Swindon

Swindon
Swindon town centre from Radnor Street Cemetery
Swindon Swindon shown within Wiltshire
Population	182,441 (2011 census)
OS grid reference	SU152842
• London	71 miles (114 km)
Unitary authority	Swindon
Ceremonial county	Wiltshire
Region	South West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	SWINDON
Postcode district	SN1–SN6, SN25, SN26
Dialling code	01793
Police	Wiltshire
Fire	Dorset and Wiltshire
Ambulance	South Western
EU Parliament	South West England
UK Parliament	North Swindon South Swindon
Website	Borough Council
List of places UK England Wiltshire 51°34′N 1°47′W / 51.56°N 1.78°W / 51.56; -1.78Coordinates: 51°34′N 1°47′W / 51.56°N 1.78°W / 51.56; -1.78

Swindon (/ˈswɪndən/ ( listen)) is a large town in Wiltshire, South West England, between Bristol, 35 miles (56 kilometres) to the west, and Reading, the same distance east. London is 71 miles (114 km) to the east, Cardiff 60 miles (97 km) to the west and Oxford is 26 miles (42 km) northeast. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 182,441.^[1] The Town Development Act 1952 led to a major increase in its population.^[2]

Swindon railway station is on the line from London Paddington to Bristol. Swindon Borough Council is a unitary authority, independent of Wiltshire Council since 1997. Residents of Swindon are known as Swindonians. Swindon is home to the Bodleian Library's book depository,^[3] the English Heritage National Monument Record Centre, the headquarters of the National Trust, on the site of the former Great Western Railway works, and the Nationwide Building Society, and a Honda car manufacturing plant.

History[edit]

The Wilts and Berks Canal near Rushey Platt

Early history[edit]

The original Anglo-Saxon settlement of Swindon sat in a defensible position atop a limestone hill. It is referred to in the Domesday Book as Suindune, believed to be derived from the Old English words "swine" and "dun" meaning "pig hill" or possibly Sweyn's hill, where Sweyn is a personal name.

Before the Battle of Hastings the Swindon estate was owned by an Anglo-Saxon thane called Leofgeat.^[4] After the Norman Conquest Swindon was given to Wadard, a knight in the service of Odo of Bayeux, brother of the king.^[5]

Swindon was a small market town, mainly for barter trade, until roughly 1848. This original market area is on top of the hill in central Swindon, now known as Old Town.^[6]

The Industrial Revolution was responsible for an acceleration of Swindon's growth. It started with the construction of the Wilts and Berks Canal in 1810 and the North Wilts Canal in 1819. The canals brought trade to the area and Swindon's population started to grow.

Railway town[edit]

Former lodging house in the Railway Village, now a community centre

Between 1841 and 1842, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Swindon Works was built for the repair and maintenance of locomotives on the Great Western Railway (GWR). The GWR built a small railway village to house some of its workers. The Steam Railway Museum and English Heritage, including the English Heritage Archive, now occupy part of the old works. In the village were the GWR Medical Fund Clinic at Park House and its hospital, both on Faringdon Road, and the 1892 health centre in Milton Road, which housed clinics, a pharmacy, laundries, baths, Turkish baths and swimming pools, was almost opposite.

From 1871, GWR workers had a small amount deducted from their weekly pay and put into a healthcare fund; GWR doctors could prescribe them or their family members free medicines or send them for medical treatment. In 1878 the fund began providing artificial limbs made by craftsmen from the carriage and wagon works, and nine years later opened its first dental surgery. In his first few months in post the dentist extracted more than 2,000 teeth. From the opening in 1892 of the health centre, a doctor could also prescribe a haircut or even a bath. The cradle-to-grave extent of this service was later used as a blueprint for the NHS.^[7]

The Mechanics' Institute, formed in 1844, moved into a building that looked rather like a church and included a covered market, on 1 May 1855. The New Swindon Improvement Company, a co-operative, raised the funds for this programme of self-improvement and paid the GWR £40 a year for its new home on a site at the heart of the railway village. It was a groundbreaking organisation that transformed the railway's workforce into some of the country's best-educated manual workers.^[8]

The Mechanics' Institute had the UK's first lending library,^[9] and a range of improving lectures, access to a theatre and various other activities, such as ambulance classes and xylophone lessons. A former institute secretary formed the New Swindon Co-operative Society in 1853 which, after a schism in the society's membership, spawned the New Swindon Industrial Society, which ran a retail business from a stall in the market at the institute. The institute also nurtured pioneering trades unionists and encouraged local democracy.^[10]

When tuberculosis hit the new town, the Mechanics' Institute persuaded the industrial pioneers of North Wiltshire to agree that the railway's former employees should continue to receive medical attention from the doctors of the GWR Medical Society Fund, which the institute had played a role in establishing and funding.^[11]

Swindon's 'other' railway, the Swindon, Marlborough and Andover Railway, merged with the Swindon and Cheltenham Extension Railway to form the Midland & South Western Junction Railway, which set out to join the London & South Western Railway with the Midland Railway at Cheltenham. The Swindon, Marlborough & Andover had planned to tunnel under the hill on which Swindon's Old Town stands but the money ran out and the railway ran into Swindon Town railway station, off Devizes Road in the Old Town, skirting the new town to the west, intersecting with the GWR at Rushey Platt and heading north for Cirencester, Cheltenham and the LMS, whose 'Midland Red' livery the M&SWJR adopted.

During the second half of the 19th century, Swindon New Town grew around the main line between London and Bristol. In 1900, the original market town, Old Swindon, merged with its new neighbour at the bottom of the hill to become a single town.^[6]

On 1 July 1923, the GWR took over the largely single-track M&SWJR and the line northwards from Swindon Town was diverted to Swindon Junction station, leaving the Town station with only the line south to Andover and Salisbury.^[12][13][14] The last passenger trains on what had been the SM&A ran on 10 September 1961, 80 years after the railway's first stretch opened.

During the first half of the 20th century, the railway works was the town's largest employer and one of the biggest in the country, employing more than 14,500 workers. Alfred Williams^[15] (1877–1930) wrote about his life as a hammerman at the works.^[16]

The works' decline started in 1960, when it rolled out Evening Star, the last steam engine to be built in the UK.^[17] The works lost its locomotive building role and took on rolling stock maintenance for British Rail. In the late 1970s, much of the works closed and the rest followed in 1986.

The community centre in the railway village was originally the barrack accommodation for railway employees of the GWR. The building became the Railway Museum in the 1960s, until the opening of the STEAM Museum in the 2000s.

Railway Town is the name of a feature-length documentary made by local filmmaker Martin Parry about the creation of the town around the railway works.

Modern period[edit]

Swindon in 1933

Swindon in 1959. Grid squares are 1km.

David Murray John, Swindon's town clerk from 1938 to 1974, is seen as a pioneering figure in Swindon's post-war regeneration: his last act before retirement was to sign the contract for Swindon's tallest building, which is now named after him.^[18] Murray John's successor was David Maxwell Kent, appointed by the Swindon/Highworth Joint Committee in 1973: he had worked closely with Murray John and continued similar policies for a further twenty years. The Greater London Council withdrew from the Town Development Agreement and the local council continued the development on its own.

There was the problem of the Western Development and of Lydiard Park being in the new North Wiltshire district, but this was resolved by a boundary change to take in part of North Wiltshire. Another factor limiting local decision-taking was the continuing role of Wiltshire County Council in the administration of Swindon. Together with like-minded councils, a campaign was launched to bring an updated form of county borough status to Swindon. This was successful in 1997 with the formation of Swindon Borough Council, covering the area of the former Thamesdown and the former Highworth Rural District Council.

The closure of the railway works (which had been in decline for many years) was a major blow to Swindon.^{[citation needed]} Because of this and the major growth in population, diversification was continued at a rapid pace and the town now has all the features of a successful urban/rural council in the Outer South East zone.

In February 2008 The Times named Swindon as one of "The 20 best places to buy a property in Britain".^[19] Only Warrington had a lower ratio of house prices to household income in 2007, with the average household income in Swindon among the highest in the country.

In October 2008 Swindon made a controversial move to ban fixed point speed cameras. The move was branded as reckless by some^[20] but by November 2008 Portsmouth, Walsall, and Birmingham councils^[21][22] were also considering the move.

In 2001 construction began on Priory Vale, the third and final instalment in Swindon's 'Northern Expansion' project, which began with Abbey Meads and continued at St Andrew's Ridge. In 2002 the New Swindon Company was formed with the remit of regenerating the town centre, to improve Swindon's regional status.^[23] The main areas targeted were Union Square, The Promenade, The Hub, Swindon Central, North Star Village, The Campus and the Public Realm.

Governance[edit]

Swindon Town Hall, now a dance theatre

The local council was created in 1974 as the Borough of Thamesdown, out of the areas of Swindon Borough and Highworth Rural District. It was not initially called Swindon, because the borough covers a larger area than the town; it was renamed as the Borough of Swindon in 1997. The borough became a unitary authority on 1 April 1997,^[24] following a review by the Local Government Commission for England. The town is therefore no longer under the auspices of Wiltshire Council.

The borough consists of 20 parished areas. The parishes are:

The executive comprises a leader and a cabinet, currently made up from the Conservative Group. The council as of the 2016 election has a majority of Conservative councillors.^[25]

Swindon is represented in the national parliament by two MPs. Robert Buckland (Conservative) was elected for the South Swindon seat in May 2010 with a 5.5% swing from Labour and Justin Tomlinson, also Conservative, represents North Swindon after a 10.1% swing at the same election. Both retained their seats at the 2015 and 2017 elections.^[26] Prior to 1997 there was a single seat for Swindon, although much of what is now in Swindon was then part of the Devizes seat.

Geography[edit]

Swindon is 35 miles west-northwest of Reading and 35 miles east-northeast of Bristol 'as the crow flies'.^[27][28]

The landscape is dominated by the chalk hills of the Wiltshire Downs to the south and east. The Old Town stands on a hill of Purbeck and Portland stone; this was quarried from Roman times until the 1950s. The area that was known as New Swindon is made up of mostly Kimmeridge clay with outcrops of Corrallian clay in the areas of Penhill and Pinehurst. Oxford clay makes up the rest of the borough.^[29] The River Ray rises at Wroughton and forms much of the borough's western boundary, joining the Thames which defines the northern boundary, and the source of which is located in nearby Kemble, Gloucestershire. The River Cole and its tributaries flow northeastward from the town and form the northeastern boundary.

• Nearby towns: Calne, Chippenham, Royal Wootton Bassett, Cirencester, Cricklade, Devizes, Highworth, Marlborough and Malmesbury
• Nearby villages: Badbury, Blunsdon, Broad Hinton, Chiseldon, Hook, Liddington, Lydiard Millicent, Lyneham, Minety, Purton, South Marston, Wanborough, Wroughton
• Nearby places of interest: Avebury, Barbury Castle, Crofton Pumping Station, Lydiard Country Park, Silbury Hill, Stonehenge, Uffington White Horse
• Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Swindon include Coate Water, Great Quarry, Haydon Meadow, Okus Quarry and Old Town Railway Cutting

Climate[edit]

Swindon has a maritime climate type, like all of the British Isles, with comparatively mild winters and comparatively cool summers considering its latitude. The nearest official weather station is RAF Lyneham, about 10 miles (16 km) west south west of Swindon town centre. The weather station's elevation is 145 metres, compared to the typical 100 metres encountered around Swindon town centre, so is likely to be marginally cooler throughout the year.

The absolute maximum is 34.9C (94.8F)^[30] recorded during August 1990. In an average year the warmest day should reach 28.7C (83.7F)^[31] and 10.3 days^[32] should register a temperature of 25.1C (77.2F) or above

The absolute minimum is −16.0C (3.0F),^[33] recorded in January 1982, and in an average year 45.2 nights of air frost can be expected.

Sunshine, at 1565 hours a year, is typical for inland parts of Southern England, although significantly higher than most areas further north.

Annual rainfall averages slightly under 720 mm (28 in) per year, with 123 days reporting over 1 mm of rain.

Demographics[edit]

The 2001 census^{[out of date]} showed there were 180,061 people and 75,154 occupied houses in the Swindon Unitary Authority.^[36] The average household size was 2.38 people. The population density was 780/km² (2020.19/mi²). 20.96% of the population were 0–15 years old, 72.80% 16–74 and the remaining 6.24% were 75 years old or over. For every 100 females there were 98.97 males. Approximately 300,000 people lived within 20 minutes of Swindon town centre.

It is forecast that there will be a 70,000 (38.9%) increase in Swindon's population by 2026 from the current 180,000, to 250,000.^{[37][out of date]}

The majority of Swindonians (70.3%) identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (19.2%), Muslims (1.0%), Sikhs (0.6%), Hindus (0.6%), other (0.2%) and Judaism (0.1%). In addition, 8.0% of people chose not to answer this question in the 2001 census.^[38]

In May 2007^{[out of date]}, 65.3% of households in Swindon had broadband Internet access, the highest in the UK, up 5.5% from June 2006.^[39]

In 2015, Public Health England found that 70.4% of the population was either overweight or obese with a BMI greater than 25.^[40]

In 2011, Swindon had a population of 182,441^[41] compared with 209,156 for the surrounding borough.^[42] The borough includes the town of Highworth and the large village of Wroughton. The population of the town increased from the 2001 census estimate of 155,700.

In 2011, the area of the town was 46.2 km2 (29 miles squared)^[43] or 3,949 people per square kilometre (6357 per square mile).

In 2011, 16.7% of the population of Swindon were non White British compared with 15.4% in the surrounding borough. There was also little difference between the percentages of Black and Asian residents. Swindon is one of the most ethnically diverse towns in South West England: 4.6% of the population registered themselves as 'Other White' and 2.5% of the population was either mixed race or of another ethnicity.^[41] The most ethnically diverse areas outside the town centre are to the north and east, such as Eastcott, Walcot and Gorse Hill.

There are three definitions of the town of Swindon for statistical purposes.^[44] The most accurate and widely accepted is the Built Up Area Subdivision, which had a population of 182,441 in 2011. Another definition is the Built Up Area, with a slightly higher population of 185,609 which includes outlying areas not often referred to as being part of the town, such as Wanborough. The final definition is the unparished area, with a population of 122,642. As its name suggests it reflects the former unparished area, now covered by the parishes of West Swindon, Central Swindon North and South, and Nythe, Eldene and Liden; thus it omits suburbs to the east and north, namely the parishes of Covingham, Stratton St Margaret and Haydon Wick.^[45]

Places of worship[edit]

St Mark's Church (Church of England)

There are numerous places of worship in Swindon, some of which are listed buildings.^[46] Until 1845, the only church in Swindon was the Holy Rood Church, a Grade II listed building.^[47] That year, St Mark's Church was built. In 1851, Christ Church was built. Later in the year, the first Roman Catholic chapel was opened in the city and was also named Holy Rood. In 1866, Cambria Baptist Chapel was built. In the 1880s, Bath Road Methodist Chapel was built. In 1885, St Barnabas Church was built. In 1907, St Augustine's Church in Even Swindon was built. Various churches and places of worship were built in the town by other denominations and faiths.^[48]

Polish community[edit]

After the end of World War II, Polish refugees were temporarily housed in barracks at Fairford RAF base about 25 km (16 mi) north. Around 1950, some settled in Scotland and others in Swindon^[49] rather than stay in the barracks or hostels they were offered.^[50]

The 2001 UK Census^{[out of date]} found that most of the Polish-born people had stayed or returned after serving with British forces during World War II. Swindon and Nottingham were parts of this settlement.^[51] Data from that census showed that 566 Swindonians were Poland-born.^[52] Notes to those data read: ‘The Polish Resettlement Act of 1947, which was designed to provide help and support to people who wished to settle here, covered about 190,000 people ... at the time Britain did not recognise many of the professional [qualifications] gained overseas ... [but] many did find work after the war; some went down the mines, some worked on the land or in steel works. Housing was more of a problem and many Poles were forced to live in barracks previously used for POWs ... The first generation took pains to ensure that their children grew up with a strong sense of Polish identity.'

In 2004^{[out of date]}, NHS planners devising services for senior citizens estimated that 5 percent of Swindon's population were not 'ethnically British'^[53] and most of those were culturally Polish.

The town's Polish ex-servicemen's club, which had run a football team for 45 years, closed in 2012. Barman Jerzy Trojan blamed the decline of both club and team on the children and grandchildren of the original refugees losing their Polish identity.^[54]

Economy[edit]

A Swindon-built locomotive (Hagley Hall) on display in the eating area of the McArthur Glen Designer Outlet, Swindon

Retail in the centre of Swindon

Christ Church (Church of England); designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and built in 1851

Major employers include the Honda car production plant at the former Vickers-Armstrongs Supermarine aircraft factory on the former South Marston aerodrome, BMW/Mini (formerly Pressed Steel Fisher) in Stratton, Dolby Labs, international engineering consultancy firm Halcrow, and retailer W H Smith's distribution centre and headquarters. The electronics company Intel has its European head office on the south side of the town. Insurance and financial services companies such as Nationwide Building Society and Zurich Financial Services, the energy companies RWE Generation UK plc and Npower (a company of the Innogy group), the fuel card and fleet management company Arval, pharmaceutical companies such as Canada's Patheon and the United States-based Catalent Pharma Solutions and French medical supplies manufacturer Vygon (UK) Ltd have their UK divisions headquartered in the town. Swindon also has the head office of the National Trust.

Other employers include all of the national Research Councils, the British Computer Society, TE Connectivity, consumer goods supplier Reckitt Benckiser, Software Test Labs, a dynamic test consultancy and managed testing services company and a branch of Becton Dickinson.

The town is currently the location of the UK Space Agency headquarters.

Transport[edit]

Swindon's Magic Roundabout

At the junction of two Roman roads, the town has developed into a transport hub over the centuries. It is on the historical GWR and on canals. It also has two junctions (15 and 16) on the M4 motorway.

Swindon railway station opened in 1842 as Swindon Junction, and until 1895 every train stopped for at least 10 minutes to change locomotives. As a result, the station hosted the first recorded railway refreshment rooms.^[55]

Swindon bus operators are Thamesdown and Stagecoach. The local council acknowledges the need for more car parking as part of its vision for 2010.^{[out of date][56]} Swindon is one of the locations for an innovative scheme called Car share. It was set up as a joint venture between Wiltshire County Council and a private organisation, and now has over 300,000 members registered. It is a car pool or ride-sharing rather than a car share scheme, seeking to link people willing to share transport.

The town contains a large roundabout called Magic Roundabout. There are five mini-roundabouts within this roundabout and at its centre is a contra-rotational hub.^[57] It is the junction of five roads: (clockwise from South) Drove Road, Fleming Way, County Road, Shrivenham Road and Queens Drive. It is built on the site of Swindon wharf on the abandoned Wilts & Berks Canal, near the County Ground. The official name used to be County Islands, although it was colloquially known as the Magic Roundabout and the official name was changed in the late 1990s^{[citation needed]} to match its nickname.

Tourism and recreation[edit]

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Events[edit]

Swindon Mela in the Town Gardens

Annual events in Swindon include:

• The Swindon Festival of Literature, held over two weeks in May.
• The Swindon Mela, an all-day celebration of South Indian arts and culture in the Town Gardens, which attracts up to 10,000 visitors each year.^[58]
• The Children's Fete, a town-wide event in celebration of Swindon's children, community, culture and heritage, is usually held the first Saturday in July in the GWR Park on Faringdon Road, with 8,000 attending in 2016. The event was resurrected in 2002 by the Mechanics' Institution Trust, a Building Preservation and Development Trust seeking to restore the now derelict Mechanics' Institution and its associated social heritage, who have run the event almost every year since, with some years missed due to lack of funding. The event was started in 1866 by the then committee of the Mechanics' Institution. It ran every year until the Second World War and saw over 30,000 Swindonians attend in some years.
• The Summer Breeze Festival has been held annually in the town since 2007^[59] with headliners ranging from Toploader^[60] to KT Tunstall.^[61] The family-friendly music event is run by volunteers on a non-profit basis with any funds raised going to charity.
• An annual Gay Pride Parade called Swindon And Wiltshire Pride is held in the town. The parade has been held in the Town Gardens since 2007. Popular Swedish DJ Basshunter performed in the 2012 celebrations which c.8,000 people attended.
• The Swindon Beer Festival, Organised by the local branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), is held at the STEAM museum in October each year. There is also an Old Town Beer Festival held at Christ Church on the 11th and 12th of May annually.

Arts venues[edit]

• Swindon's most recent addition is the Shoebox Theatre, a fringe theatre and producing house with a focus on contemporary performance and new work.
• Live music venues such as Baila Coffee & Vinyl, The Castle, The Beehive, Level III and The Victoria attract local acts as well as touring national acts. Collectively they host an annual music festival, the Swindon Shuffle.^[62] The Oasis Leisure Centre and the County Ground are used for some major events. MECA is a 2,000-capacity music venue in the former Mecca bingo hall.
• The Arts Centre is a theatre in Old Town which seats 200 and has music, professional and amateur theatre, comedians, films, children's events, and one-man shows.
• The Wyvern Theatre has film, comedy, and music.
• In 2012 Swindon: The Opera was performed at the STEAM Museum in Swindon by the Janice Thompson Performance Trust,^[63] after a successful 2011 Jubilee People's Millions Lottery bid. It charted Swindon's history since 1952 until the present day. Over twenty songs were written by Matt Fox, with music by internationally acclaimed composer Betty Roe MBE.

Shopping[edit]

McArthur Glen Designer Outlet, a shopping complex built within the disused Swindon railway engine works

The David Murray John Tower

• The Brunel Centre and The Parade are shopping areas in the town centre, built along the line of the filled-in Wilts and Berks Canal (where a canal milepost can still be seen).
• Swindon Tented Market located in the Town Centre, close to the Brunel Centre, was built in 1994. It reopened in October 2009, having been closed for two years.^[64] The Tented Market closed on the 30th August 2017 after 9 years of trading.^[65]
• Regent Circus, which opened in 2015 on the site of the former Swindon College building. It contains a Morrison's superstore, along with a Cineworld cinema and several restaurants including the likes of Nandos, GBK, Coal and many others.
• Retail parks include Greenbridge (although not located within the township of Swindon but in the urban parish of Stratton St. Margaret, Mannington which is the location of a John Lewis at Home store, Bridgemead, West Swindon Shopping Centre and the Orbital Shopping Park in Haydon Wick Parish
• McArthur Glen Designer Outlet is an indoor shopping mall for reduced price goods (mainly clothing), using the buildings of the disused railway engine works. The outlet is adjacent to the Steam Museum and the National Trust headquarters. The Swindon Designer Outlet has around 100 shops and is the biggest covered designer outlet centre in Europe.
• Craft shops within Studley Grange Craft Village, inside Blooms Garden Centre, just off junction 16 of the M4 motorway.
• Small specialist shops within BSS House in Cheney Manor Industrial Park and Basepoint Business Centre.

Green spaces[edit]

• Public parks include Lydiard Country Park, The Lawns, Stanton Park, Barbury Castle, Queens Park, Town Gardens, Pembroke Gardens and Coate Water.
• Shaw Country Park currently being developed in West Swindon.

Other[edit]

• The English Heritage Archive is based in Swindon. The Science Museum has its large objects stored on the disused airfield at Wroughton as well as housing the Museum's Library and Archives.

Media[edit]

Online[edit]

Swindon has many online media outlets with the largest being the Swindon Advertiser. SwindonWeb was the first website dedicated to Swindon in 1997 followed by SwindonLink with many other sites now available.

Print[edit]

King George V pulling the 'Bristolian' passenger train at the Swindon Steam Railway Museum.

Swindon has a daily newspaper, the Swindon Advertiser, with daily circulation of about 4,000 with an estimated readership of 21,000. Other newspapers covering the area include Bristol's daily Western Daily Press and the Swindon Advertisers weekly, the Gazette and Herald; the Wiltshire Ocelot (a free listings magazine), Swindon Star, Hungry Monkeys (a comic), Stratton Outlook, Frequency (an arts and cultural magazine), Great Swindon Magazine, Swindon Business News, Swindon Link and Highworth Link.

Radio[edit]

Local radio stations include Sam FM and Heart Wiltshire in the commercial sector, with BBC Wiltshire as a publicly funded alternative. The town has its own 24-hour community radio station, Swindon 105.5, which was given the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service in 2014, the highest award which can be given to a voluntary group.

Television[edit]

The Swindon area is in the overlap between two transmission regions, for the Thames valley and the West of England. ITV regional news programmes come from ITV News Meridian (with offices at Abingdon) and ITV West (Bristol). On BBC One the area is served by both South Today (from Oxford) and Points West (Bristol).

Between 1973 and 1982, the town had its own cable television channel called Swindon Viewpoint. This was a community television project run mainly by enthusiasts from studios in Victoria Hill, and later by Media Arts at the Town Hall Studios. It was followed by the more commercial Swindon's Local Channel, which included pay-per-view films.^[66] NTL (later Virgin Media) took over the channel's parent company, ComTel, and closed the station.

Education[edit]

The borough of Swindon has many primary schools, 12 secondary schools and two purpose built sixth-form colleges. Two secondary schools also have sixth forms. There is one independent school, Maranatha Christian School at Sevenhampton.

Secondary schools[edit]

• Abbey Park School
• Commonweal School
• The Dorcan Academy
• Highworth Warneford School
• Kingsdown School
• Lawn Manor Academy
• Lydiard Park Academy
• Nova Hreod Academy
• The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College
• St. Joseph's Catholic College
• Swindon Academy
• UTC Swindon (from age 14)

Further education[edit]

New College and Swindon College cater for the town's further education and higher education requirements, mainly for 16- to 21-year-olds. Swindon College is one of the largest FE-HE colleges in southwestern England, situated at a purpose-built campus in North Star, Swindon.

Swindon also has a foundation learning programme called Include, which is situated in the Gorse Hill area. This is for 16- to 19-year-olds who are currently not in education or work.

Higher education[edit]

Swindon is the UK's largest centre of population without its own university (by comparison, there are two universities in nearby Bath, which is half Swindon's size). In March 2008, a proposal was made by former Swindon MP, Anne Snelgrove, for a university-level institution to be established in the town within a decade, culminating in a future 'University of Swindon' (with some touting the future institution to be entitled 'The Murray John University, Swindon', after the town's most distinguished post-war civic leader). In October 2008, plans were announced for a possible University of Swindon campus to be built in east Swindon to the south of the town's Great Western Hospital, close to the M4-A419 interchange. However, these plans are currently mothballed.

Oxford Brookes University has had a campus in Swindon since 1999. The campus offers degrees in Adult Nursing and Operating Department Practice (ODP).^[67] The Joel Joffe Building^[68] opened in August 2016 and was officially opened^[69] in February 2017 by Lord Joel Joffe, a long-time Swindon resident and former human rights lawyer. From 1999 to 2016 the Ferndale Campus was based in north-central Swindon. The main OBU campus is about 27 miles (43 km) northeast of Swindon. The university also sponsors UTC Swindon, which opened in 2014 for students aged 14–19.

Between 2000 and 2008 the University of Bath had a campus in Walcot, east Swindon.

Museums and cultural institutions[edit]

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• National Museum of Science & Industry, Wroughton.
• Richard Jefferies Museum, dedicated to the memory of one of England's most individual writers on nature and the countryside.
• Steam Railway Museum.
• Swindon Collection, Central Library. Extensive local studies and family history archive.
• Swindon Arts Centre, a 212-seat entertainment venue in the Old Town.
• Wyvern Theatre, the town's principal stage venue.^{[citation needed]}
• Swindon Museum and Swindon Art Gallery, next to each other.
• The Museum of Computing the first computer museum in the UK.

Sports[edit]

The Stratton Bank

Football[edit]

Swindon Town F.C. play at the County Ground near the town centre. They have been Football League members since joining the then-new Third Division (southern section) in 1920, and won promotion to the Second Division for the first time in 1963. They won their only major trophy to date, the Football League Cup, in 1969 beating Arsenal 3-1, and won the Anglo-Italian Cup the following year as the Football Association forbade Swindon from competing in the European Cup because they were in Division 3. They won promotion to the First Division in 1990, but stayed in the Second Division due to financial irregularities, and reached the top flight (by then the Premier League) three years later. Their spell in the top flight lasted just one season, and then came a second successive relegation. A brief recovery saw them promoted at the first attempt as champions of the new Division Two, but they were relegated again four years later and in 2006 fell back into the fourth tier for the first time since 1986, although promotion was gained at the first attempt. They were relegated again four years later. Under the charismatic reign of manager Paolo Di Canio, Swindon became League Two champions in 2011–12 and played in League One, the third-highest tier until the season of 2016–17, when they were relegated to League Two after losing their penultimate game against Scunthorpe 2–1.

The town also has a non-league club Swindon Supermarine F.C., playing in Southern League Division One South and West. Nearby Highworth Town F.C., based in Highworth, also play in the Southern League whilst Royal Wootton Bassett Town F.C., Shrivenham F.C. and New College Swindon F.C. are members of the Hellenic Football League.

Ice hockey[edit]

The Swindon Wildcats play in the second-tier English Premier Ice Hockey League. Since their inception in 1986, the Wildcats have played their home games at the 2,800-capacity Link Centre in West Swindon.

Motor sports[edit]

Swindon Robins are a speedway team competing in the top national division, the SGB Premiership, where they were champions in the 2017 season. The team has operated at the Abbey Stadium, Blunsdon since 1949. There was a speedway track in the Gorse Hill area of Swindon in the early days of the sport in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Foxhill motocross circuit is 6 miles (9.7 km) south east of the town and has staged Grand Prix events.

In popular culture[edit]

• The 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is set in Swindon.
• Thursday Next, a character in Jasper Fforde's novels, was born in Swindon.
• Post-punk band XTC was formed in Swindon in 1972. Three of the band's singles reached the UK top 20 and they gained a cult following.^[70]
• The 1998 Comic Strip episode "Four Men in a Car" is based around four businessmen trying to get to a meeting in Swindon.
• In the UK television seris The Office, one of the branches of the fictitious paper merchants Wernham Hogg is based in Swindon. The Swindon branch is referred to throughout Series 1 and the Slough branch incorporates staff from the Swindon branch in Series 2, after the latter branch is closed.

See also[edit]

• Swindon Civic Trust
• List of twin towns in the United Kingdom
• List of people from Swindon
• Healthcare in Wiltshire

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Swindon, Mark Child, Breedon Books, 2002, hardcover, 159 pages, ISBN 1-85983-322-5
• Francis Frith's Swindon Living Memories (Photographic Memories S.), Francis Frith and Brian Bridgeman, The Frith Book Company Ltd, 2003, Paperback, 96 pages, ISBN 1-85937-656-8

External links[edit]

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Swindon.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Swindon.

• Swindon travel guide from Wikivoyage
• Swindon Borough Council website
• SwindonWeb