May 2020
To be clear, this post is about the GWR Weighbridge Swindon as part of the GWR Works – not the Weighbridge Brewhouse as the restaurant that it is now.
The GWR Weighbridge Swindon on Penzance Drive – near the Outlet Centre and the Pattern Store – soon to be the Pattern Church.
Once the home of Archer’s Brewery – now a Harpers Steakhouse.
Photograph taken during the Covid-19 2020 lockdown. This road is never normally quiet like this.
Swindon’s GWR Weighbridge
This GWR weighbridge – part of ‘A’ shop – came into life in 1906. Here, as its name suggests, engines were weighed and balanced along a single track.
After it fell out of use, Archers Brewery refurbished the building and relocated to it in 1999. The Swindon Book by Mark Child tell us that:
‘ … photographs taken in the place, over the next decade, depict balancing machines named ‘Henry Pooley and Sons, Birmingham and London. They’re dated 1930. In their honour, Archers brewed a beer bearing the Pooley name.
Following a further refurbishment costing in the region of two million pounds, Anthony and Allyson Windle opened the building in 2011 as a restaurant and micro-brewery named The Weighbridge Brewhouse. It’s now a Harper’s steakhouse.
Penzance Drive, where the Weighbridge is located, is now a busy thoroughfare. It has housing on the opposite side, going to the Outlet Centre – itself once part of the mighty GWR Works. But imagine the area as it was – packed with railway sidings and full of rolling stock.
Archer’s Brewery
Between the GWR period and the the buildings’ current use, Archer’s brewery inhabited the place.
According to Quaffle (love that name) Archer’s beer first was brewed in London Street before moving to the weighbridge.
Archer’s Brewey: Founded in 1979, by former RAF pilot Mark Archer Wellington and his wife, Wendy. They set up up their brewery in an industrial unit that once was part of the GWR carriage and wagon works.
The Pattern Store and the Turntable
A few yards down the road from the Weighbridge, and on the opposite side of the McArthur Glen Outlet centre, stands the Pattern Church. The historic turntable is in front of the Pattern Church – the pattern store as was.
As the Pattern Store, that building features in Swindon in 50 buildings. As part of a triumverate with the turntable and the water tank on its roof, it features too in my Born Again Swindonian’s Guide.
See this Historic England entry for technical detail: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1355885
