Well, I must make a very big confession; I have never been much interested in the railway. It’s not for lack of suitable breeding either. My father, uncle and grandfathers on both sides worked for the Works – a typical Swindonian family history, I imagine.
Swindon’s Cultural Heritage Institute
Swindon is Britain’s only large town with no university. There is a university in Gloucester, a university in Reading and TWO universities in Bath. And they even have a university in Oxford – who knew?
But not in Swindon. Yet that has now changed.
It’s arguable that the Cotswold Water Park ranks as Europe’s largest centre for water sports with its 150 lakes spread over forty-two square miles. t started out almost by accident, in the middle of the 20th century, as a result of much excavations for aggregates in the upper Thames region. As these diggings became exhausted natural flooding occurred, extending below the water table.
Having written a short piece on my memories of The Oasis, it feels timely to think back on another important, but threatened piece of Swindon heritage, the Bath Road Museum.
Before I get to uploading Rebecca’s words – it made me smile did this. Though I’m not sure what my dinosaur barmy, budding palaeontologist, 4-year old granddaughter would make of this.
In the midst of the ongoing situation with the Oasis leisure centre, my ad-hoc guest blogger Rebecca Davies, shares her memories of the Oasis from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. My Memories of the Oasis, by Rebecca Davies BSc (Hons). I thought I ought to write...
Wiltshire is the finest county, with a great many things to see and do, and good access to London and Bristol. If, like me you’re interested in the past, there is, what appears to be, an endless supply of antiquities to study. Such as the Alton Barnes white horse.
The green and white stripes represent the chalk downland, and the segmented circle, henge monuments. But the bird is a strange creature; it is a big, powerful legged avian. It may be a fabulous Heraldic bird. But then again, it may actually exist. This is Otis tarda: the Great Bustard.
Bradford on Avon is a market town in West Wiltshire, situated upon one of the many rivers in Britain called the Avon. Avon comes from afon – Welsh for river.
From time to time something gets discovered that is new and surprising. Royal Wootton Bassett mud springs are definitely new and surprising. These are springs that instead of upwelling water, as springs generally do, produce goopey clay mud.
The friends of Lydiard Park tell us, on their website, that the great forest of Braydon once extended across north Wiltshire. It covered much of the ground where Swindon now stands as well as the land destined to become Lydiard Park.
The other week my regular guest blogger, Rebecca Davies, sent me a delightful and charming account of an older couple she once visited in Ferndale. It’s a lovely story and it’s further down in this post. But as her story is set in Ferndale I figured I could tie it in with a Swindon in 50 More Buildings post centred on the Southbrook Inn Swindon. Which happens to be in Ferndale.
Fill out the form and click the button to own your copy of 'Swindon - A Born Again Swindonian's Guide'.
