MY STREET CHALLENGE - 'XETER STREET

I know that several people have been wondering what street I would do for the letter “X” and this is the best I could do – I did think of renaming one of the Swindon streets, Xylophone Street, but thought that might meet with some opposition from local residents!  

We decided to go for coffee first this morning as it was rather dull and dreary, but when it started raining, I wished that we had gone earlier – and trying to hold an umbrella in the pouring rain and take photographs was rather challenging, but I managed!

Whilst researching my family history, I remembered that my Great Aunt Emily, known as “Em” used to live in Exeter Street, one of the streets in the Swindon Railway Village.  A few years ago, when Mr. HCB was a Cub Leader, we knew someone named Brian H. and I discovered a few months ago that he is my first cousin, once removed, being the son of Great Aunt Em and her husband, Ernest.

I got in touch with him earlier this week to ask if he had any photographs of his mother and father, but sadly he has been ill and has been unable to find any – but I am hoping that he will be able to let me have some photographs and more information about them and perhaps even my great-grandparents, at some time in the future

He confirmed that his parents had lived at number 39 Exeter Street, shown at the top left of the collage, and that he was brought up there.  I visited our local library and from my enquiries it would appear that when his parents were first married they lived in the house next door to his grandparents, i.e. my great-grandparents, in Taunton Street, which I believe was in the charge of a Mrs Ada Hook, so the possibility is that they had what was known as “rooms” in the house when they first got married in 1937.  From other searches I made in the Kelly’s Directories, it seems they moved into the house in Exeter Street, which is the next street over towards the railway works, sometime in the mid 1940s, so they didn’t move far!

The houses in Exeter Street, built to house the hundreds of workers who came in the 1840s to work in the Locomotive Works of the Great Western Railway, are the same as a lot of the houses in the area and I won’t repeat the information I gave about Taunton Street, but you can read about it here in my Blip dated 12th November 2016. 

The workers’ cottages, considered small by today’s standards, and with variations in design, were built in parallel rows running from the east and west of a central square, then named High Street but now known as Emlyn Square, and were named after stations on the Great Western line, the western ones being Bristol, Bath (which later became Bathampton as there was already a Bath Road up the hill in Old Swindon), Exeter and Taunton Streets and the eastern ones were named London, Reading, Oxford and Faringdon.  They are still very neat, back-to-back, two-up and two-down Bath stone houses, shown in the top middle photograph of the collage (complete with man and umbrella!) with many of them at the time, no doubt, accommodating parents with large families.

The backways of the houses, or the “backsies” as they are known in Swindon and shown at the bottom left of the collage, are very narrow and the gardens of the houses are very small, housing the outside lavatory.  Most of the houses had very small front gardens, which were often well looked after, and the Railway Company gave prizes for the best-kept front garden.  Sadly most of the front gardens now house the recycling bins whilst the black refuse bins can be seen in the photograph of the back alley, with the Mechanics Institute in the far background.

The whole of the Swindon Railway Village is one of the earliest examples of planned industrial housing in Britain and the impact of the Industrial Revolution and the advent of The Railways made a great impact on the country and on this small community, which before the railways arrived was a small market town.  The Railway Village is probably unique in that this whole estate has survived with all its original stone cottages and buildings intact and with roofs and interesting chimneys with no television aerials and no shops on the estate.  It was a self-contained community for railwaymen and their families, who were all within walking distance of their work, their leisure pursuits at The Park and the nearby Mechanics’ Institute and their spiritual needs could be met at the nearby church, if they so desired.  

The Great Western Railway Company provided not only housing, but it also catered for the welfare needs of its workers and their families by providing medical and health services so that for a small weekly payment from their wages, the employees and their families received benefits.  However, in return the Company expected and received loyalty and commitment and indeed looked after its employees from “cradle to grave”.  There were also other amenities such as swimming baths, washing baths, and a savings bank as well as provident fund to help those unable to work through illness.

Looking through the 1939 Register, it is obvious that most of the heads of the households in Exeter Street worked in the Great Western Railway as of course, these houses were built to accommodate the workers; my Great Uncle was no exception and his occupation was listed as a General Labourer/Heavy Worker on the Railways whereas Great Aunty Em’s occupation was given as “Unpaid Household Duties” in other words a housewife.

When they got married in 1937, the chances are that it was in the church just round the corner, St. Marks, which was built to serve the Great Western Railway workers and of course, is very close to where the Swindon works were situated and therefore ideally placed for the congregation to walk to the services.  Nowadays, diesel trains pass on their way from Swindon to Bristol very near to the church but it was probably very much noisier and even “smellier” for the vicar and congregation in the days of steam trains.  

As it was raining so hard, I decided to see if we could get into the church. It was quite difficult to get through the wrought iron gates into the porch, but we managed it eventually.  We could hear someone playing the organ, so once I had opened the large church door and was inside, I just told the organist I had come to take photographs, to which he nodded and got on with his playing, so it was good to have some organ accompaniment.  The middle photograph of the collage is the stained glass window above the organ pipes and the statue of the Virgin Mary, is in as an extra.

Mr. George Gibbs, a director of the Great Western Railway Company died in 1842 leaving £500 towards the building of a church and school for the new housing estate, known as the Railway Village and by 1843, because the company could not finance it completely, after an appeal for contributions, a total of £6,000 was raised to build the church – equivalent to £540,000 in today’s money!  The photograph at the bottom right of the collage shows the plaque on the wall of the nearby school, erected in 1870 and which commemorates the original GWR Company school opened in 1844.

St. Mark’s, an Anglo-Catholic church, was constructed between 1843 and 1845, the site being provided by the Vilett Family, after whom a street is named nearby.  It is built of limestone and decorated in the Gothic style, and was dedicated to St. Mark on 25 April 1845, which happens to be St. Mark’s Day;  a north vestry was added in 1897.  For the first few years, the vicar’s stipend was paid by the G.W.R. Company, but grants from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners meant that this was no longer necessary and it became self-supporting.

As the population of the parish rose, the church was not large enough to accommodate all those wishing to attend the Sunday evening services, so additional seating was provided in the parish hall.  This situation was alleviated by the building of “daughter” churches in various areas of the town. 

St Mark's has a long tradition of performing choral music in the style of an English cathedral. The choir sings at the weekly Parish Mass and at other services, has a repertoire of over 30 masses, and has recorded two CDs. In 1944 Benjamin Britten composed his “Festival Te Deum” for the centenary of the church, where it was first performed on 24 April 1945.   While Mr. Britten attended the rehearsal, which included choristers from three other Swindon churches, St. John’s, St. Saviour’s and St. Luke’s, earlier in the day, he declined to attend the performance due to the poor quality of the performers.  However, I have it on good authority from a friend of mine who used to be in the choir, that the standard is very much higher today!

It was very interesting to read that members of Stratton Baptist church began to visit this new Railway Village and to hold “missionary” services here.  A Baptist Chapel was built in 1849, in Cambria Bridge Road, to accommodate 250, for the Welsh community of ironworkers who had moved to Swindon and for many years the sermons were preached in Welsh.

At the end of Exeter Street, shown in the photograph at the top right of the collage, on the way to St. Mark’s Church, is Faringdon Road Park, formerly known as The Park, gifted to the GWR Company in 1844 by Colonel Vilett, a local landowner, to be used by the employees of the company and no doubt both my grandfather and his sisters, including Emily, would have played there and in the back alleys when they were children.  Apparently, this was originally a cricket ground with a pavilion when cricket was a popular sport amongst the railwaymen, hence the name of the nearby public house.

On questioning my 92 year old mother about my Grandfather’s family a couple of weeks ago, she remembers that my Great Grandfather, William Henry Randell, was almost blind, and she said he used to go and sit outside the public house known as The Cricketer’s Arms, at the end of Exeter Street and Emlyn Square, which is about five minutes from where he lived in Taunton Street.  Opened in 1847, this was the only fully licensed public house in the Railway Village, taking its name from the cricket field at The Park.  It was the property of the Great Western Railway Company and was leased to various breweries over the years.  

It may originally have been a house, but if so, then it would either have been in multiple occupation as it is rather large, as you will see in the middle left photograph or was the house for someone quite high up in the Management of the GWR.  It is a Listed Building, but is no longer used as a public house.  I happened to see a young lady going into the house next door and asked her about the Cricketer’s Arms.  She said that it had been derelict for months and as part of it extended under her house, she would like to have that room back, but so far she had had no response from the Council.  I encouraged her to keep trying to get this back, especially if the public house part was no longer used and before it fell into disrepair.  

I found information in an advertisement dated 1870 that said the Cricketer’s Arms provided “Refreshments of the Best Quality” and that it also had “Well-aired Beds”!

The Water Tower in Bristol Street shown in the middle right photograph in the collage stands over 70 feet tall and has recently been renovated.  It provided the high pressure water supply for the buildings connected to the railway works and overlooked all the houses around.

The Railway works, which at one time employed over 14,000 people, closed completely in 1986 but prior to that, in 1966, the majority of the properties in the Railway Village were purchased by the local Council so that these could be preserved and most of them are now Listed Buildings of special architectural or historical interest.  Renovation works were started in 1969 and completed in 1980.  If you would like to see what a typical railway worker’s cottage looked like, and obviously this cottage was not renovated, and is now a museum, you can see it here in my Blip dated 11th September 2016.

“Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, 
     but they also expected much less 
          and were less intent on controlling the future. 
We are of the arrogant generations 
     who believe a lasting happiness 
          was promised to us at birth. 
Promised? 
By whom?” 
Amin Maalouf : Origenes