Swindon, the railway town

Swindon is the railway town. In Wiltshire, halfway between London and Bristol, it was for more than a century the heart of the Great Western Railway, the company founded by the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel: here the steam locomotives that ran to the west of England and Wales were built, and around the works grew a model workers' town, with houses, schools, libraries, swimming pools and even a health service for the workers that anticipated Britain's National Health Service. Today Swindon, with about 235,000 inhabitants across its borough, is one of the most dynamic towns in southern England, home to large companies and national institutions. The British also know it for its famous and feared Magic Roundabout, a roundabout made up of five roundabouts. And it is an excellent base for exploring some of the oldest and most mysterious places in Britain: the stone circle of Avebury, the Uffington White Horse and the villages of the Cotswolds.

Trains from London Paddington take about an hour, and Bath and Bristol are less than an hour away.

From pig hill to the railway

The name Swindon comes from Old English and means "pig hill": for centuries it was a small market town on top of a hill, today's Old Town, surrounded by fields and pastures. In 1840 its history changed for ever. The Great Western Railway was building the line from London to Bristol, and Brunel and the young engineer Daniel Gooch chose the fields at the foot of the hill as the site of the company's main works, at the point where the main line met the branch to Gloucester and Wales and where locomotives had to be changed.

Within a few decades a new town grew up beside the old one, New Swindon, built by the company for its workers. The works, the Swindon Works, became among the largest in the world: in the early 20th century more than fourteen thousand people worked there, and thousands of locomotives, carriages and wagons left its sheds, including some of the fastest and most elegant steam engines ever built, such as City of Truro, one of the first locomotives credited, in a disputed timing, with exceeding a hundred miles an hour. The two towns, old and new, were officially merged only in 1900.

The railway village

Next to the works, between 1841 and 1865, the company built the Railway Village, a district of about three hundred stone terraced houses for workers and their families, one of the first planned industrial villages in the world. The houses, now restored and lived in, line orderly streets and keep their Victorian appearance. One of them, the Railway Workers' Cottage, is furnished as it was at the time and can be visited on certain days of the year.

At the heart of the village stands the Mechanics' Institute, opened in 1855: it was the cultural centre of the community, with a library, one of the first lending libraries in the country, reading rooms, a theatre, rooms for evening classes and a market. Through their subscriptions, workers had access to books, education and entertainment. Another institution born here was the Medical Fund Society: in return for a small weekly deduction from their wages, railwaymen and their families received medical and dental care, medicines and even a hospital and public baths. It is said that Aneurin Bevan, the minister who created Britain's National Health Service in 1948, was inspired by the Swindon model. The baths building, the Health Hydro, with its Victorian pools and Turkish baths, still stands and is one of the town's symbols.

What to see in Swindon

STEAM, the Museum of the Great Western Railway

Inside a restored building of the old works is STEAM, the museum of the Great Western Railway, which tells the story of the railway and the town with original steam locomotives, vintage carriages, reconstructions of workshop areas, a Victorian station and recorded voices of former workers. You can climb into a locomotive cab, see how a boiler was built and discover the lives of the thousands of men and women who worked in the huge sheds. Among the exhibits is the historic locomotive Caerphilly Castle. It is a museum that suits children too, with many interactive features.

The Designer Outlet and the works sheds

Next to the museum, one of the large stone sheds of the works now houses the Swindon Designer Outlet, one of the largest outlet shopping centres in the United Kingdom. The original structures, with their iron beams and columns, have been preserved, and railway-era equipment and machinery can still be seen among the shops. Even if you don't like shopping, it is worth going in to see how this piece of industrial archaeology has been reused.

Old Town

On top of the hill, Old Town keeps the atmosphere of the market town that existed before the railway, with its market square, old town hall, Georgian houses, pubs and restaurants along Wood Street and Devizes Road. Nearby, the park of The Lawn holds the ruins of the medieval church of Holy Rood and a pond, while the town's Museum and Art Gallery has a surprising collection of modern British art, with works by Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and L. S. Lowry.

The Magic Roundabout

No visit to Swindon is complete without meeting the Magic Roundabout, opened in 1972: a large junction made up of five mini-roundabouts arranged around a central one, where traffic circulates clockwise around the centre and anticlockwise around each of the small roundabouts. The name comes from a popular children's television programme of the time. It is regularly voted among the most feared junctions in the UK, yet its system is considered very efficient and safe. There is a footpath all around it for pedestrians, and it is fun to watch the traffic flow from a distance.

Lydiard Park

West of the town, Lydiard Park is a large historic estate with a park of woods and lakes and a Palladian house, Lydiard House, home for centuries of the St John family, the Viscounts Bolingbroke. The restored house keeps furniture, family portraits and a rare 17th-century painted window, while the nearby church of St Mary has gilded funerary monuments among the most spectacular in England. The park also has an 18th-century walled garden.

Coate Water and Richard Jefferies

To the south-east lies Coate Water, a reservoir surrounded by a country park, popular for walks and birdwatching. Next to it is the birthplace of Richard Jefferies, a 19th-century writer and naturalist who described the Wiltshire countryside, now a small museum with a garden. For the poet Edward Thomas, who wrote a biography of him, Jefferies was a great inspiration.

A day in Swindon

A possible itinerary: the morning at the STEAM museum, then a walk through the nearby Railway Village among the railwaymen's houses and the Mechanics' Institute. After lunch climb up to Old Town to see the square, the parks and the art museum. The afternoon is for Lydiard Park, with the house and walled garden, or a drive out to Avebury. In the evening you can dine in Old Town's restaurants or see a show at the Wyvern Theatre.

Eating and drinking

Wiltshire food is simple and hearty: ham and bacon cured in the county's traditional way, cheeses from nearby farms and lardy cake, a yeasted dough made with lard, sugar and dried fruit, a local speciality to enjoy with tea. Swindon also has a historic brewery, Arkell's, founded in 1843, the same year as the railway works, and still run by the same family: its beers are served in many pubs in the town and surrounding villages. The most interesting restaurants are in Old Town, while the centre and the outlet have plenty of chains.

Steam trains and canals

Railway lovers can ride the Swindon and Cricklade Railway, a heritage line run by volunteers north of the town, where vintage steam and diesel locomotives run at weekends on a short stretch of an old line. The Wilts and Berks Canal also once passed through the town; abandoned in the early 20th century, it has been partly restored by volunteer groups, and some stretches can be walked or cycled along the old towpath. Around the town, the Great Western Community Forest is a reforestation project with new woods, paths and cycle routes.

Music and famous people

Swindon has produced very different people: the actress Diana Dors, one of the stars of 1950s British cinema, the actress and singer Billie Piper, and the new wave band XTC, who described English provincial life in many songs. The football club, Swindon Town, is nicknamed The Robins and in 1969, as a third-tier side, won the League Cup against the odds, beating Arsenal at Wembley.

Around Swindon

• Avebury, about twenty kilometres south-west: the largest prehistoric stone circle in the world, so big that a whole village, pub included, lies inside it. It is part of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site; see also Stonehenge.
• Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric artificial mound in Europe, and West Kennet Long Barrow, a tomb more than five thousand years old, near Avebury.
• The Uffington White Horse, a gigantic figure of a horse cut into the chalk of a hillside three thousand years ago, about half an hour away.
• Barbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort on the downs south of the town, along the prehistoric Ridgeway path.
• The villages of the Cotswolds, such as Castle Combe, Bibury and Cirencester, less than an hour away.
• Bath and Oxford, both reachable by train or car in about an hour.

Living in Swindon

After the works closed in 1986, Swindon reinvented itself as a centre for service, logistics and technology companies, thanks to its strategic position on the M4 motorway and the railway to London. The town is home to the headquarters of the National Trust, the charity that looks after hundreds of historic houses and landscapes, the Historic England archive, the head office of a large building society and several multinationals. The closure of the Honda car plant in 2021 was a heavy blow, but the town keeps growing. Homes are cheaper than in London, Oxford or Bath, and there is plenty of green space; the centre, however, has suffered from competition with shopping centres and is the focus of major regeneration projects.

Getting there and getting around

• By train: from London Paddington about an hour on Great Western Railway trains, which still carry the historic company's name; direct services to Bristol, Bath, Cardiff and Gloucester.
• By air: Bristol Airport and Heathrow are both about an hour and a quarter away.
• By car: the town lies on the M4 motorway, between London and Wales.
• In town: the centre, the station, STEAM and the Railway Village are within walking distance; local buses serve Old Town, Lydiard Park and Coate Water.

For travel around the rest of the country see trains and transport, and for other cities British cities.

Tips for your visit

• How long: one day for STEAM, the Railway Village and Old Town; another for Avebury, Uffington and the Cotswolds.
• When to go: all year round for the museums; May to September for the downs and prehistoric sites.
• Don't miss: the STEAM museum, one of the finest railway museums in England, and a walk among the stones of Avebury.
• A tip: if you are driving, study the Magic Roundabout on a map beforehand; and if you would rather avoid it, there are always alternative routes.

Swindon on the map

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