It’s a fabulous story that concerns the several-years-long and on-off search for ‘the magnificent sculpture of ‘The Angel of Assassination’ which was, as Barry explains ‘stumbled upon quite by accident’.
‘We can only imagine the joy, delight and sheer relief of Borough Arts Officer Terry Court when, after pulling back a crumpled canvas while clearing out an old costume store at the back of the Devizes Road Arts Centre, he was confronted with the elusive, milky white form of Charlotte Corday.’
Barry explains that, during the 1860s, one Pasquale Miglioretti (Italian sculptor 1822-1881) created at least three versions of Charlotte Corday. The lady described as a ‘counter revolutionary heroine’ who acquired infamy (infamy, infamy – they’ve all got it in for me! The BEST movie line ever!) when, in 1793 she stabbed to death Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub. How very Psycho!
It’s a Marbleous Mystery
To cut a long story short cos you can read the rest of it in the article, it’s a marbleous mystery how one of these wonderful creations landed up in little old Swindon.
But anyway, about a century ago it did! And, since it was found twenty-five years ago the statue has graced the foyer of Swindon’s town hall. As the article says – ‘it’s pretty much unseen by anyone who doesn’t go to Swindon Dance. I’ve seen it though. Yay.
Finally – yes I’m stretching the Dr Whoweeping angels, ‘Don’t blink’ thing a bit but she is referred to as an angel – albeit of assassination. And anyway, tucked away as she is in the town hall – blink and you’ll miss her. Which seems rather a shame really given her infamy.
The ugliest town in England? Really? 2021: At the time of writing, this post Swindon was submitting a bid to the Heritage Lottery fund for a fancy-pants new building to house the Museum and Art gallery.
That bid failed – but that’s by the by. When the news emerged of Swindon’s designs on a new building, two broadsheet newspapers covered the story with quite the laziest, insulting and unnecessary journalism. What follows is my response to it at the time.
Swindon hits the headlines of the nationals – and yet again it’s an insult.
Beauty is only skin deep – and it lies in the eye of the beholder. You may have to dig but it’s there. Okay. There can’t be many of us by now that have missed the recent press coverage by The Telegraph and the Independent of Swindon’s bid to ‘become Britain’s new cultural magnet’ (The Telegraph.)
In covering this story they’ve managed to turn what should have been a positive story about the town’s impressive and unsung art collection into a damning portrait of an ugly and soulless town.
Yes – I KNOW that Swindon has destroyed some perfectly fine buildings. I don’t why – I wasn’t here then. I know too that there are areas that could be better in all sorts of ways. But – do we really think that this isn’t true throughout the country? Of course it is. But nevertheless, Swindon has a healthy heart of culture and creativity and it’s far, far from ugly.
Swindon has hit the headlines once again. And once again the media has dug deep into their hidden shallows to insult a town that many people love and choose to live in. Yes. CHOOSE.
I’m incandescent.
The Independent headlined what could and indeed should have been a positive story about Swindon’s art collection and proposed new art gallery and museum thus: ‘The “ugliest town in England” is getting a makeover’
A big claim – and an unfounded one
Ugliest town? That’s a big claim and a strong insult Independent. Just what yardstick have you used exactly? Why is it necessary to be so rude? I must be in the running to be Swindon’s number one fan but I’ll own that Swindon is dispiriting in places – the bottom end of the town is not exactly salubrious for a start.
However there’s a yawning great chasm between that and ‘ugly’. I hail from a part of the country left economically devastated by the 1980s pit closures. I know rough when I see it. And Swindon isn’t it.
A kickback
Some years ago I started this blog, in part, as a kick-back against this constant drip drip drip of attacks against the town. I’ve written hundreds of posts of positive stories about the cornucopia of art, culture, creativity and fantastic people that love to live and work and create in this ‘ugly’ town with no heart. Allegedly
What’s it got in the way of art?
The Independent posed the question of Swindon, ‘‘What’s it got in the way of art?’ Well dear Independent article writer, you already know that Swindon has one of the most important collections of 20th century British art outside the Tate. You also know we have a statue of Diana Dors.
But had you done a bit more research you might have discovered that Swindon is home to many pieces of public art scattered all over the town. Notably the wonderful and unsung West Swindon sculpture trail but many more besides. Read the blog – I’ve posted about much of it here.
Diana Dors West Swindon
Art for art’s sake
You might also have discovered that Swindon is home to not one but two world-class artists. Ken White famed for his murals and the Virgin Red Lady emblem (alongside a fabulous and renowned body of work centred around his experiences working in the railway works) and David Bent, aviation artist and artist in residence to the Red Arrows:
Ken White is Swindon born and bred and David Bent came to live here. Yes CHOSE to live in Swindon and play a full part in the life and heart of the community.
But the creativity doesn’t end there. There’s Artsite and the Post Modern, the literature festival and the poetry festival. And so, so much more.
Swindon Festival of Poetry
I’m so, so tired of all this carrying on as if Swindon were the only town in the land to have demolished good buildings and put in concrete. It’s not. Move on please.
‘Designed by Douglas Stephen and built in the Seventies, this tower is a sleek, slick return to the smooth white grace of Twenties and Thirties Modernism. It’s a mixed-use building, incorporating social housing, offices and retail, which is rare in Britain. Stephen was a communist and believed in architecture as a power for social good.”
But that aside, Swindon is a mostly a working-class town founded on industry so it’s hardly likely to be stuffed to the gills with Palladian columns and Georgian windows now is it? What’s wrong with being proud of the town’s fantastically rich industrial heritage that is so much broader and deeper than the GWR – albeit that’s the one that put Swindon on the map.
But you know what? Those that know – know. We know that Palladian columns don’t make a community. What does make a community is all of the things I’ve mentioned here and all the elements of Swindon life and people that I haven’t mentioned here because frankly it would take all day. But it’s all here on this blog.’
This was a non-definitive list, in no particular order, of things that I felt worth shouting about. The list encompassed parks, public art, artists, museums and even the buses. Though, TBH, I’ve changed my mind about the buses. (2020)
It’s now 2020 – and I’ve adjusted the list a little since its original conception. But most of what you see below still stands. The big exception is No 3 and I’ve changed that to make space for the GWR Railway Village. A couple of others have changed too – only to make the blog tidier. Not because the subject matter wasn’t still interesting.
Here’s the list of 10 Things to Celebrate About Swindon
1)Parks, gardens and green spaces. Swindon is teeming with green spaces and is packed with park life. It’s wonderful. There’s Queen’s Park, and the Secret Garden, there’s Town Gardens and Lydiard Park to name some of the ‘biggies’ but there seems to a green area of some description practically at every turn – Hagbourne Copsebeing a recent-ish discovery.
We are very, very lucky to live in such a green town. In that aspect at least.
Queen’s Park
2) Number 2 on my list was the arts, culture and creativity that you can find in abundance in Swindon. In the initial list I focused on the poetry bus but now, several years on, I know of so much more – it’s pretty much endless. Off the top of my head there’s Artsite and the Post Modernand so much more.
On the buses
3) The buses – well okay – this isn’t entirely positive. (As of 2017 Thamesdown Transport is under new ownership. Already the loathsome fast fare system that wasn’t fast and wasn’t fair has been removed. But it’s not a great system now for the size of the town.
So I’ve now removed this original entry to make space for something more worthy.
4) The Public Art: I LOVE that Swindon has so much public art. Okay some of it could be better cared for but it’s none the less interesting for all that. Hats off to the then Thamesdown Council who were responsible for installing much of it – notably the West Swindon sculpture walk. Read more posts about Swindon’s public art here:https://swindonian.me/category/public-art-sculpture/
Artists
5) Number 5 on my list had to be Swindon treasure Ken White.
If you think you don’t know Ken’s work – his murals aside – you absolutely do because he created Virgin’s famed red lady emblem. Banksy? Who’s he? But now I know about Tim Carroll and more besides.
6) The Museum of Computing: small but perfectly formed this is a little gem tucked away on Theatre Square. Always riding high on Trip Advisor it’s well worth a peek – geek or not.
7) The leisure facilities: I left a small village in Derbyshire to come to Swindon. It was a bus ride to the nearest town – Worksop – and then a long trek across the town simply to access a swimming pool. Everything else was Sheffield. And that, without a car, was an EXPOTITION. So imagine my delight at pitching up somewhere with a swimming pool, an ICE RINK, and a multiplex cinema just up the road! Died and gone to heaven didn’t cover it.
9) Theatre and the Arts: encompassing the Wyvern Theatre and the Arts Centre, Am-Dram, Gilbert and Sullivan, literature and poetry. What’s NOT to like?
So – all of this in a town where there’s nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing goes on, nothing happens and so on. Odd then that I’ve managed to fill a blog with all that nothingness.
“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” So said Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of children’s classic, The Secret Garden.
Well, be that as it may we can easily say that the whole of Swindon is a garden. Or a park or green space at any rate – given that here in Swindon we’re astonishingly well-blessed with leafy and open spaces. It’s quite astonishing when you stop to think about it. You can read about some more of them here:https://swindonian.me/category/parks-and-open-spaces/ But this post focuses on Queen’s Park in Swindon.
Queens Park sign
Queen’s Park Swindon
But this post is concerned with Queen’s Park Swindon and its secret garden. Swindon’s Queen’s Park is not a place I get to much. I live one the west side of town and have the magnificent Lydiard Park not much more than a spit from my house so I go there – obvs.
Which is not to say that Queen’s Park isn’t lovely because it is. It’a a fabulous oasis in the middle of an urban conurbation. And it has some public art in too. So what’s not to like?
Plus the secret garden of course. And it was the secret garden summer BBQ that took me there last night.
The Secret Garden volunteers organized the BBQ ,among them the Incredible Edible Swindon people and councillor Paul Dixon, and was a very pleasant evening. After a few days of not great weather the sun switched itself back on and produced a fabulous evening.
NB: the Secret garden once was operated by the group of keen volunteers aforementioned but that no longer applies. They’ve handed it over to South Swindon Parish now.
Below are a load of photos I took but before that some general information about the park.
Wikipededia says:
Dull but factual from Wikepedia:Queen’s Park is a public park, located near the Regent Circus area of Swindon town centre.
It is about 12 acres (49,000 m2) in size, with a lake of around 2 acres (8,100 m2), and contains a diverse range of ornamental trees and shrubs.
The park has a Garden of Remembrance, officially opened by Princess Elizabeth on 15 November 1950 and commemorates those who died in World War II.
‘It is difficult to believe that this town centre parkland oasis was once a brown field site. Queen’s Park is a twelve acre beauty spot with a Victorian industrial past, the site of builder Thomas Turner’s brick works – examples of his artistry stand close to the Drove Road entrance.
Today the former derelict claypit, once popular with zoologist Desmond Morris and his girlfriend Diana Dors, is an award winning park and garden.’ And: ‘In 2001 English Heritage awarded the garden a Grade II listing on the Register of Parks & Gardens. And it’s easy to see why.’
The photo of the gorilla is way better than mine for a start!
On the subject of the gorilla – also from Swindon History blogspot:
‘The long time resident gorilla took up his present position in 1994. The Borough bought the welded steel sculpture by Tom Gleeson following an exhibition in the Theatre Square in the mid-1980s. Today he looked particularly fetching with a flower tucked behind his ear by an admirer.’
Sculpture – Queen’s Park in Swindon
The sculpture is ‘Turtle Storm’ (1986) by Joseph Ingleby and is made of forged steel. Donated to Thamesdown Council as a gift from the Dufty family in 1995 and sited in Queens Park, Swindon, Wiltshire.
The work was originally purchased for Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, the country home of William Morris, in 1989. In 1995 the decision was taken to limit artefacts at the house and grounds to those created in Morris’s lifetime (1834-96).
“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.” Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret garden.
Coate Water Miniature Railway Hurrah!! After twenty-two years in Swindon I made it to the miniature railway at Coate Water. It was great. As the nearly-two-year-old I was with said “Choo choo’:
July 2015
Regular listeners will know, from my blog post about the Hooter Express, that I love a miniature railway. Which makes it all the more surprising that I’ve never managed to get my butt into gear and take a trip on the Coate Water miniature railway – something I really must address.
Just this evening I was reading the Link magazine (find them on Facebook here) and came across a small piece about the railway. Would you believe that 2015 marks the FIFTIETH birthday of the railway? Blimey!
‘The NWMES was founded in the early 1960s by a small band of enthusiasts interested in the building and running of miniature steam locomotives. They leased the land and constructed a small loop of track, with a steaming bay, on the present site at Coate Water Country Park, Swindon, Wiltshire.
In the early days there was nothing else on the site and they had to bring everything, including water to the track for each running session.’
There’s lots of great reasons to visit Coate Water – aside from the railway and seeing thelisted concrete diving platform. It has lovely walks, is a nature reserve and an area of scientific interest. Visit Swindon Webto find out more.
About the North Wilts Model Engineering Society
We open every Sunday (weather permitting) and most bank holidays. The railway is also open where advertised on Saturdays (but may be open if sufficient volunteers are available). During the summer school holidays we open on a Tuesday. Opening times are from around 11am through to 5pm, or dusk during the winter. Go here for more information.
