Due to popular demand, The Cotswold Challenge competition for teenagers under lockdown is now open to young people in Swindon as THE COTSWOLD CHALLENGE COMES TO SWINDON!
Five business owners, living in and around the Cotswolds, came together during lockdown to try to support local young people who’ve had their examinations cancelled. The contest launched three weeks ago and several students from Swindon have asked to take part.
“Due to demand, we made the decision to widen the geographical area covered by the competition and now it’s open to any young person living in Swindon who would have been taking GCSEs, A Levels or equivalents this year,” said Fiona Scott, from Swindon, who is one of the team behind the contest.
We’ve had requests from young people from West Swindon and Central Swindon so we’ve widened the area to a 25 miles radius of Cirencester – deemed to be the centre of the Cotswolds.”
What that means
This means young people from across Swindon can submit an entry for the challenge. It’s divided into three categories: 1. Art & Design 2. Creative Writing 3. Innovation & Entrepreneurial Thinking
There’s a first, second, third and fourth prize in each category of £500, £300, £150, £50 and runners up will get a book token.
The initiative was first developed to support 16 to 19 year olds (Years 11, 12, 13) to give them something creative to do and offer them the chance to excel, gain a sense of achievement and self-worth.
The challenge launched in April and it remains open until 9pm on Monday June 1.
“We’re particularly interested in getting entries from young people who are enterprising and innovative. They may have an idea for a new product, be a fledgling inventor, have thought of the next best app or have come up with a solution for the good of their community.
These young people may have a great business idea – or simply a great idea which they want to share and perhaps take the next steps to become a reality,” Fiona said.
The sponsors have already donated the prize money in full.
Winners will also be able to pitch for extra funds to take ‘the next step’ in showcasing their work eg. publishing their poem or short story in a local publication, staging their own art exhibition or taking an idea to an early prototype stage.
The sponsors for the project include:
The Fred And Marjorie Sainsbury Charitable Trust Jeevan Thandi of Karhoo Timothy James & Partners, independent financial advisers Jason Houghton, Salperton Park Estate, Cheltenham The Fairford & Lechlade Business Club Royal Agricultural University, Gloucestershire The Paperback Shop, of Fairford Marion Whittaker Author Kevin Wignall Meg Rivers Bakery, of Shipston On Stour Suzannah Harvey, CEO of Cotswold Airport Kim Harvey of The MadHatter Bookshop, of Burford. Nicky Godding, founder of Business & Innovation Magazine John Biddulph, of Rodmarton Manor Emma & Jamie Tuck of Bulldog Websites, of Swindon Allison Murray of Allison Murray Design, of Eastleach Barry Jackson, of Aspire Academy Bettina Harvey of Hector & Queen Nicky Godding of Business & Innovation magazine
Judging
A a team of well-known people, who have themselves achieved success in their own sector or business, will judge the entries. To date 60 young people have submitted entries for consideration.
Details of the competition, the criteria for entry and the briefing pack are all available via the website www.thecotswoldchallenge.com
One of the entries in Swindon in 50 Buildings,is The Crumpled Horn pub over in Eldene. Thus, I figured this blog series of Swindon in 50 More Buildings should include a pub too. And this news about the Hall & Woodhouse pub out at Wichelstow is a good enough reason to make it this one.
The Hall and Woodhouse Canal-side Hostelrygets national recognition for innovative pub in Swindon
Hall & Woodhouse at Wichelstowe, Swindon, has won the coveted ‘New Build Award’ in the prestigious CAMRA Pub Design Awards 2020.
A CAMRA award – Campaign for Real Ale
The awards, held by CAMRA, in conjunction with Historic England, celebrate exceptional pubs across the country. These are pubs that have undergone conversion or conservation work. That or they’re newly built.
Hall & Woodhouse in Wichelstowe first opened its doors to guests in February 2019. This follows a £5million investment. The canal-side pub sits in the new housing expansion at Wichelstowe and has become a flagship symbol of the emerging community.
Inspiration
The pub’s designers took inspiration from its surroundings, looking at creative ways to:
A. Incorporate the canal B. Reflect industrial Swindon’s architectural heritage into the pub’s interior and striking exterior.
An innovative, purpose-built canal boat named Lady Rose protrudes from the front entrance of the building. It contains self-serve beer pumps in sectioned booths that can seat up to 20 people.
Mark James, Property Director at Hall & Woodhouse, said: “It’s important to us to create a welcoming atmosphere that makes guests feel at home. A place where they can relax over a coffee or a meal, or enjoy a drink with friends.
A labour of love
Hall & Woodhouse, Wichelstowe was a real labour of love for our design team. They spent months sourcing unique features to enhance the pub’s iconic appearance. A walk around the pub surrounds you with pieces of Swindon’s history and artefacts conveying our 240 years of brewing heritage.
Glazed drinking and dining areas extending along the canal frontage, represent a terrace of traditional boathouses. The gabled roofs opening onto the water’s edge, form an extensive area of covered outdoor space. And the taller accommodation block symbolises traditional canal-side warehouses.
Juxtaposition in the internal decor
The internal décor is a juxtaposition of industrial structure and soft furnishings. The walls are adorned with images of local boatbuilding, the Hall & Woodhouse family and the company’s brewing heritage.
We sourced with care, knick-knacks from all over the country to enhance the building’s atmosphere.
Andrew Davison, chair of CAMRA’s Pub Design Award judging panel, added: “The New Build Award is rarely awarded. It’s a testament to the quality of Hall & Woodhouse at Wichelstowe that it has won.
“The commitment Hall & Woodhouse make to individual, location-specific design is praiseworthy.”
About Hall & Woodhouse
Hall & Woodhouse is an independent Dorset family company. They brew award-winning Badger Ales and run an estate of high-quality pubs in the south of England.
35 years and counting for pioneering Swindon web company
DMJ Computer Services is 35! A Swindon based web development company, created right at the start of the computing boom, is a phenomenal 35 years old!
DMJ Computer Services, headed by Martin Jarvis set up the business in 1985. In the first instance, offering programming and software development services. Martin jokes that he’s been programming “for as long as Bill Gates”.
DMJ Evolves
Under Martin’s stewardship, DMJ has evolved. It now specialises in end-to-end website service for small businesses. From web design to hosting and aftercare, Martin’s service, based in offices in Chiseldon, runs the gamut.
The firm has worked on hundreds of websites. Clients include dog walkers and a chateau owner, a professional football club and a design agency which brands international airlines.
Weathering the storms
The company has weathered many storms including recessions in the 80s, 90s, 2008. And now the economic fallout from the Coronavirus pandemic, to become a strong entity with a loyal client base across the UK and more than eight other countries.
“We recognised back in the early Noughties that many smaller companies were not benefiting from quality website services because they couldn’t justify the ad hoc consultancy fees charged by specialists. Nor were they able to justify the expense of employing their own in-house staff,” said Martin. “We launched a boutique website service, aimed at delivering the quality service offered by larger companies at an affordable cost.”
Early interest in computing
Martin, who grew up in Swindon had an interest in computing from his teenage years. He began his career in 1978 as a computer programmer. He worked first with a factoring company, before moving to Burmah Castrol and then on to Intel.
At the age of 25, with a young family, he decided to leave corporate life and set up DMJ Computer Services.
“It was a risk, but when you’re in your twenties it doesn’t seem like a risk. I suspect it’s a lot braver to do this when you’re in your fifties,” said Martin. “I wanted to get a better deal for my family and the gamble paid off.”
DMJ Computer Services then concentrated on project work, including programming and software development for a range of businesses, including PHH and BMW.
The Millennium didn’t bug Martin
In the early Millennium, Martin steered DMJ towards web development for smaller business. He began building websites from scratch and then becoming an early adopter of WordPress, created in 2003 as a blogging platform.
“I was looking at a way to build websites smarter. I predicted that all businesses were going to need a website. And, at the same time, I realised that not every business was going to be able to afford the cost of a bespoke website. WordPress provided the perfect solution for my clients.”
As well as web design, DMJ offers hosting and support packages for website. Martin hosts the websites on servers based in West London, in premises powered by 100 per cent green-source renewable energy.
Martin is now expanding DMJ’s website support packages. His offerings will include a premium website spam protection product, with more benefits to come during 2020.
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.
A firmly shut Weighbridge Brewhouse during the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic
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.
During the current coronavirus pandemic I’ve been undertaking #Covid19 constitutionals that I’ve recorded on this blog’s Born Again Swindonian Facebook page.
It’s only taken me 26 years in Swindon and a pandemic to get me to find out more about it. I even used to work on the aforementioned location, in Trigonos.
‘Windmill Hill Business Park is an imaginative collection of high quality office buildings. It’s set in a beautifully landscaped business park setting. It overlooks the Wiltshire countryside and lies less than 20 minutes from Swindon town centre and the railway station.
The environment is peaceful and relaxed, with lakes and pedestrian walkways to the local shops. Easy connections to the Wiltshire cycleway and direct access to J16 of the M4 a quarter of a mile away.’
But what about the windmill?
As a 2015 Swindon Advertiser article explains: ‘This graceful structure, with its majestic sails, originally adorned the fields of Chiseldon around six miles away before its dramatic though not unproblematic rebirth.’ Onto Windmill Hill that is.
Built in the 1820s, next to Chiseldon church, local historians claim the windmill still did its thing as late as 1892.
The rationale for putting the windmill there it that, it seems, there used to be a medieval post mill on the site. That traditional business activity gave the name to the centre and the reason to move the Chiseldon windmill to where it stands now.
In the absence of any archaeological remains of the post there is one compelling piece of pictorial evidence.
Among the St John monuments in St Mary’s Church, Lydiard Tregoz is the Golden Cavalier. That’s a tribute to Sir John St John’s son Edward who died from wounds received at the 2nd Battle of Newbury in 1644.
On the base of the statue there is a relief carving of the Cavalier leading his troop . Alan Turton, writing in English Civil War Notes And Queries 1985 about the presence of a Post Mill (windmill) in the carving says:
‘the whole design may show Captain Edward St John parading his troop in the park, hence the railings, of his family home at Lydiard Tregoze where there is also a Windmill Hill on the estate.’
Costs
A ballpark figure for the total cost of constructing the mill in the early 1820s would have looked like £450-500. That would have included the tower, windows, doors, floors, gearing and grinding stones. Such a sum would also have included a set of easy-to-operate shutter sails and even white lime wash for the interior walls.
The developers acquired the windmill in 1983 for £15,000. And the fine folk of Chiseldon – who gained funding for tennis courts as part of the deal – waved farewell to their 160-year-old landmark. Its thousands of bricks were numbered with care to make sure each one went back in the right place. Had that not happened it wouldn’t have been the Chiseldon windmill.
With re-pointed, cleaned-up bricks, spanking new sails, a concrete base, smart door and windows and even a fan tail, it arose from the dead at its new West Swindon home the following year. The process of relocating the windmill wasn’t all plain sailing – as it were. Severe damp broke out necessitating drastic action with a special type of mortar.
The five-year rescue-and-restore mission wound-up in 1988, signalling the completion of Swindon’s first newly erected windmill.
Another remnant of Swindon past
Close by to this windmill is another hidden remnant of Swindon past – now serving as the site office for the business park.
Now office accommodation, this is the Marsh Farm, Farmhouse.
The 101-acre dairy farm, once part of the Lydiard Park Estate belonged to the St John family.
The tithe map apportionments, produced in 1841, record ancient field names such as The Shannells and Picks Mead.
