Where: Venue: Lecture Theatre, New College Swindon, SN3 1AH
The Science and Technology Facilities Council (the other STFC) based here in Swindon funds some of the most amazing and inspirational science and technology in the world. Starting in October 2018 we will run a series of public events to highlight the science realised here in Swindon.
The first talk by eminent solar physicist Dr Helen Mason OBE from the University of Cambridge will bring the Sun to Swindon…
Dr Helen Mason
Reaching for the Sun
The Sun, our star, is in a quiet phase of its eleven activity cycle, but we can expect some spectacular action in a few years time. Several solar space observatories have been watching the Sun over the past couple of decades:
SoHO, Stereo, Hinode and the Solar Dynamics Observatory. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has just been launched, August 2018, and ESA’s Solar Orbiter will be launched in 2020. These satellites will travel closer to the Sun than ever before.
This talk will review what we have learnt about our dynamic Sun, in particular what we know (and don’t yet know!) about sunspots, solar active regions and flares (huge explosions), and how the Sun affects the Earth’s environment (space weather).’
Play areas in Malmesbury are now even safer thanks to a £42,000 investment by Malmesbury Town Council. The council commissioned a report by RoSPA – The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents – to look at the five play areas it manages in the town. It’s funded all its suggested changes.
Athelstan Artefacts Exhibition. A UNIQUE exhibition of rare artifacts, that speak to the Anglo Saxon heritage of Malmesbury prepares to open to the public. It’s all part of the Athelstan 1100 celebrations in the town (Tuesday July 2).
Sing Something Swindon: a round up of some of Swindon’s choirs
12th October 2018
Thanks to Jo Garton for this lovely guest blog post focusing on some of Swindon’s choirs. Which are many and various.
This is your note – sing it! Swindon’s lungs are bursting with singing opportunities.
Sing Something Swindon
Swindon is a city of choirs. Well – ok, it’s a town, but it feels like a city to many of us.
Many health and psychology studies show that singing is good for your health. This easy form of self-expression helps maintain sound (pun intended) mental health. Swindon is the place to be if you want to sing, because thousands of people sing here every week and not only in the shower!
History of arts, culture – and singing
Of course, we have a history of singing here; the Mechanics Institute had a resident opera company, which famously made Swindon the place to be in the UK if you fancied a bit of Russian opera! If you want to know more about that then I suggest you read Secret Swindon by Angela Atkinson, in which she tells more about that.
Nowadays we have highbrow, lowbrow and everything in between.
Long established choirs
Probably Swindon’s longest established choir is the Swindon Male Voice Choir, founded in 1919. They meet weekly in Gorse Hill and have about fifty members. Over the years they have toured internationally and won many competitions and Eisteddfods.
The Swindon Choral Society is another long-established choir. It has roots right back to the 1920s. They also tour internationally with a repertoire that includes Requiems of Brahms and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. The choral society has 110 singers and they meet in Freshbrook.
Like many of the choirs in Swindon they have raised a lot of money for charity – over the fifty-three years of their existence over £1 million. Their president is the internationally renown jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine. Their thirty-five women members have sung on national television and abroad.
New kids on the blog
Newer kids on the blog are The Magnificent AK47s formed in 2008. They meet in Ashton Keynes, but many of their members are from Swindon, some are not even members of the Spooner family! They have enjoyed success at the Derry International Choral Festival and the Cork International Festival. The AK47s are an all male choir who, for reasons not entirely clear, sing quite a lot about beards!
Swindon Community Choir started in 2000as the Scratch Choir but over the years have changed their name. They favour a ‘natural voice technique’ which believes that singing is everyone’s birthright. They meet in the Central Community Centre in the railway village (what was the medical fund society hospital) on a Monday evening. This is a mixed choir, which welcomes new members without an audition. They have a wide ranging taste, singing folk, pop and international songs.
Running for twenty-five years and also raising money for good causes is the Thamesdown Ladies choir. The choir has around fifty members and a wide-ranging repertoire.
Finally, the BigSingThinghas been running for seven years and meets in West Swindon on a Monday evening. Roughly ninety men and women sing each week. They perform concerts locally and have raised over £10,000 for charity. BigSing claims to be Swindon’s friendliest choir and sings pop songs old and new as well as some songs from musicals.
If you want to sing in Swindon there is plenty of choice!
This blog is an opportunity to share a few photographs of the work of Ken White Swindon artist. In my recently published book, Secret Swindon, I made a big effort to convey that Swindon’s cultural and creative present is as rich as its cultural and creative past. Many people/entities/artists contribute to Swindon’s varied cultural landscape as the recent Swindon Open Studios even will testify. And one of whom is Swindon born Ken.
An extract:
‘Ken White: Painter not artist
That’s his description of himself not mine. He’s emphatic on the point. Yet, however you describe him his talent is indisputable.
A born Swindonian, Ken had the great good fortune to get what you’d call ‘a big break’. First though, like so many young men in Swindon, at the tender age of fifteen saw him enter the Works (the 3rdgeneration of his family to go ‘inside’) as a rivet-hotter. Escaping that role, he began his artistic career with sign-writing and stenciling numbers on carriages in the Works. During this period Ken went to evening classes at Swindon Art College to study ‘O’ and A ‘Level art with the intention of becoming a full-time artist … ‘ For the rest – buy the book! 😉
Ken’s portfolio is a wonder to behold – the just-passed Open Studios is the ideal time to view it.
When researching for Secret Swindon I visited Ken and spent ages poring over his output from over the years. His collection of posters designed for Swindon events back in the day are an exhibition in themselves – never mind the rest. Here’s a small few that didn’t get used in Secret Swindon:
Ken White’s famed Red Lady emblem for Virgin AtlanticPoster for the unveiling of Carleton Attwood’s ‘The Watchers’ at Toothill village centrePoster for old GWR Railway museum
Deacon’s Jewellers Old Town Swindon and the regulator clock
It’s struck me often that Swindon’s Old Town has, within a few yards of one another, three long-standing and still family-owned businesses. That must be somewhat unusual surely? On Newport Street there’s Gilbert’s. On the corner of Bath Road and Devizes Rd there’s Blaylocks and on Wood Street of course we have Deacon & Son (Swindon) Ltd. The business was founded, by George Deacon, in 1848 as jewellers, watch and clock makers. It remains a family-run business that’s now in its sixth generation.
That is quite remarkable for sure. But on its own, a ‘so what’ is fair enough – after all, they can’t be the only long-standing family jewellery business in the land can they? At least I wouldn’t imagine so.
Deacon’s Jewellers Old Town Swindon
So what makes this business stand out?
But there’s something else about this business that makes it stand-out – and that’s its relationship with the story of New Swindon. Because there’s no doubt at all that the reason Deacon’s is such a well-known Swindon business, is the coming of the Great Western Railway.
An ambitious, 26-year-old George Deacon had the vision to see the need for time-keeping in a fast-growing town – one that arguably was the crucible of the industrial revolution. So – with an eye on the main chance, young George Deacon moved from his home town of Westbury to Swindon.
The business expanded and won one of the timing contracts for the Great Western Railway on the Paddington to Swansea line from the early 1850s to 1893.
The regulator clock
Around 1865, Deacon & Son Ltd made the Regulator Clock that stands to this day in the jewellery, clock and watch department of the shop. Before radio and the telephone gave universally available time, local means were designed to maintain accurate time-keeping. And this tended to be done by means of a regulator clock.
The famed regulator clock in Deacon’s jewellers in Wood Street, Swindon
The dead-beat escapement in this movement causes less friction and dampens vibration, giving greater accuracy. The self-regulating mercury pendulum, changes volume equally with the changes in temperatureand thus keeps the clock on a constant steady beat giving better time keeping.
Close up of the face of Deacon’s regulator clockExplanatory plaque on the regulator clock in Deacon’s
Deacon’s workshops made extensive use of the regulator clock for clock timing and regulation for many years. But then, in 2011, radio-controlled timing came from the nuclear caesium clock at the National Physics lab in Rugby.
So – were it not for the coming of the Great Western Railway, Deacon’s as we know it may well not exist at all.
An early receipt from Deacon’s of Swindon’s Old Town.
These boots are made for walking
Of course, Deacon’s is not the only long-standing, family-owned business in Old Town. I’m really rather fond of Blaylock’s – the shoe shop on the corner of Bath Road and Devizes Rd.
Blaylock’s is what I call a ‘proper’ shoe shop – though you’d need to be of a certain again to even know what I mean by that. And, what I mean by that is, that the shoes are stacked in boxes on shelves in the shop itself. Exactly as I remember shoe shops!
There’s no going out the back somewhere with an iPad and a headset on. Pfft. It’s friendly service and I love it. Not quite as old as Deacon’s they’ve been around for somewhere in the region of 100 years. Still, to my knowledge, this is a family-run business and an independent shoe shop. Fabulous.
Gilberts
Having bought your super comfy carpet slippers in Blaylocks – where better for your actual carpet than Gilbert’s on Newport Street, Gilbert’s have been in Old Town since 1866 so must have furnished a few Swindon homes in the intervening 152 years. What an astonishing thought.
It’s been sometime in the coming – you know how it is with building works – it always takes longer and costs more than you think. But at last it’s open and getting underway and, best thing of all, it’s a lovely bit of good news for Swindon’s heritage and the railway village conservation area.
I’m pretty ignorant of the history of this ex railway village pub, but it seems it had a reputation for being ‘a bit rough’ – to understate the case. As this article in the Swindon Advertiser explains:
It will prove a major reversal of fortune for the Emlyn Square pub, which was once a source of anti-social behaviour and ire for residents.
In December 2011, police raided the Bakers Arms and found a shotgun and a large amount of what officers suspected was cocaine. The pub was closed three months later after a review by the council’s licensing panel. .. ‘
Huge congrats to everyone at the Mechanics’ Institute Trust – I’m sure it will be great asset to the central area and to Swindon as a whole. Goodness knows Swindon’s heritage areas need some uplift. So this is super welcome.
