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| 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.
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
