Swindon in the Past Lane

Next week sees the launch of Swindon Heritage, an exciting new local history magazine all about Swindon. Contrary to Ricky Gervais and popular opinion, Swindon has, in fact, plenty of fascinating history and this new publication is set to reveal some surprises. In the first issue you can read about the myths surrounding the magnificent Mechanics' Institution, a hub of intellectual enterprise established by innovative railway men in the nineteenth century.  Today the dilapidated building, high on Swindon Borough Council's 'to do' list is a familiar sight, but what went on there will be a revelation to those new to the town. Local farmer John Arkell went to Canada, founded a township and returned home to establish a brewery.  Today Arkell's is Swindon's oldest surviving business and they will be hosting the official launch of Swindon Heritage. This magazine, the first of its kind in not only Swindon, but the whole of the UK, is the brainchild ...

As 140 members of Swindon Borough Council’s children’s services department move out to Wat Tyler House, Sanford Street School building stands boarded up and vulnerable. It was quite a different story when the school opened in 1881. On January 8, 1880 Ipswich based architect Brightwen Binyon presented his plans to the Swindon School Board for approval.  The cost of building a school to accommodate 800 children on the corner of Sanford Street and College Street was estimated at £4,000. In the same year Brightwen Binyon also designed Queenstown School and Gilbert’s Hill Girls and Infants School. Westcott School in Birch Street followed in 1881 and in 1891-3 he designed extensions to the Mechanics Institution, another Swindon building in dire need of rescue. Gloucester builder D.C. Jones & Co won the contract for Sanford Street School but by August 1880 they were in trouble.  Work was not progressing as speedily as the hard pressed School Board required....

Devizes Road was a very different place by the beginning of the twentieth century, its hawthorn hedgerow long gone and the horse fair a thing of the past. With two breweries and sixteen pubs within staggering distance, Devizes Road probably wasn’t one of the quietest places in which to live. Built by James Howe in 1847, the pub on the corner of Britannia Place began life as a humble beerhouse.  In 1870 the Britannia, described as containing ‘Bar, Parlour, Taproom, Small Parlour and 4 bedrooms’ went on the market and was snapped up by Bowly’s, another local brewery.  Enlarged and refitted, the pub opened under new management and with a new name.  The Fountain was used as a dressing room by the Swindon Town Football Club and their opponents when the team played at the Croft before moving to the County Ground in 1896.  Renamed The Pig on the Hill, the former Fountain, reopened in the summer of 2010 under new management.   Newspaper proprietor...

Devizes Road was a late starter getting on the property ladder.  Building along Nyweport Street had begun nearly five hundred years earlier while on Wood Street and High Street documents detailing 16 th  century property deeds survive. In 1773 Devizes Road was still an unnamed, rural lane known locally as Short Hedge or Edge after the hawthorn hedges that lined its route.  By 1841 there was little change with only twelve houses built along the lane, also known as Horsefair as this was the site of regular horse fairs where the animals were tethered along the hedgerow for inspection. Properties on the west side of the road date from the second half of the 19 th  century where the stone built terraced houses at 43-45 Devizes Road retain their original sash windows. Built in about 1830, Canford House was a private dwelling before it became home to Swindon’s early police force in the mid century.  With accommodation for a police superintendent, an i...

In the final days of 1940, London received yet another pounding from the Luftwaffe during which serious damage was caused by fire in the historic City area. “An army of firemen, wardens, workers and civilian volunteers battled with the thousands of incendiaries showered on the district,” reported the Advertiser. Several incendiary bombs were dropped on St. Paul’s but Cathedral staff managed to prevent any serious damage. “At one time the Cathedral was ringed with fire,” the report continued.  Cheapside was badly damaged with building after building reduced to a scarred and blackened shell. Back home in Swindon things were much quieter.  Brides who walked down the aisle on the last Saturday in 1940 included Ida Muriel Green of 73 Rodbourne Road, who married Engine Room Artificer Reginald Rouse at St. Augustine’s Church.  Annie Seward Stratton of 7 Buller Street married L/Cpl Frederick Charles Monk at St. Barnabas’ Church while Margaret Louise Avery o...

Following the initial building boom during the 1840-60s, development of New Swindon pretty much ground to a halt.   The reason given was a slump in the railway industry in the 1870s and the scarcity of building land in the centre of town due to the Goddard’s reluctance to sell their land. Another area of prime building land, the Rolleston estate, owned by William Vilett Rolleston, was tied up in the Court of Chancery for more than ten years.  It was not until 1885 that parcels of land came onto the market and were rapidly snapped up. Old Swindon jeweller Hubert J. Deacon bought the area on which Deacon Street was built and named in his honour.   Construction began in 1890 when builders William Crombey, a former engine driver from Durham, and John Horsell, who lived in neighbouring Commercial Road, got the ball rolling.   They soon began work on streets that would eventually be named Curtis, Crombey and Deacon Streets. At the time of t...

Anderson's Hostel The feast of St Thomas on December 21 was the day when alms for the poor were distributed within the parish. Traditionally caring for the poor and infirm in the past was achieved by taxation (the poor rate) and charity dispensed by affluent and local landowning families such as Swindon's Tuckey family, who frequently left a bequest in their will. Kelly's Directory of 1889 states that Swindon charities amounted to £110 yearly from land and Consols left by 'Mrs Evans, Messrs. Sheppard and Rolleston, Anderson, Gray, Bowly and others at various times.' Documents held at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham dating between 1899-1955 cover Swindon United Charities, listed as - Alexander Anderson, Anderson's Institution, Richard Bowly, Margaret Brind, Mary Breadway, John Burgess, John Chandler, Joseph and Elizabeth Cooper, Elizabeth Evans, Richard Gray, Horne, Sheppard's Dole, Villett's Charity and the Widows F...