Jim Hurst Blue Plaque. Well this is fab – a blue plaque in our GWR Railway village, celebrating a son of Swindon, unveiled by our current transport minister, and South Swindon MP, Heidi Alexander.
The unveiling came as part of the 200th anniversary celebrations of the birth of the railway.
Who was Jim Hurst?
Well James (Jim) Hurst was a man who worked at close quarters with such railway pioneers as George Stephenson, our very own Sir Daniel Gooch and the legendary Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Hurst found himself appointed as the first locomotive shunter for the GWR, taking to the tracks on 28th December, 1837.
Now the commemorative inscription sits above the front door of the last dwelling that Jim called home. And that was Taunton Street in Swindon’s historic railway village.
Hurst’s backstory
Entering the world in Lancashire, in 1911, Hurst began his railway career aged 14, as assistant to George Stephenson, surveying the land that became the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. As a result of this work, 1832 saw Stephenson employ him at an engine house in Salford as a fireman. Two years later, Hurst achieved promotion to engine driver. Every school boy’s dream?
While driving locomotives to the Vulcan foundry of Charles Tayleur & Co. in Lancashire, that he met and befriended a young apprentice by the name of Daniel Gooch. He of course went on to the dizzy heights of first Locomotive Superintendent, appointed by the chief engineer of Great Western Railway, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Jim Hurst joined his good friend soon afterwards, relocating to Paddington.
Another tale to tell
And of course, all the above is all well and good. But historian Frances Bevan, paints a different/alternative portrait of Jim on her Radnor Street cemetary blog. She tell us that, a personal friend of Gooch he may well have been. Yet there was escaping that Jim Hurst was a tricky character. It seems that GWR official reports tell a tale of arguments, rows, conflicts, accidents and even fights – all through the career of the company’s first driver.
It seems his first driving accident took place in 1856 while still in the employ of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Though sacked, Gooch, by now Locomotive Superintendent of the GWR, hired hm again almost at once. Though Frances tells us that, when recounting the story to the company magazine, many years later, he gave an entirely different explanation of the circumstances.
To finish
There’s much more to Jim’s story in Frances’ blog so do follow the link above to read the rest. I’ll finish though with this extract from it:
For the last 30 years of his life Jim was a Swindonian, living in the Railway Village and earning, through his pension, more than most of the general workers ‘inside.’
Jim’s time ran out in August of 1982 when he died in his 81st year. He lies with his wife in Radnor Street cemetery. It does seen odd that, given that he and his family had the means to afford a memorial, his grave is unmarked. The Swindon heritage team uncovered it in the summer of 2016.
Thus it’s kind nice, I suppose, that there’s now a blue plaque commemorating him.
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