Swindon Roundabouts: Part 1

Swindon, as we know, is famous – even infamous – for its roundabouts. Of course there’s the grand-daddy of them all, the Magic Roundabout. Such a rich vein of material is that particular jewel in Swindon’s roundabout crown that it has its own category on the blog.

But as any driver will tell you there are sooooo many more roundabouts in Swindon. Whilst they can’t all be as exciting/terrifying/world-famous as THE roundabout many of them are, nevertheless, quite interesting – if only by dint of what they are associated with and named for.

With this in mind, myself and Jess Robinson, aka @Swindondriver on Twitter, recently went out – in manner of Winne-the-Pooh – on an EXPOTITION to photograph some of them and dig out a little of the history behind their names.

When we started to look at this idea in more detail it became clear that, due to the rather large number of roundabouts in Swindon, we’d have to break them down into sets of some kind.

 So if you’re sitting comfortably listeners – then I’ll begin – with roundabouts associated with Swindon’s industry – something that segues nicely into a post I did (with lots of photos and input from @leefer on Twitter) about just some of Swindon’s industry. 

But where to begin?

After some discussion we figured the most interesting ones to focus on for the purposes of this particular post were the Supermarine, Vickers, Deloro and Renault roundabouts. Why? Because all of them named for industries/organizations that were once close by to the location of the roundabouts.

Taking flight

I only learned relatively recently of Swindon’s connections with the aviation industry. And that’s where Supermarine and Vickers came in.

Around 1912 the first aeroplane, a Bleriot monoplane, visited Swindon. Then, not so many years later, Swindonians found themselves thrust into the midst of both aviation industry and history when – in 1938 – South Marston was chosen as a shadow site* due to its good communication links and proximity to the skilled workforce of the Swindon’s GWR works. *As Swindon Web explain in one of their articles on the subject, shadow sites were sites intended to provide back-up to the leading aircraft factories in the event of war-time attack.

As the jolly useful Swindon Web website further describes, at length the factory passed to Supermarine. The South Marston site became a shadow site of the Castle Bromwich site in the Midlands and the original Supermarine factory in Southampton.

Little remains of that factory. It’s now an industrial estate and in part of the massive Honda plant there are echoes. The sports club that was once part of Vickers still retains the name.

In addition of course, there’s the Supermarine roundabout and further homage to the Spitfire is paid in the industrial estate in the area.

 Deloro Stellite (Kennametal) is a specialist engineering firm – no longer manufacturing in its Swindon factory and now a distribution centre but again the name lives on in the roundabout sign.

Vickers

So where does the name Vickers fit with all this you may ask?

Well, back to our old friend Swindon Web again for enlightenment. It seems that, by the 1950s, the South Marston factory was part of the Vickers-Armstrong (Aircraft) Ltd, Supermarine Division.  

There’s much more information on their article about what came off the production line, in particular about the Supermarine Swift. But the link between that and the model of Concorde you see in the pictures below is that, through the 1970s and 1980s, the South Marston site produced components for a range of Vickers products – and for Concorde. Supersonic Swindon eh? Hence the model you see in the pictures below. It would be nice though if someone gave it a wash and brush up… I do really miss Concorde coming over…

Galleries

Supermarine, Vickers and Deloro

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The Spectrum Building

Having around Supermarine and Vickers, had coffee in the Spitfire cafe, stopped for a peek at the nearby portrait bench on the South Marston cycle path, one of the figures on which is a Spitfire pilot, and chuckled at the sign for Equity Trading Centre which just looks so very, very random … etc….. we headed off to the other side of town to a have a look at the Spectrum Building. It’s still indicated as Renault on the roundabout sign and indeed I still refer to it as the Renault building – never the Spectrum building.

But whatever you want to call it, this Norman Fostor designed and now listed building, is I think, fabulous. It’s certainly iconic anyway.

So that’s it for Swindon Roundabouts: Part 1