Paradise Lost
Entry posted by caldrail
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I've mentioned before about a scheme to build a canal through Swindon. There used to be one, the Wilts & Berks, and the last stretch of this water still exists on the outskirts of town. There is however a lobby for recreating it and they occupy the Old Collectibles Shop opposite the new permanent library currently under construction (Swindon had a temporary library for thirty or forty years). I spoke to one of their people the other day.
The plan is to go under the road at Kingshill, follow the course of the main road past the GWR Park (The canal originally ran behind the houses, not in front) and divert northward to Swindons boundary. It means digging up one of the major through routes for motor vehicles, which I suppose in the anti-car regime we have in Britain today this is no obstacle at all.
So who pays? I had images of horrendous council tax bills and to be honest so do other people, which is why the lobby set up shop. Apparently the European Union pays for it, because they like urban beautification schemes and the assumption is that the canal will bring in money. They want Swindon to be a place to visit. Come and see our canal!
A place to visit? There's nothing here to attract visitors at all. We just don't have any tourist traps. Ok, sure, there's the railway museum, but its nothing like as impressive as York and a disappointment for those aware of Swindons railway history. The biggest problem with Swindon is the problem its always had. Its embarrased by its working class railway history. Swindon likes the future, its all about redevelopment and there's plenty of those bland new office blocks in evidence. Yet all those victorian pidgeon nests were what gave Swindon its character. So many of those edwardian brick shool houses are gone now. I remember the atmosphere of the places, the tangible sense of tradition, now replaced by modern schools that whilst being more efficient in terms of energy look horrible, become horrible in a few short years, and simply don't command the same respect.
But what about Swindon College? That 60's edifice is about to be pulled down (the campus has moved to North Star) and whilst I studied engineering there for five years, to be honest I won't shed any tears. It was a horrible building. I remember Production Engineering B classes in the early afternoon on the south side, with the sun beating down through the windows. The whole class nodding their heads semi-comatosed by the heat. In its place is going to be a new shopping arcade, a cinema, a hotel etc. Its the sort of civic renewal that looks great on paper but looks undesirable after the natives have lived in it for a few years.
There's been a thread on the forums about finding old photographs of your home town. Swindon is well blessed with those. A chap named Hooper went about in the 1900's photographing anything and of course with Swindon being the old railway town it was, there were always other people making records of life in Swindon. You know, the Great Western Railway did much to make life bearable for its employees. It built an entire housing estate for them (the 'Railway Village'), a park, a hospital (now closed), and of course the now derelict Mechanics Institute for social matters. The modern National health Service was inspired by the success of the health schemes set up by the GWR. You just don't see this sort of civic responsibility with employers now, and they probably couldn't afford it anyway. Swindon was once a quaint little isolated market town on the hill, changed forever by the arrival of the GWR works to the north. Now its changed forever again, its past demolished to make way for the future, like an old lady who dresses up in the latest fashions and nightclubbing to attract the young men. Its all a little sad.
I've been leafing through those old photographs again. Occaisionally I see things I remember. The old canal warehouse on Milton Road. The market hall on Commercial Road. The greek style frontage of the chapel on Temple St. That old greenhouse in Queens Park. The Goddard Manor House at Lawns. The arched iron bridges crossing the canal behind the main roads. The huge stone and brick workshops of the GWR. The oddly rural railway station building, and those quiet farm fields in little pockets here and there now buried under housing estates. There's a part of me that wants the old Swindon back. It had style.
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