Swindon
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For other places with the same name, see Swindon (disambiguation).
Swindon (pronunciation ) is a large town in Wiltshire in the South West of England. The town is midway between Bristol (64 km / 40 miles west) and Reading (64 km / 40 miles east). London is 130 km / 81 miles east. Swindon is on the main rail line between London and Bristol, and has one train station. It is in the borough of Swindon, which has been a unitary authority independent of Wiltshire since 1998. A resident of Swindon is known as a Swindonian. Swindon's motto is "Salubritas et Industria" (Health and Industry). Swindon was named an Expanded Town under the Town Development Act 1952 and this led to a major increase in its population.[1] In the 2001 census the population of the Swindon urban area was 155,432, whilst around 184,000 lived in the Borough, which includes the satellite towns of Highworth and Wroughton. HistoryEtymologyThe original saxon settlement of Swindon sat in a defensible position atop a limestone hill. It is referred to in the Domesday Book as Suindune, a name believed to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon words swine and dun meaning 'pig hill', or possibly 'Sweyn's hill' where Sweyn would be the local landlord. Industrial RevolutionSwindon was a small market town, mainly for barter trade, until the mid-1800s. This original market area of Swindon is located on top of the hill in central Swindon and is now known as Old Town. 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 then the North Wilts canal in 1819. The canals brought trade to the area, and Swindon's population started to grow. Image:Swindon-DMJ-tower-from-rec.jpg
David Murray John tower, seen from the Westcott Rec.
Railway TownIn 1840, Isambard Kingdom Brunel chose Swindon as the site for the Swindon railway works he planned for the Great Western Railway. Eastwards towards London the line was gently graded, while westwards there was a steep descent towards Bath. Swindon was also at the junction of a proposed line to Gloucester. Swindon Junction station opened in 1842 – and, until 1895, every passing train stopped here for at least 10 minutes to change locomotives. As a result, the station hosted the first recorded railway refreshment rooms. There were three storeys to the station in 1842, with the refreshment rooms on the ground floor – and the upper floors housing the station hotel and lounge. That building was demolished in 1972 – and an office building with a one-storey modern station under it. The town's railway works were completed in 1842. The GWR built a small railway 'village' to house some of its workers. People still live in the those houses and several of the buildings that made up the railway works remain, although many are vacant. The Steam Railway Museum now occupies 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 1892's Health Centre in Milton Road – which housed clinics, a pharmacy, laundries, baths, Turkish baths and swimming pools – was almost opposite. From 1871, GWR workers each week had a small amount deducted from their pay and put into a fund – its doctors could prescribe them or their family members free medicines or send them for medical treatments. 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 removed more than 2,000 teeth,From the opening in 1892 of the Health Centre, a doctor could also prescribe a hair cut – and even a bath – for a patient. The cradle-to-grave extent of this service was later used as a blueprint for the NHS.[2][3] The Mechanics Institute, formed in 1844, moved into a building, looking not unlike a church – although it included a covered market – on May 1 1855. The New Swindon Improvement Company, a co-operative had raised the funds for this cathedral to self-improvement – and paid the GWR £40 a year its new home for its commanding site at the heart of the railway village. It was a ground-breaking organisation — outside London — that transformed the railway's workforce into some of the country's best-educated manual workers.[4] Some claim that GWR Chief Engineer Daniel Gooch had got the railway to fund the Institute[5] It offered the aspiring poor the UK's first lending library,[6] and a range of improving lectures, access to a theatre and worthy pastimes from ambulance classes to 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 that ran a retail business from a stall in the market at the Institute. The Institute also nurtured pioneering trades unionists and encouraged local democracy.[7] When TB hit the new town, the Mechanics’ Institute helped the industrial pioneers of north Wiltshire agree that the railway’s former employees should continue to receive medical attention from the doctors of GWR Medical Society Fund, which the Institute had played a role in establishing and funding.[8] Swindon’s ‘other’ railway, the Swindon, Marlborough & 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 railway ran, instead, into Swindon Town station, off Devizes Road in the Old Town – later 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 a new town (Swindon New Town) had grown around the mainline between London and Bristol – and the Old Town, the original market town merged with its newer neighbour at the bottom of the hill to become a single Swindon. 20th CenturyOn 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 Old Town station with only the line south to Andover and Salisbury[9][10][11] 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. The works' decline started in 1960, when it rolled out the Evening Star, the last steam engine to be built in the UK[12] The works lost its loco 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. 21st CenturyIn 2001 construction commenced 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 to regenerate the town centre,[13] reflecting Swindon's regional status. In February 2008, The Times named Swindon as one of "The 20 best places to buy a property in Britain" [14]. Notably, In the list, only Warrington had a lower ratio of house prices to household income in 2007 with the average household income in Swindon being among the highest in the country. Geography and climate
Image:Swindonmap 1933.jpg
A map of Swindon from 1933
The town has a total area of approximately 40 km² (25.33 mi²). Swindon has a temperate climate, with roughly equal length winters and summers. The landscape is dominated by the chalk hills of the Wiltshire Downs to the south and east.
Government
The local council was created in 1974 as the Borough of Thamesdown, out of Swindon Borough and Highworth Rural Councils, but renamed in 1997 because the Borough of Swindon) has a much larger area as it encompasses villages and land. The borough became a unitary authority on 1 April 1998, following a review by Local Government Commission for England. The town is therefore no longer under the auspices of Wiltshire County Council. The executive comprises a leader (Cllr Rod Bluh), and a cabinet made up from the Conservative Group. The makeup of the council is Conservative 43 councillors, Labour 12, Liberal Democrat 3 and 1 (previously Labour) independent. Swindon is represented in the national parliament by two MPs. Anne Snelgrove (Labour) was elected for the South Swindon seat in 2005, and Michael Wills, also Labour, has represented North Swindon since 1997. Prior to 1997, there was a single seat for Swindon, although much of what is now in Swindon was then in the Devizes seat. DemographicsAt the census of 2001, there were 180,061 people and 75,154 occupied houses in the Swindon Unitary Authority.[15] The average household size was 2.38 people. The population density was 780/km² (2020.19/mi²). 20.96% of the population were 0 to 15 years old, 72.80% were 16 to 74 years old, and the remaining 6.24% were 75 years old or over. For every 100 females there were 98.97 males. Approximately 300,000 people live within 20 minutes of Swindon town centre.
 The ethnic make-up of the town was 95.2% white, 1.3% Indian, and 3.5% other. Of the population, 92.4% were born in the UK, 2.7% in the EU, and 4.9% elsewhere in the world. It has been 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.[16] Swindon is considered to be an almost exact microcosm of the whole United Kingdom in its demographic make-up, to the extent that it has been used for market research purposes and trials of new products and services. One example was the ill-fated Mondex electronic money. Religious communities include Church of England, Catholic, Mormon, and one of the largest Sikh temples in the UK. More people have joined the Hare Krishna movement in Swindon than in any other English town. In May 2007, 65.3% of households in Swindon had broadband Internet access, the highest in the UK – and up 5.5% from June 2006.[17] A 2007 report by Endsleigh Insurance concluded that the town was the second safest place to live in the UK, beaten only by Guildford in Surrey.[18] This was based on the number of insurance claims made in the region and the total incidences of burglaries and accidents reported. Endsleigh commented that "Swindon is a great example of where local authorities, working hand in hand with the community, have played a key role in bringing down crime"[18] After the end of World War II a significant – unspecified – number of Polish refugees were put up temporarily in barracks at the Fairford RAF base about 25 km (roughly 15 miles) north of Swindon. In about 1950, some of them settled in Scotland and others in Swindon[19] rather than stay in the barracks or hostels they were offered.[20] The 2001 UK Census 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.[21] Data from that census showed that 566 Swindonians were Poland-born.[22] 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, NHS planners devising services for senior citizens estimated that 5 percent of Swindon’s population were not ‘ethnically British’[23] and most of those were culturally Polish. The town’s Polish ex-servicemen’s club, which had also run a football team for 40 years closed in 2007. Barman Jerzy Trojan, 56, blamed the decline of both club and team on the children and grandchildren of the original refugees losing their Polish identity.[24] BusinessMajor employers include the Honda car production plant at South Marston, BMW/Mini in Stratton, mobile phone company Motorola, Dolby Labs and retailer W H Smith which has its distribution centre and headquarters in Swindon. The computer company Intel has its European head office on the south side of the town and Alcatel-Lucent Technologies head office is on the west side. Insurance and financial services companies such as Nationwide Building Society and Zurich Financial Services, and pharmaceutical companies such as Canada's Patheon and the US-based Cardinal Health's have their UK divisions headquartered in the town. Several of the UK's Science Research Councils have their head offices in Polaris House, near the rail station. Swindon is also the location of two Tyco Electronics (a division of Tyco International) sites, based in Dorcan and Cheney Manor. The household products division of consumer goods supplier Reckitt Benckiser – best known for dishwasher detergents, disinfectants and cold remedies[25] – has its headquarters in Swindon. TransportImage:Swindon Magic Roundabout eng.svg
The Magic Roundabout
Lying on the junction of two Roman roads, the town has developed over the centuries, with the assistance of the Great Western Railway and the Canals, into a transport hub. It has two junctions (15 and 16) onto the M4 motorway and lies on the GWR mainline to London. Swindon has two bus operators - Thamesdown and Stagecoach. The local council acknowledges the need for more car parking as part of its vision for 2010.[26] The Borough Council is promoting more efficient use of cars with the launch of [www.carshareswindon.com] which will start in April 2008 RoundaboutsThe town is notable for its roundabouts and there is even a calendar featuring a different roundabout each month.[27] The best known roundabout is the 'Magic Roundabout' at the junction of five roads including Drove Road, Queens Drive and Fleming Way. It is located near the County Ground. The official name of this roundabout used to be County Islands, although it was rarely referred to by this name and instead was colliqually known as the Magic Roundabout. The name was changed in the late 1990s to match its popular name. It is the subject of the song English Roundabout by local band XTC from the album English Settlement. Tourism and recreationEvents
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