LOOKING BACK..........

For a few years now, my eldest son, David and I have been interested in tracing some of our family history. I have to confess that he is much more adept, thorough and organised than I am, so I have taken to relying on my memories. One of the most compelling memory I have is of my maternal grandfather, one William Austen of Swindon. (Note the spelling of the surname, which encouraged a brief flirtation with the notion that Jane Austen might feature in our family history and thus we might be in for some hefty royalties....but no.)

The photograph shows the gentlemen of the Morris Street Working Mens Club which existed in Swindon as an `amenity` associated with the Great Western Railway Works, which dominated the geography and the economy of that Wiltshire town for so long.

My grandfather worked there all his adult life as a pattern maker, a skill which he passed on to his only son (another William) ...although he did have four daughters, one of whom was my mother. The railway works was responsible for all the heavy engineering work required by God`s Wonderful Railway (GWR).....

.....and was housed in imposing buildings, surrounded by a huge brick wall, which took up the whole of one side of Rodbourne Road:-



My grandparents lived in a terraced house in Hughes Street which, along with other identical and adjacent streets, were populated almost exclusively by GWR workers. As a boy during WWII, I spent some time in that house along with my mother who, to make ends meet with my father being a prisoner of war, took a job as a bus conductress with Swindon Corporation Transport - many`s the time I sat on the bus in her care as it travelled the length and breadth of that railway town.

My grandfather retired when he was 65 but with a dogged determination borne out of a life of struggle, he survived to the grand old age of 98; and my grandmother wasn`t far behind, living until she was 96. My mother passed away a few short years ago and she managed to get to 90, so I`m fervently hoping that the genes I have inherited for longevity come from that side of the family.

As to the railway works, well it closed down in, I think, 1962 and became a trendy `outlet centre,` which I regret I have not visited, so I have no idea of its contribution to modern day Swindon; except, that is, that it continues to preserve those forbidding buildings which form part of my formative years.

I wonder what the men of the Morris Street Working Mens Club would make of it all.

(click on photos for larger images)