The Highworth Town Trail. Described on the brochure/booklet as: A leisurely walk through the fascinating history of Highworth.
I do in fact give some small mention of of historic Highworth on this page about things to do in Swindon. But this post is to talk a little about this Highworth activity in particular – that I did with a friend recently.
If you want to do some deep delving into Higworth’s history then do check out Highworth historical society here.
So we had this booklet and my mate had the app on her phone. Having both turned out to be useful because the app covered the high street only – and had some extra information not in the booklet. Whereas the booklet went beyond the high street and included Westrop, St Michael and All Angels Church and Sheep Street.
We did this trail on a sunny Sunday. That’s a good day to do it in many ways because the town is quiet. There’s neither a lot of traffic nor a ton of people about – a big bonus when you’re trying to look at buildings and things on buildings. But it’s less good if you a want to explore some of the little shops and so on. There was a cafe open on the high street – huge relief. đŸ™‚
The booklet then
Well it’s an attractive, glossy, colour thing stuffed with lots of photos. Though we did think that perhaps they could have done with captions. While I can’t now remember particular instances, we did have some confusions at times when images on a page didn’t necessarily relate to the text. It also did a bit of taking us to a particular building then having us doubling back on ourselves to the next one. But never mind – between that and the app we worked it out.
The Riot act
One of my fave stories dates back to 1830. In that year the market place was the scene of a notorious incident known as the Swing riots. Though why that is I don’t know. Anyway, at this time rural labourers were engaged in protest actions across England hoping to improve their wages and preserve their winter work.
Highworth saw riots break out on the 24th November 1830 – though they were soon suppressed. The next day, headed by Mr Thomas Cally, a magistrate, and Lieutenant Cally of Blundsdon House, a large troop of over 200 horsemen arrived in Highworth. And there was then a reading of the Riot Act to disperse the demonstrators.
Now a small number of photos from the trail.
Where to get the booklet
I picked up my copy on a previous visit to Highworth, in the visitor information centre – find info on that here.
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