Last year, when writing Swindon in 50 Buildings, I simply had to include Thomas Turner’s villas on Drove Road.
Since the book came out I’ve had a mind to write a bit more on here about Thomas Turner Swindon brick-maker and his brick-making enterprise. But I never quite got round to it. Then not long back I saw a super blog by Swindon historian Frances Bevan so figured – why reinvent the wheel? I may as well feature that with some of my own photographs.
One of the entries in Swindon in 50 Buildings, is The Crumpled Horn pub over in Eldene. That one made the cut – as it were – in part because it had been listed by Historic England. So when I saw the press release that follows, about the Hall & Woodhouse canalside hostelry gaining national recognition for its innovative design, it felt appropriate to include it in this blog series: Swindon in 50 More Buildings.
To be clear, this post is about the GWR Weighbridge Swindon as part of the GWR Works – not the Weighbridge Brewhouse as the restaurant that it is now.
During the current coronavirus pandemic I’ve been undertaking #Covid19constitutionals that I’ve recored on this blog’s Born Again Swindonian Facebook page. Today’s such stroll took me on a visit to the Windmill Hill windmill. It’s a bizarre thing that, after 26 years in Swindon, it’s taken a pandemic to get me find out more about it. I even used to work on Windmill Hill in Trigonos.
Inching along with Swindon in 50 More Buildings, this post is about St Augustine’s Church in Even Swindon, Rodbourne. Having covered St Mark’s and St Barnabas (Gorse Hill) in Swindon in 50 Buildings, I had to get St Augustine’s into this blog series.
The Prospect Beerhouse is a building with an interesting history – both during and after its period as a beerhouse. And it’s now the home of my friends, Jo Garton and Chris Eley. It’s interesting, because when you’re in the house you do a feel it’s early life.
Knowing that I have a passing interest, that’s by no means expert, in architecture, someone tagged me on Twitter the other day a with a link to a fabulous article.
From a blog called Calcio England and entitled ‘Florence, Rome, Swindon: How the Grand Master of Italian Stadium Design Nearly Made His Mark in England’, the article had my interest well and truly piqued.
The County Ground Hotel Swindon
Hello lovely listeners. Hot on the heels of Secret Swindon, came my second publication for Amberley – Swindon in 50 Buildings – published in 2019.
[jetpack_subscription_form] The Spectrum Building My second favourite building, in Swindon, the David Murray John Tower being my number one, has to be the Spectrum Building – or the Renault Building as it still tends to be known. [gallery type="rectangular"...
Back in 1950, in his ‘Studies of Swindon’, John Betjeman wrote, apropos of architecture in Swindon, that there was ‘very little architecture in Swindon and a great deal of building’. He then went on to say that ‘Swindon, instead of being a West Country town, looked on its outskirts at any rate, like any industrial town anywhere.’
The Civic Society Movement & Swindon. Okay! If you’ve been paying attention at all you’ll know by now that here in Swindon we have an organisation by the name of Swindon Civic Voice. But what you might not know – and I didn’t until relatively recently – is that the civic society movement is a national one and there’s civic voices and civic societies all over the shop.
21 November 2015 'New Swindon' 1840 - 2015 - Swindon Civic Voice Walker's Guide Swindon - this is Swindon Though not intentionally planned that way, it turned out to be rather timely that Jess (@swindondriver) and I should go on an EXPOTITION and go exploring the New...
