Wish-Hound: It Takes A Village

Another Friday, another blog, 3 in a row now perhaps this is a thing... slight cheat this week in that the pics were taken earlier this week when the sun was a-shining. Location this time The Railway Village, the very heart of Swindon in every sense really given that this area is the location of the railway workers' cottages built in the 19th century to house the influx of workers needed for the new Great Western Railway works. The houses are built largely of Bath stone, thought to have been excavated from the cutting of the Box tunnel.

Park House, adjacent to GWR Park

GWR were big on notices...

I start my walk in Faringdon Road park, the vast open space that borders the Railway Village this used to be the location for the annual GWR Children's Fete a very big deal in the Swindon social calendar in the days when the term "inside" meant you worked for the railways not that you were detained at Her Majesty's pleasure.

Faringdon Road Park

This gives an indication of how dominant the Railways were in Swindon, if you didn't work there you knew someone who did, most likely a relation.

St.Mark's Church

Just over the road from the park stands St. Mark's church, keeping spiritual watch over the main railway line and the inhabitants of the Village. This is a very grand Church, venerated by Sir John Betjeman, who opened the church centenary garden party fete celebration in 1945.

Water Tower

Heading East along Bristol Street, towards the Railway Station, on the left is the original works Water Tower, now listed and due for renovation as part of the development of a new Technical College on this site due to open Autumn 2014.

Mechanics Institute

Heading further on is the blot on the landscape that should be anything but - the increasingly derelict Mechanics Institute. Plans for its redevelopment and restoration as some kind of community resource, reflective of its original purpose, have been scuppered so many times over the last 20 - 30 years. I am not holding my breath over the likelihood of success for the latest developments in this continuing local sob story ...

Taking a right-turn a quick look at some of the pubs in these parts - a reminder of the days when a street corner wasn't a street corner without a pub or a shop to finish it off ... The Bakers Arms, The Cricketer's both still going but the next stop on my journey has to be the rather wonderful Glue Pot, as fine a real ale pub as you are likely to find in these parts, which appears in the local CAMRA Pub guide.

The Glue Pot

The Cricketers

Bakers Arms

"The backs"

The old Railway Museum, Emlyn Square

After some welcome hop-based sustenance a few steps on to Emlyn Square and the building that has seen many uses over the years, originally a chapel, then the first Railway Musuem (before STEAM Museum) and now a youth centre known as The Platform.

Glancing down the alleyways between the terraces, though I do of course support recycling, it is a bit of a pity about the wheelie bins, these alleyways between the terraced cottages would be very evocative of days of yore otherwise.

We should be grateful though, the Railway Village, in an unusual piece of post-war vision from Swindon council, was renovated in the 1970s preserving, rather brilliantly, a very important part of our local railway heritage. Andy Partridge, of XTC fame, filmed a very entertaining piece on this area as part of a local TV documentary in the early 80s. It was part of a series shown in the West TV region check it out here .. .Andy Partridge - Our Swindon

Over the road from the old Railway Museum is the Central Community Centre, once the Medical Fund Hospital. The GWR workers paid into a medical fund that was used to provide them with health services that would have been the envy of many other factory workers of the times - this was decades before the National Health Services was established in 1948, the Swindon scheme providing something of a model for the establishment of the NHS. I remember hearing the term "on the club" when I was a lad, another Railways term in origination I think, which meant someone was off sick, and therefore claiming sickness benefit from the medical fund - the "club". I could be wrong on this, but that's my memory of the use of the term.