Swindon in the Past Lane

The leaves are swept off the trees and branches creak and moan as the wind whips across the cemetery on the hill today. But the sun is shining and I'm wrapped up warmly so off we go.

This is the final resting place of members of the Wall family, husband and wife William and Mary Ann, and their son Arthur Henry.

Arthur was born in 1899, one of six children born to William and Mary Ann of whom only three sons survived childhood. He grew up in Rodbourne living at addresses in Redcliffe Street, Drew Street, Linslade Street, Montague Street and Jennings Street. William worked as a Boiler Maker in the railway factory and when young Arthur left school he followed him into the GWR Works and the same trade.

Following the outbreak of war in 1914 Arthur was keen to join up and enlisted in the 2nd Wiltshire Battalion on January 12, 1915. He gave his age as 19. He was in fact not yet 16, but recruiting officers were apt to turn a blind eye to fresh faced, eager young volunteers. He was posted to France on June 1 where his age was quickly detected and on July 7, 1915 he was sent back to England as being 'under age and physically unfit for service at the front.' He spent the following year in service on the home front before returning to France in June 1916, this time in the 1st Hertfordshires.

His service records reveal that on May 12, 1918 he was gassed. His medical records state that his capacity was lessened by 40% and he was left with defective vision and suffering from headaches. He was discharged on November 23, 1918 as being no longer physically fit for war service. He received a pension of 11s and returned to Swindon where he married Mabel Pinnegar in 1919.

Whether Arthur was able to return to work as a boiler maker remains unknown. In 1920 he wrote to the Infantry Record Office asking if he was entitled to anything under Army Order 325/19 concerning the Territorial extra allowances. He received this reply:

'I regret to inform you that you are not entitled to any extra pay or allowances under Army Order 325 of 1919 as you were discharged on 23rd November, 1918.

The increase of pay authorised under the Army Order in question was only granted from 1st July, 1919 to soldiers who were actually serving on the date of the order, viz 13th September 1919.

Arthur died on May 22, 1922 aged just 23 years old. Further research is required to establish if his death was as a direct result of his military service. If so it is possible he would be entitled to an official Commonwealth War Graves headstone. His father William died on the same day as his son Arthur, another event which requires further research. Such tragedy for one Swindon family.

Well the rain held off - hope to see you again tomorrow.

There has been heavy rainfall over night and underfoot is very damp and slippy. But I have come prepared as today I am taking you to a crowded corner of the cemetery where there are some magnificent monuments with some classic funeral iconography. The IHS on this cross is the Greek representation of Jesus Christ's name. The garland of flowers around the cross represents victory in death.

This is the last resting place of Edward Henry Sammes. It’s interesting that his family should make a point of adding ‘of Swindon’ to the inscription because Edward was not originally from Swindon but was born in Lambeth in January 1842, the son of William and Sarah Sammes.

The first reference to Edward in Swindon is in the 1871 census when he is 29 years old and living a 1 Belle Vue Road where he describes himself as a grocer. That same year he married Sarah Anne Spackman from Wootton Bassett and the couple had two children William and Millicent who are both buried here as well.

At the time of the 1881 census Edward described himself as a retired grocer. By 1889 he was a member of the Old Swindon Local Board, so well placed to know plans for development in the town. The family was then living at Wycliffe House in Devizes Road.

In 1892 Edward submitted planning application to build eight houses on the corner of Kent Road and Maidstone Road. The land had orginally come on the market in the 1870s but development was slow to take off. However, by the 1890s the area was pretty much one huge building site.

A map of Edward’s project shows an empty site next door on the corner of Kent Road and Ashford Road with another empty site opposite. The building specifications for Edward’s houses describe three bedrooms, a parlor, sitting room, kitchen, conservatory, scullery, WC, coals and pantry. At the other end of the road rival builder William Chambers had a yard opposite his own development at Ashford Terrace. We will learn more about William Chambers later in our walk.

Edward died in 1897 aged 55. He left £5,814 18s 6d to his widow Sarah and son William, worth today somewhere in the region of £2.7 million.

I’m not sure if his son William ever worked or whether he spent his whole life living off his inheritance. The last census available to researchers is the 1911 when the family are living at 31 Devizes Road where William, then aged 35, and his sister Millicent 27 are both living on private means.

Let's make an early start on our walk today. The sun is out but the weather forecast is not good.

It’s easy to almost miss this magnificent pink granite monument to another railway father and son. Like the Carlton obelisk opposite that we visited on our summer walk, this memorial was also paid for by employees at the GWR Works.

James Haydon was born in Bristol in 1826. The Railway Employment Records available on the Ancestry website, indicate that James entered the railway employment in March 1851 when he was about 25 years old.

By 1861 he was working as an engine fitter in the Swindon Works. He lived with his wife Ellen, their young son Lancelot and his wife’s nephew Henry Wardle at 9 London Road. Sharing number 9 were Ellen’s parents, Lancelot Young who at 64 was still working as a boilersmith, Eleanor Young and two more Wardle children. Thomas Watson and his wife Ann with yet another Wardle child also lived at number 9. Things must have been very cosy at number 9.

By 1871 James was Deputy Manager at the Works and was living in a house in what was then still known as Sheppard Fields. This later became Sheppard Street, named after the former owner of this area, John Harding Sheppard.

James died on July 5, 1888. He had been Assistant Manager in the Loco Works for 22 years. The inscription reads 'this monument has been erected as a token of affection and esteem by his fellow officers and employes.'

Also remembered on this memorial is James’s son, Lancelot who died in 1894 aged just 38. Lancelot followed his father into the works and his career can be charted through the same railway records.

He began work as a pattern maker in 1871 when he was 14. In 1877, presumably after he had finished his apprenticeship, he transferred to the Drawing Office. In 1881, by then a mechanical draughtsman, Lancelot left the GWR for an appointment on the Swindon, Marlborough and Andover Railway, but by 1888 he was back at the GWR firstly as Assistant Draughtsman and later as Chief Draughtsman.

At the time of the 1891 census he was living at his old family home, 21 Sheppard Street, with his wife Isabella and their young daughter. The following year Lancelot was on the move again, this time to Newton Abbott as Assistant District Superintendent Loco Carriage Dept. He died less than two years later.

Tomorrow we meet another man who has left his mark on Swindon.

Sadly we have arrived at the last day of our walk through Radnor Street Cemetery - it's been fun, hasn't it?
We conclude by stopping off at the grave of William Chambers.

Despite a shortage of readily available building land and a depression in the railway industry during the 1870s, Swindon enjoyed a building boom throughout much of the late Victorian period. Many of our street names bear testimony to a number of local builders, George Street, Crombey Street, Colbourne Street, Ponting Street, Turner Street.

William Chambers lived and worked as builder and funeral director in the end house in Ashford Road, the one with the Calvary cross in the brickwork. The silhouette of the shop sign can still be seen. As we have already discovered William Chambers was building on the Kingshill estate in the 1890s.

William was born in Stroud in 1839 the son of Samuel, a handloom weaver, and his wife Maria. In 1859 he married Sarah Tyler and the couple raised their family of eight children in nearby Bisley where William then worked as an agricultural labourer.

In 1871 he was working as a bricklayer and by 1884 the family had moved to Swindon where William established himself as a builder and contractor. His four sons would eventually join him in the business, William and Alfred both bricklayers and Robert and Samuel who were joiners.

From 1884-1897 William was engaged in building projects in Stafford Street and Hythe, Kent and Maidstone Roads. In the last decade of the nineteenth century William was also busy building in Ashford Road.

At the time of the 1891 census eldest married sons Alfred and William both had homes in Stafford Street. Family folklore tells how so many relatives once lived in Stafford Street that it was known locally as Chambers Street.

William’s son Samuel took over the family business after his father’s death. A 1906 trade directory entry describes the business at 1 Ashford Road under new management – S. Chambers (late W. Chambers) builder & contractor, dealer in all kinds of building material, funerals completely furnished, repairs promptly attended to at moderate charges.

William died in 1901 and Sarah in 1926. I think this stylish headstone befits a couple who spent their lives in the funeral business.

My next guided walk will be on Remembrance Sunday when we visit a few of the 103 Commonwealth War Graves in Radnor Street Cemetery.

Two buildings in this aerial view of Swindon fifty years ago are testament to the town's continuing record of expansion.

Clarence Street School on the corner of Euclid and Clarence Streets was build in 1897 at a cost of £12,091. With accommodation for 885 children by the beginning of the new century the school was already overcrowded.

The building of Euclid Street Higher Elementary School in 1904 eased the pressure somewhat. School log books reveal that around this time Clarence Street School was divided into a separate girls' and boys' section.

In 1907 J.J. Stafford was the headmaster with Miss C.J. Stiles in charge of the girls and Miss L.M. Kent, the infants' mistress. Just two years later and the average attendances numbered 891.

Fifty years later and Clarence Street School accommodated the children of Swindon newcomers moving to the new estates at Walcot and Parks. In 1958 there were approximately 1,000 children on the roll.

With a population topping the 60,000 mark the Town Hall building in Regent Street was proving to be inadequate accommodation for the increasing number of local government officers. In 1936 a small recreation ground in Euclid Street was ear marked for the site of the new civic offices. Designed by Oxford based architects Bertram, Bertram and Rice the Civic Offices opened in 1938.

Watering holes along this stretch of town included the Red Cow, closed and demolished in 1968. Originally situated in Cow Lane, the Red Cow public house was rebuilt in Princes Street in 1879. At the other end of Princes Street next to the Whale Bridge was the Whale Inn. Terraced housing along Islington Street was demolished to make way for the Courts of Justice opened in 1965 while Cow Lane, reduced to a back way when Princes Street was built in the 1870s, disappeared altogether.

Civic Offices now and then

Clarence Street School

It is difficult to believe that this town centre parkland oasis was once a brown field site. Queen's Park is a twelve acre beauty spot with a Victorian industrial past, the site of builder Thomas Turner's brick works - examples of his artistry stand close to the Drove Road entrance. Today the former derelict claypit, once popular with zoologist Desmond Morris and his girlfriend Diana Dors, is an award winning park and garden.

The park was developed between 1947 and 1962. The first phase - a Garden of Remembrance to the fallen of the Second World War - was opened by Princess Elizabeth in 1950, the year of Swindon Borough's Golden Jubilee. The second phase was opened by Sir Noel Arkell, Sheriff of Wiltshire, on May 30, 1953.

Unfortunately the glass Show House was dismantled following storms in the early 1990s. Designed by Borough Architect J. Loring-Morgan and opened in 1964 a brick wall is all that remains of the structure that once boasted a pond surrounded by exotic plants.

Other garden features have also changed during the park's 62 year history. Gone is the 1960s crocodile - created in homage to the Swindon Museum exhibit. Built entirely of succulents and measuring 16ft from prickly nose to tail the crocodile was carefully tended by head gardener Bill Wicks and filmed by Pathe News in 1961.

The long time resident gorilla took up his present position in 1994. The welded steel sculpture by Tom Gleeson was purchased by the Borough following an exhibition in the Theatre Square in the mid 1980s. Today he looked particularly fetching with a flower tucked behind his ear by an admirer.

In 2001 English Heritage awarded the garden a Grade II listing on the Register of Parks & Gardens and it is easy to see why. With birds gathered on the lake and a shy heron in the bushes, the park was a riot of autumnal colours, even on a damp and misty day like today.

The gorilla, the heron and a fairy all feature in drawings produced by local children for Tim Carroll's 2007 mural, a colourful backdrop behind benches overlooking the lake. Sadly the excellent volunteer run Park Cafe was closed today, the kiosk padlocked and deserted, but on other visits I have joined the regulars for a cup of tea and a piece of home made cake.

Queen's Park continues to be an area of remembrance with the Mesothelioma Memorial Garden opened by Mayor Stan Pajak in April 2003. The garden is a memorial to those railway men who have died from the 'Swindon disease,' caused by exposure to asbestos in the railway works. This beautifully secluded area is a peaceful place of contemplation in the busy town centre.

Mesothelioma Memorial Garden

Gorilla with recently repaired hand - and flower!

1964 view of the park

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Brick Maker Extraordinaire

Swindon has been a work in progress since Brunel and Gooch sited an engineering works for the maintenance and repair of locomotives here in 1840. Of course the industrial new town grew bigger and was more successful than anyone could have possibly predicted. Pretty much the same could be said for the development that came after the railway boom.

Victorian development on Princes Street, the site of construction work pictured here, began in the 1870s as building projects swallowed up fields of pasture right to the door of Eastcott Farm. Among the builders at work on Princes Street were the entrepreneurial James Hinton, John Webb and one time publican at the Dolphin Inn, Rodbourne Charles Williams.

The street that stretched from Regent Circus to the canal was named in honour of Albert Victor, eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. The scandalous Albert Victor, once in the frame for the Jack the Ripper murders, died from influenza just a week after his 28th birthday in 1892.

By the time of the 1891 census Princes Street numbered 135 terraced houses occupied mainly by railway workers - engine stokers, fitters, riveters, platelayers - and their families. George Dibbs was licensed victualler at the Red Cow at the Regent Street end of the road while Thomas Garland was behind the bar at the canalside Whale Public House.

Today building continues apace on the first phase of the ambitious Union Square project. Work begun in June on an 850 space multistorey car park and 45 apartments on the site of the old 1960s police station and this is only the beginning. The whole caboodle has a 10-15 year time frame but then Rome wasn't built in a day.

1968 view of Princes Street courtesy of Swindon Collection see www.flickr.com/photos/swindonlocal

Taken from Victoria Road

Any old building worth its bricks and mortar should have a spectral presence and the Clifton has long boasted one of its own. Supernatural sightings have included those of a hooded figure, possibly a nun, in keeping with Arkell's website claim that the pub was built on the site of an ancient priory.

However, evidence to support this legend is lacking. The surrounding area once comprised part of the former Kingshill Estate owned by John Harding Sheppard where around 300 houses were built along Clifton, Albion, William, Redcross (renamed Radnor) and Exmouth Streets between 1877 and 1880. The Clifton Hotel, complete with a tiled mural of Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge, was built around 1878.

As with so many Swindon Streets, Clifton Street grew piecemeal across a number of years. Among the 19th century builders was Job Day who constructed an unspecified number of cottages in 1882 and Edwin Harvey who built eleven houses in the same year with further properties in 1883. W.H. Read designed Clifton Street Schools in 1884-6 and the Primitive Methodist Chapel, built in 1900, was designed by R.J. Beswick.

To date no documentary evidence of a priory has made an appearance, and neither has the nun. Apparently religious ghosts have slipped out of fashion in recent years.

Ghostly goings on at the Clifton hit local news headlines more than thirty five years ago when during the busy Christmas Day celebrations a poltergeist joined Christmas revellers.

Manager's wife Mrs Blanche Chirgwin reported sherry glasses jumping from shelves behind the bar while her husband recalled an eerie presence in the beer cellar. Then there was the story of a previous landlord's dog that went mad and a jammed attic window found open only to jam again.

One long serving landlord at the Clifton was Cardiff born Henry Jefferies and his wife Frances. Local trade directories place them at the pub in the mid 1880s and Frances was still there at the end of the 19th century.

During their occupancy of the pub, two of the couple's sons died, Edwin in 1887 and Frank ten years later. Henry died in 1896 and is buried with his sons and his wife in nearby Radnor Street Cemetery. Perhaps he pops back occasionally to keep an eye on the business!

The Paranormal Site Investigators (PSI) conducted an overnight investigation at the pub in March 2005. Despite a few bumps in the night the team failed to detect any ghostly activities. And still no sign of the nun.

A Foggy Morning in Radnor Street Cemetery © Andy Preston - for more of Andy's photographs visit www.edge-effect.co.uk

1950s photograph of the Clifton is used courtesy of Arkell's see www.flickr.com/photos/swindonlocal/

Self portrait of L.S. Lowry

Today is the 125th anniversary of the birth of artist Laurence Stephen Lowry, famous for painting scenes of industrial landscapes. Swindon has often been described as a northern industrial town misplaced in Wiltshire so it is fitting that one of Lowry's paintings hangs in the Bath Road Museum and Art Gallery. The Swindon collection of modern art, one of the best outside London, was established in 1944 by H.J.P. Bomford a local property speculator and art collector. His gift of some 20 paintings includes works by Ben Nicholson, Jack Smith and Lowry.

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.

However, 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 moved to Swindon during the late 1840s. Industrial Swindon offered lucrative opportunities for coal and coke merchants and at the time of the 1851 census Toomer was lodging with his employer, Henry Cuss, a coal agent, on Victoria Street.

At the time of his marriage to Mary Reynolds in 1855 Toomer's business was based at Bath Terrace. On the 1861 census he described himself as a hay and coal merchant employing 12 men and 2 boys, working out of his newly built, four storey warehouse on the north side of the Market Square.

Ten years later John Toomer had outstripped his rival Tarrant. Having secured the lucrative GWR contract Toomer bought Apsley House and moved into Tarrant's former home on Bath Road.

In the 1870s Apsley House was an L shaped property with land stretching back as far as the cottages on Prospect Place. A photograph on display in the museum shows one of the Toomer daughters on her pony in a paddock at the back of the house, giving some idea of the extent of the property.

John Toomer died in 1882 at the age of 58 leaving the business in the capable hands of his elder sons John George and Francis William. Mary Ann continued to live at Apsley House and John George at 27 Bath Road while Francis worked from a depot in Wroughton.

Mary Ann died in 1926, in her 91st year, having remained a widow for over forty years. She is buried with her husband and two of their children in Christ Church graveyard.

Francis later moved to London where he died in 1916, but the thriving family business in Swindon continued, based at Apsley House until the property was sold to the Borough in 1928.

Come and learn more about Apsley House and how to research a house history at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery on Thursday November 15 - 6 - 7pm. For more details phone the museum on 01793 466556

It was railway engineer Daniel Gooch who identified Swindon as the most suitable site for the much debated principal engine establishment in a letter to Brunel dated September 13, 1840. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Chief Engineer at the Great Western Railway, and Gooch worked on the design for a substantial engineering works for the maintenance and repair of locomotives.

The land, approximately a mile to the north of the small market town of Swindon, was somewhat unprepossessing. 'The poorest in the neighbourhood; low lying, shallow soil on top of an endless depth of stiff clay, worthless for arable purposes, of small value for pasture, covered with furze, rushes and rowen,' according to local writer and naturalist Richard Jefferies.

Once the workplace of boilermakers, brass finishers and toolmakers today 'V', 'O' and 'E' Shops are Grade II listed buildings and a modern day monument to merchandise. The historic buildings built during the 1870s reign of Locomotive Superintendent Joseph Armstrong were transformed following the closure of the railway works in 1986, reopening in 1997 as the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Village. But look up and around and you will see the vestige of the buildings industrial past; fixtures and fittings, overhead cranes, including one of the earliest wooden examples and of course the big yellow walking crane.

Wall plaques inform the shopper who cares to stop and read and in the Food Hall there is a memorial 'To Commemorate the Memory of the Men of W Shop who rallied to their Country's call during the Great War 1914-1919.'

Big yellow walking crane

Early wooden crane

These two paintings hanging in the Outlet Village were painted by local artist Ken White. In 1958 fifteen year old Ken began an apprenticeship in the railway factory working as a rivet hotter. He later moved to a job in the Carriage and Wagon Works as a sign writer, the first step to a long and extremely successful career in art. For many years the personal artist for Richard Branson, Ken designed the Virgin airlines Scarlet Lady logo.

Another of the many faces of Town Gardens was on show today where British Slackline Walker Champion, Jake Hirsch-Holland embarked upon a fund raising endurance test. Families on a Saturday walk, children on bikes and boys carrying footballs all stopped to watch as Jake set himself the challenge of walking 5 kilometres across a 50 metre long slackline strung between two trees.

Known on the circus circuit as Jake the Juggler he developed his skills at home at Lower Shaw Farm under the watchful eye of Jim Semlyen. Today Jake shares his expertise with individual and group tuition sessions at the farm and is available for bookings at other venues. Contact Jake for more information at Lower Shaw Farm.

Today's event was in preparation for a tour next year when Jake and his crew - Team Land Pirates - will be travelling with Performers Without Borders. The circus entertainers will spend three months in Nicaragua teaching their skills to vulnerable children. Jake and Team Land Pirates, were demonstrating slackline walking in the Victorian gardens in a fund raising event to pay for their trip in January 2013.

Despite a chill wind Jake was on target to achieve his 5 kilometre challenge passing the half way mark at just after 12.30 pm.

For more information about Performers Without Borders visit the website.

Jake Hirsch-Holland sets out on his slackline challenge.

Heave ho me hearties!

Half way mark!

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By the Bandstand

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Lower Shaw Farm

A Bonfire Night prank led to a tragic accident and swift action from the Great Western Railway's company doctor. George Money Swinhoe had been in the job just 12 days when he was called out to the market hall adjoining the Mechanics' Intuition on the evening of November 5, 1859.

A group of enterprising boys had constructed “a cannon loaded with fireworks” which they had set off in the market to give the stall holders a fright. However, the high jinks turned to tragedy when a nine year old girl suffered such severe leg injuries that Dr Swinhoe had to amputate the limb on the scene.

Park House, a spacious yellow brick residence overlooking the GWR Park, was built for the railway company doctor in 1876. However, in the early days of the company’s presence in Swindon the medical officer’s situation was far more precarious.

In 1846 medic Stuart Keith Rea was the doctor most frequently called to accidents at the works. His terms and conditions of employment were put on a more secure basis with the creation of the GWR Medical Fund in 1847.

In a letter to the GWR directors, which set the Medical Fund ball rolling, Gooch explains Dr Rea is frequently “not paid at all from the inability of the injured man to do so.”

With the doctor called to the Works at least once a week, Gooch makes a suggestion “that they will give Mr Rae (sic) £30 per year to take them all, or what is nearly the same, to give him his house free of rent.”

Not quite as generous as the £50 and free accommodation that the London and North Western Railway Company paid their doctor at Crewe, which Gooch refers to in the same letter.

Dr Rea moved into a three storey former shop on the corner of London Street and High Street (Emlyn Square), which was to be home, surgery and dispensary.

By all accounts Stuart Keith Rea, brother of Work’s Manager Minard C. Rea, was a popular, hard-working doctor. Unfortunately his career was cut short when he died in 1848 from tuberculosis, contracted while attending patients suffering from the disease.

The second GWR doctor was Charles Whiston Hind. At the time of the 1851 census he was living at 12 London Street with his brother Frederick, a surgeon’s assistant and Elizabeth Wallace, their housekeeper.

Edward Rogers, a surgeon and apothecary living with his family at 28 Reading Street, just round the corner from Dr Hind, and was presumably his assistant. Dr Hind continued the crusade against poor sanitation in the Railway Village and it was his initiative that saw the free issue of limewash for the railway cottages in the battle against disease. Dr Hind resigned after ten years of working under very difficult conditions.

The third doctor to hold the title of GWR Medical Officer at Swindon was George Money Swinhoe. At the time of the 1861 census George and his wife Maud were living at 4 London Street with their ten month old daughter. By 1871 another five children had joined the Swinhoe family and ten years later, in their home in Church Place, there were 12 aged between four months and 20 years.

In 1886 George Swinhoe had been in the job for more than 25 years. His long time partners in the railway practice were doctors William Hose and John Madden Bromley.

During the last decade of the 19^th century the railway works at Swindon was reportedly the largest in the world with more than 10,000 employees, all of them members of the Medical Fund.

The accident hospital register for the 1890s records an eclectic range of cases. In the summer of 1894 Fred William Walker, 21 of New Swindon, employed in the saw mill suffered a bullet wound to his arm “removal under chloroform, brandy.”

Widowed George Money Swinhoe lived in Park House until his death in 1908. His family had long since dispersed, apart from George Rodway Swinhoe who became Chief Medical Superintendent to the GWR Medical Fund Society, District Consultant Surgeon to the GWR Company and Certifying Factory Surgeon.

George Rodway Swinhoe’s death at Park House on November 10, 1929 ended a family association with the GWR Medical Fund spanning seventy-five years.

Today the elegant Park House is divided into office space.

Old views of Park House courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/swindonlocal

A hundred years ago Moredon was a hamlet in the parish of Rodbourne Cheney. William Loder farmed at Moredon House and Charles Pitman Staight was landlord at the Red Lion. At the time of the 1901 census the population of the whole parish numbered just 1,639.

Then in 1948 the corporation purchased farms at Rodbourne Cheney and Moredon towards the north west of the borough boundary. Just ten years later, at the time of this aerial photo shoot, Moredon estate was up and running. It even received a Royal seal of approval when Princess Elizabeth visited the town on November 15, 1950. The Princess was in Swindon to officially open the Garden of Remembrance at Groundwell Road. During her visit she viewed the newly opened council houses on Akers Way and called in on Mrs Willmott at number 22.

Moredon Infants, pictured, opened in 1952 and the junior school opened a year later. In 2006 the new Moredon Primary School opened on a part of the site of the former school.

Hreod Burna Secondary School, named after the reed stream tributary of the River Ray which runs through the site, was built in the 1960s alongside the infant and junior schools. By 1983 the school, renamed Hreod Parkway, occupied two sites either side of Akers Way connected by a footbridge. In 2007 a new state of the art secondary school named Nova Hreod opened on the south site of its predecessor while the old north side site became a new housing development called Nightingale Rise. In 2011 pupils at Greendown Community School were successful in naming one of the new streets Edith New Close after the Swindon born suffragette who served several prison sentences during the campaign for Votes for Women.

Veterans, service personnel and members of the public gathered together today for the opening of the Royal Wootton Bassett Field of Remembrance in the walled garden at Lydiard Park.

Following the exhortation given by the Royal British Legion's National Vice Chairman, John Crisford there was the familiar reading from For The Fallen by Laurence Binyon - They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them. The 18th century garden fell silent.

Accompanying music for the ceremony was provided by the British Imperial Military Band and the ladies of the Military Wives Choir from the Shrivenham Defence Academy who sang the title track from their recently released album Stronger Together.

The Field of Remembrance will be open to visitors daily from 9am - 4pm, closing on Sunday November 18.

And after the poignancy of the Remembrance Service came an unexpected interlude of joyful exuberance. Crowds gathered at the front of Lydiard House where the ladies of the Military Wives Choir shed their coats and braved the elements to sing again while Strictly Come Dancing stars Anton du Beke and Kristina Rihanoff danced.

Afghanistan - Roll of Honour 2012

Medic Channing Day 25, was serving with 3 Medical Regiment when she was killed whilst on patrol in the Nahr-e-Saraj district of Helmand Province last month.

The Military Wives Choir singing Stronger Together, the title track from their latest album.

Strictly Come Dancing stars Anton du Beke and Kristina Rihanoff.

The Swindon Committee for the Provision of Comforts for the Wiltshire Regiment was formed in 1915. Over thirty years later Mary Slade and Kate Handley would still be supporting the soldiers who had survived the horrors of the First World War and the families of those who hadn’t.

Mary Elizabeth Slade was born in Bradford upon Avon in 1872, the daughter of woollen weavers Frank and Susan Slade. Mary and her brother George grew up in Trowbridge but by 1899 Mary had moved to Swindon and a teaching position at King William Street School.

Mary headed the team of women volunteers who were based at the Town Hall. Their work was much more than despatching a few cigarettes and a pair of socks to the Tommies on the Front Line and soon became a matter of life and death as the plight of the prisoners of war was revealed.

“When letters began to arrive from the men themselves begging for bread, it was soon realised that they were in dire need, and in imminent risk of dying from starvation, exposure and disease,” W. D. Bavin wrote in his seminal book Swindon’s War Record published in 1922.

All the prisoners received daily was a slice of dry bread for breakfast and tea and a bowl of cabbage soup for dinner.

“Had it not been for the parcels received out there from Great Britain we should have starved,” said returning serviceman T. Saddler.

The team of women co-ordinated supplies and materials with the support of local shopkeepers, schools and hard pressed Swindon families.

In the beginning the committee spent £2 a week on groceries to be sent to Gottingen and other camps where a large number of Wiltshire men had been interned following their capture in 1914. By October 1915 the committee was sending parcels to 660 men, including 332 at Gottingen and 152 at Munster. And at the end of July 1916 they had despatched 1,365 parcels of groceries, 1,419 of bread comprising 4,741 loaves, 38 parcels of clothing and 15 of books.

As the men were moved from prison camps on labour details, the committee adopted a system of sending parcels individually addressed. Each prisoner received a parcel once every seven weeks containing seven shillings worth of food. More than 3,750 individual parcels were despatched in the five months to the end of November 1916.

But the women’s work did not end with the armistice on November 11, 1918. Sadly the soldiers did not return to a land fit for heroes, as promised, but to unemployment and poverty. Mary Slade continued to fund raise for these Swindon families through to the end of the Second World War.

On July 25, 1919 Mary Slade and Kate Handley represented the Swindon Prisoners of War Committee at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party and in 1920 Mary was awarded the MBE.

Mary Slade died suddenly on January 31, 1960 at her home, 63 Avenue Road. She was 87 years old. The previous evening she had been a guest at the choir boy’s party at Christ Church.

Today Mary Slade’s MBE and a handful of photographs languish in a brown paper file at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham. Yet another of Swindon’s forgotten heroines.

The Leggett brothers - William (left) Ernest (right)

Recent publicity concerning the future of Sanford Street School has highlighted the importance of a roll of honour on display there to former pupils who died in the First World War. Among the list of more than 130 names are those of seven sets of brothers killed in the 1914-18 war.

An entry in the school logbook dated March 20, 1936 records –“Received today the memorial to Old Sanfordians who fell in the Great War. It is a very beautifully made memorial, paid for by money in the School’s private fund.’

Two brothers listed among the dead are Horace and Reginald Corser, the sons of William and Elizabeth Corser of 1 Broad Street. Reginald, an engine room artificer on HMS Defence was killed on May 31, 1916 during the Battle of Jutland. He was 25 years old and had been married for less than a year. Brother Horace was serving with the 79th Field Company Royal Engineers when he was killed on January 11, 1918 aged 25.

Arthur and William Barnes were two brothers both aged just 18 years old when they were killed. Arthur, an Ordinary Signalman died on board the HMS Queen Mary on May 31, 1916 during the same Battle of Jutland. His brother William was serving with the 2^nd Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment when he was killed in action during the Battle of Arras eleven months later. The boy’s parents Harry, a warehouseman at the GWR Works, and Charlotte lived at 18 Medgbury Road.

In his book Tell Them of Us, Mark Sutton includes the story of the Leggett brothers William and Ernest of 282 Ferndale Road who enlisted together in Swindon and served alongside each other in 1st Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment.

William was shot during action on the Ypres Salient on June 16, 1915 and was taken into one of the dugouts where Ernest sat with him until he died.

“He was a very brave chap and was very happy, right up to the last. I was proud of the way he stuck it out,” Ernest wrote home to his mother.

Lance Corporal F. Parker who lived near the Leggett family in Ferndale Road also wrote to his mother:

“I am sorry to say Billy Leggett was killed. One of our chaps told me that Ern was with him as well and he said that Billy died very calm and like a hero. He was shot through the stomach and the bullet came out at the hip.” Less than three months later 21 year old Ernest was also killed in action.

The brothers who enlisted together, served and fought together are remembered together - their names appear on the Menin Gate Memorial in Belgium and the Sanford Street School memorial.

Tell Them of Us – Remembering Swindon’s Sons by Mark Sutton is available for consultation in Swindon Central Library. Copies can be obtained from the author on sutton5110@hotmail.co.uk.

Sanford Street School First World War Roll of Honour

Mark Sutton, author of Tell Them of Us

Other writers have said it far better than I ever could -

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

"When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today"

Attrib. John Maxwell Edmonds (1875-1958)

It is difficult to believe that at the time this aerial photograph was taken in the 1950s, the railway industry was officially in decline.

Visiting Swindon Junction in 1840, Brunel and his superintendent of locomotives, Daniel Gooch decided this would be an ideal place to establish a repair and maintenance depot. The works opened in January 1843 with 423 men on the pay roll.

Today the Churchward estate occupies what was once the site of 'A' Shop completed in 1920 and reputed to be one of the largest covered workshops in the world. These were the heady days of the GWR when more than 14,000 worked 'inside' and the vast railway factory complex occupied in excess of 320 acres.

The railway industry was nationalised in 1948 by the post war Labour government and the 100 year old GWR works was renamed British Railways Workshops. In 1960 the Evening Star was the last steam loco built for BR at Swindon and three years later a large part of the Carriage Works closed. The end came at 4.30 pm March 26, 1986 when the hooter that had sounded the beginning and end of the working day for so long, kept going until the steam ran out. Buildings preserved along Rodbourne Road include the former 'V', 'P' and 'O' Shops which reopened in 1997 as the Designer Outlet Village.

And the former railway works is proving to be a popular eating out venue. In 2007 Bottelinos, the pizzeria chain of restaurants, opened in the former Pattern Store while in 2011 Anthony & Allyson Windle opened The Weighbridge.

1886 View of Swindon GWR Works from railway line

1881 GWR Swindon Works: Road Wagon Shop

c1886 The Iron Foundry at Swindon GWR Works

For more old views of the GWR Works visit www.flickr.com/photos/swindonlocal

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The Railway Factory

In this remembrance week it was appropriate that the speaker at the Swindon Society monthly meeting was Steve Williams who gave a talk about a soldier's life in the trenches. Dressed in authentic WWI uniform and carrying 60lb worth of kit, Steve showed us some of the gruesome weapons the men used in hand to hand fighting and trench raids.

A military historian from Trowbridge, Steve travels the country with his reconstructed trench. He describes himself as a storyteller, but his presentation to group members on Wednesday evening proved he is much more than this.

In 1914 the age range for recruits was 19-35 but Steve told how Recruiting Sergeants, who received a cash enhancement for each man they enlisted, were apt to turn a blind eye to enthusiastic youngsters. Following Kitchener's "Your Country Needs You" campaign 100,000 men enlisted in a week. The new recruits of K1-K6 Army Group, as they were known, grew moustaches in homage to Lord Kitchener. Initially new recruits received 16 weeks training but this was quickly reduced to 12 as men were needed to replace the dead on the front line where 250 an hour were reported injured, missing or killed.

Set against the backdrop of the WWI trench, Steve described not only the conditions in which the soldiers lived and fought, but some poignant facts and figures. Of the one million British servicemen reported dead or missing, only 100,000 were ever identified. Out on the battlefields of Gallipoli (modern day Turkey) and in France and Flanders there are the remains of 500,000 lost Tommies.

Season of mists Pt II

Season of mists Pt III

Season of mists Pt IV

Season of mists - last day

Looking Down on the Civic Centre in the 1950s

Queen's Park

Princes Street

Ghostly goings on at the Clifton

Apsley House, Bath Road, Swindon

The Railway Factory

Jake the Juggler

The GWR Company Doctors

Looking Down on Moredon in the 1950s

Royal Wootton Bassett Field of Remembrance

Mary E. Slade

William and Ernest Leggett

Remembrance Day 2012 at Radnor Street Cemetery

Looking Down on the GWR Works

A Soldier's Life in the Trenches

Looking Down on Regent Street