Swindon's unusual history as a large industrial town in the heart of
Wiltshire has defined its townscape for the last 200 years. The town is
largely the creation of the nineteenth century, built around the Great
Western Railway's Works, but it nonetheless has over 600 listed
buildings, not to mention scheduled monuments and three registered parks
and gardens. In Swindon in 50 Buildings, local author Angela Atkinson
examines not only such well-known Swindon landmarks and areas as the GWR
Railway Village Conservation Area and the Old Town, but also everyday
buildings that reveal aspects of Swindon's always fascinating and
surprising story. It is inevitable that many of the buildings in this
book reflect Swindon's great railway heritage, but others are small
stories written in brick and stone that tell of a time before the
railway came and changed everything. There are farmhouses now engulfed
by twentieth-century housing estates and grander buildings such as
Lydiard House. Rebuilt in the eighteenth century with a formal park, the
Lydiard estate served as both an American army camp and prisoner of war
camp during the Second World War. The story continues to the present day
with buildings designed by such well-known architects as Hugh Casson,
the creator of the Wyvern Theatre, and Norman Foster, architect of the
landmark and award-winning Spectrum Building. It includes, too, the most
recent of Swindon's additions to the listed building's register - and
it's one that will surprise you.
