two streets to further extend their VWH Horse and Carriage Repository. The business flourished and in 1879 1,872 horses were entered for sale across the year. Today Thomas Hooper Deacon is commemorated in the naming of Hooper Place, a lane close to the site of the Newport Street entrance to the former Vale of White Horse Repository. This 1950s photograph shows Newport Street almost unrecognisable today with the Co-op Store occupying the former corner site of Sheppard’s mansion house. Upham Road marks the divide between old ...