Secret Swindon

What is now Swindon’s Old Town—or Old Swindon as it should be called—began life as an Anglo-Saxon settlement. That early version of Swindon became a small market town and a sculpture of a ram marks the site where the cattle market used to take place, one of many pieces of public art that punctuate the town. As a sleepy market town, Old Swindon would likely have stayed were it not for the Industrial Revolution. The subsequent acceleration in Swindon’s growth began with the 1810 construction of the Wilts and Berks canal and later the North Wilts canal but the real transformative factor came between 1841 and 1842, with the historic decision by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Daniel Gooch to site their Great Western Railway works in Swindon. Swindon’s connections to London and the southwest made it possible for many later industries to come to the town. Over the decades, Swindon has had associations with Garrard record decks, Triumph lingerie, Bluebird toys and iconic aviation, and many other industries. Today’s Swindon is a surprising, many-layered, creative hotspot and home to artists and writers of every genre and calibre. Author Angela Atkinson peels back a few of those layers and shows how surprising Swindon is in Secret Swindon, exploring the less well-known episodes and characters in the history of this Wiltshire town through the years, and bringing to life tales of those who have lived in it and the places they inhabited.