After ‘Nexus’ at Freshbrook is WSSW Part 6: The Watchers at Toothill.
‘Artist: Carleton Attwood. Material: Cement Fondue. Project details: Funded by R.S. McColl and E.H.Bradley Building Projects Ltd. The sculpture represents guardian figures looking over the community.’
‘The Watchers, 1982, by Carleton Attwood (1908 to 1985) at Toothill Village Centre. The first sculpture in West Swindon, cast in ferro-concrete at Swindon’s town hall studios, is one of Carleton’s last works and due to his ill-health was largely completed by sculptor Pat Elmore. The work represents the guardians of the new community.’ – from Swindon Link in 2017.
And, as you can see in the picture, they are still there, still quietly watching.
Carleton Attwood
Swindon born, Carleton Attwood created a number of works in Swindon that you might well be familiar with. One of them is a bust of Alfred Williams that resides in the museum and art gallery up in Old Town.
Find a map of the walk here: The Sculpture Tour West Swindon. And all my writings about the West Swindon Sculpture walk here.
Here’s a link to a blog about conserving the bust from the Wiltshire and Swindon History centre. As they say: ‘ Although Attwood worked in many more traditional materials, this bust is made from moulded concrete. Some of his other well known public commissions are “Golden Lion” in Regent Street and “The Watchers” at Toothill Village Centre.’
Here’s a YouTube clip about the conservation work on the Alfred Williams bust.
There’s also a mural of his in the dance studio in Swindon Dance in the Town Hall – see Secret Swindon and Swindon in 50 Buildings.
I discovered your posts on the West Swindon sculpture tour while hunting for publix Swindon artworks myself, and went out today (in the rain) to visit some of them. I’m collecting things to add to OpenStreetMap (www.openstreetmap.iorg) about Swindon, and am currently on “tourism=artwork”.
What annoys me about public projects like this is that there is (or rather presumably was) all sorts of ceremonies and whatnot when they got put up, but later they just seem to get forgotten about. I came across some numbered “Heritage Trail” path labels in Swindon the other day, and nobody seems to know what they mean.. so they toss all the docs in the bin, or is it just that nobody has digitised them? Maybe I should volunteer!
Oh Jess. Please do! I would love to get more involved with that sort of thing but am just about to go back to uni (very mature student) for my 3rd year so that will be my one and only focus for the next few months.
You are right, I suspect the documents about all this are there somewhere but just not digitised. I’m not sure SBC care too much about all this public art. The Tom Dixon light sculpture that lived on Vilett Street has been simply scrapped when there are I know, from Twitter, people out there that would have rescued it. It’s criminal some of the things they do.
The Heritage trail you speak of is, I think, to do with the railway village and what have you. As far as I know it’s just about still current. There’s a website about it.
Swindon Viewpoint have some archive film on their website of one of the artists – Jon Buck. Swindon local fckr collection also have loads of photos of the public art – some of it long gone.
Your project sounds interesting. Would you like to write a guest blog post about it? At any rate do update me with your findings. That would be really great.
regards
A
Oops.. I kept forgetting to write you a reply.. where did the rest of September go!?
I have looked at the railway village heritage trail website, and it doesn’t seem to come anywhere near Stratton where I spotted these two “Heritage Trail” labels. One is on Highworth Road, pointing down the side of the LDS church near the Rat Trap roundabout, the other is on the path around the Kingsdown Crematorium. I shall have to go up top of the library and actually ask.. Any ideas/help appreciated.
I ought indeed to write more blog posts about my wanderings/collecting around Swindon. I’ll try and figure one out and let you know.
Hello Jess
Thanks for getting in contact again. I’m back at uni now so getting wrapped up in that so I know what you mean.
I’m afraid I have no idea what these heritage trail labels are. I don’t know that area of Swindon at all. My suggestions would be to try the visit Swindon folk on the tourist information desk, Swindon Local who look after the Flickr collection or the people at Swindon Heritage magazine. All of them are on Facebook and Twitter. If you don’t use either of those you can mail me pictures of them and I can send out some feelers. I’m building relationships with all those groups now with the blog so would be happy to do that. Or, yep, write a blog post about it. Either for a blog of your own I can put it on here as a guest blog.
How mysterious!
Kind regards
A
Reblogged this on Born again Swindonian and commented:
22 February 2014
I’m giving this post a re-blog because it features ‘The Watchers’ which happens to be Art gallery and museum’s object of the month. And also because I’ve added in a link to Swindon Local’s Flickr collection featuring a picture of the post Ken White created for the unveiling of the statue.