Swindon in the Past Lane

As Lydiard House closes its walled garden doors on another successful  NGS Open for Charity Sunday, SPL takes a trip to neighbouring Cirencester on the trail of a once lost daffodil. The Bowly family roots are dug deep in Cirencest er.   From millers and  brewers to local politicians and a slavery abolionist, the Bowly’s have left their stamp on the town.   But one Bowly wife had family roots of a different kind – daffodil roots. Born in 1851 Sarah Aldam Bowly nee Backhouse, like her husband, came from a Quaker family.  Her father, William Backhouse began work in the Newcastle branch of the family banking business, but his first love was horticulture and in particular, daffodils. Sarah and her four brothers, the children of William’s second marriage to Catherine Aldam, grew up at St. John’s Hall, near Wolsingham Co. Durham where her father owned 669 acres, an ideal setting for William’s studies and where he wrote his major horticultural work, N...

Family historians grow accustomed to unearthing the occasional coincidence, but I was unprepared for a connection between the nearby Wiltshire parish of Lydiard Tregoze and my husband's family in Pembrokeshire. A new century saw the arrival of a new Rector at St Mary's when Ebenezer Humphrey Jones moved into the Rectory in Hay Lane, close to the site of the present day Tregoze School, in 1900. The 1901 census records the widowed Rev Jones aged 58 living at the Rectory with his eldest daughter Gwendolin 21 and three young children, Mildred 11, Stanley B. 8 and Kathleen M. 6, all born in Steynton, Pembrokeshire. Rev Jones was no stranger to the congregation at St Mary's, having previously served nine months there as a curate in 1877.  After this first short stay the Rev Jones moved his young family to a parish in Fitz, Shropshire before taking up an incumbency at St Peter and St Cewydd, Steynton near Milford Haven in West Wales. Benjamin Roberts 25, a laboure...

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has recently erected new signage at Radnor Street Cemetery where work continues apace to commemorate the centenary of the Great War. The Community Payback Team is doing a marvelous job clearing overgrown areas and revealing gravestones long hidden while in the chapel boarded up windows have been replaced with Perspex. Unfortunately work on a small damaged area of the roof, promised by Swindon Borough Council some months ago, has still to be completed. The Swindon in the Great War team will begin guided tours of the cemetery next month with local military historian Mark Sutton talking about Swindon men who fought and fell while I will be looking at some of the other memorials and the stories behind the families. In August local historical societies will come together in to produce an exhibition in the cemetery chapel. Dates for your diary: Thursday, May 22 - An Evening Walk through Radnor Street Cemetery - 6.30 pm.  Saturday June...

During the 1930s building contractor E.H. Bradley was averaging more than 300 houses a year - and they also built Avebury stone circle as well! In 1939 when marmalade millionaire Alexander Keiller, owner of Avebury Manor, set about renovating the henge, he employed Swindon builder Edwin Bradley to reconstruct the Neolithic stone circle. Not the biggest project the firm would ever undertake but arguably the most prestigious. Apparently Keiller was to complain that he paid the bill while Bradley's enjoyed the glory. Edwin Henry Bradley was born at Iffley Road, Cowley in Oxford in 1865, the youngest of William and Helen Bradley's three sons. The son of a bricklayer, Edwin followed his father into the construction, but it was his marriage to milliner Caroline Hubert in 1894 that was to kick start his ambition. Edwin recognised the building opportunities in neighbouring Swindon and in 1896 moved his growing young family to a small terrace house in Quarry Road where h...

Today in the East End of London a group of dedicated people are trying to save the Smithfield General Market Hall - 'Behold the winged lion on the Holborn Viaduct looking down protectively upon the Smithfield General Market,' writes the Gentle Author on www.spitalfieldslife.com. 'as - over at the Guildhall the Public Enquiry that will decide the fate of this magnificent building designed by Horace Jones, the architect of Tower Bridge, reaches the end of its second week.' Read more about this threatened building by clicking the link - now read about Swindon's former market buildings, which sadly have also been lost. In the 1840s Old Swindon had a thriving shopping centre.  Blacksmiths, butchers and brewers rubbed shoulders alongside the Strange family's drapers store in the High Street and Sadler Bristow's ironmongers in Wood Street. But in the developing settlement at the bottom of the hill facilities for the early settlers in New Swindon were d...

Today is Jon Ratcliffe's last day behind the enquiry desk in Local Studies at Swindon Central Library as the busy department is reduced to one full time post and one part time. Jon has worked with the Local Studies team for two years, one year volunteering and one year as a member of staff. He will be greatly missed by his colleagues and the many visitors to this fantastic archive who have benefited from his knowledge of local and family history research. His area of expertise has been the architecture of our town, both old and not so old and he has contributed some stunning photographs to the library online archive. When the latest round of restructuring hit the library we were assured there would be no further cuts to front line staff. However, Local Studies has been hit under the guise of back room efficiencies. I for one am not convinced by this argument as the immediate impact is a reduction in the number of hours the enquiry desk will be able to open. Visitors needing h...

Ironically the dedication on the official Swindon Roll of Honour reads 'Their Glory Shall Not Be Blotted Out, Their Name Liveth For Evermore.' Whilst it might not be exactly blotted out, the magnificent memorial lies hidden behind curtains in the dance studio at Swindon's Town Hall and today is seldom seen. The memorial was erected by public subscription and in the same spirit the Swindon in the Great War committee launched its own fund raising memorial project 'Adopt a Tommy.' You are invited to adopt one of the servicemen whose name appears on the memorial. For £10 you will receive a certificate based on the one the returning soldiers, sailors and airmen received and details of that man's service. I've 'adopted' Edward William Reginald Bevan. Why? He is no relation, but I share his surname and because he served at sea. My husband comes from Milford Haven, a small former fishing town on the Pembrokeshire coast. Generations of his ...