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Ink Heritage Focus - on the unfairness and pointlessness of comparisons between Swindon and the the likes of Bath and Cheltenham
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An Unreasonable Comparison of an Exceptional Town
By local historian and author Angela Atkinson
It strikes and irks me how unreasonable, to somewhat understate the case, are the ubiquitous comparisons between Swindon and the cities and towns it rubs shoulders with. Namely Bristol, Bath and Cheltenham.
But the thing is, and I touched on this in Secret Swindon (Ch.6), why, by sheer dint of its position, should Swindon be similar in architectural terms? Does no-one stop to consider how (and when) they came into being and got their wealth – and how Swindon (New Swindon this is) came into being and got its economy?
As I said in the aforementioned chapter: ‘Let’s go to Swindon for a spa break’ said nobody ever. But ‘let’s go to Swindon for jobs and hopefully some economic prosperity’ said thousands – in the Victorian era. Thus, New Swindon mushroomed, almost overnight as fungi is wont to do, as a 19th century working-class, industrial town. Whereas Bath, the Romans aside, grew as a spa resort in the Georgian period. Take that into consideration and one sees at once that Swindon isn’t likely to have sweeping Georgian crescents or Regency arcades. As for Bristol…well, slavery and tobacco funded many of that city’s buildings of note. So…y’know…And on the topic of buildings of note – I’ll come back to that.
Sir John Betjeman
The poet, writer, broadcaster, one-time Poet Laureate and defender of Victorian architecture, we can call an ally of Swindon. He had good things to say about much of it – Villet’s House & St Mark’s Church being notable but not the only examples. He also campaigned to save the GWR railway village when the great David Murray John had plans to raze it. Phew!
Now back in 1950, Swindon’s council published Studies in the History of Swindon, a volume containing a contribution from JB. In it he wrote: “There is very little architecture in Swindon but a great deal of building.” And then went on to comment: “Swindon, instead of being a West Country town, looked on the outskirts at any rate, like any industrial town anywhere.”
Taking the first of those quotes – it’s not the damnation it at first appears. What Betjeman meant by that, I’m sure, was that Swindon didn’t have much/anything in the way of architect-designed buildings – rather it had buildings, built by builders/developers. It’s important at this juncture to bear in mind that JB made this observation a good two decades before Swindon gained such architect-designed edifices as the Spectrum Building, the Link Centre and of course the David Murray John tower.