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SWINDON

For other uses, see Swindon (disambiguation).

Swindon is a large town in the South West of England. The town is situated between Bristol and London, and is accessible from junction 15 or 16 of the M4 motorway, or by rail using Swindon station. With a population of over 160,000, Swindon is often cited as a "boom town". It is in the borough of Swindon, which has been a unitary authority (UA) since 1998.

A resident of Swindon is known as a Swindonian. Swindon's motto is "Salubritas et Industria" (Health and Industry).

Contents

History

The original Saxon settlement of Swindon sat in a defensible position atop a limestone hill. It is referred to in the Domesday Book as Suindune, a name believed to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon word swine and the Brythonic word dun meaning literally pig hill, or possibly Sweyn's hill where Sweyn would be the local landlord. Swindon remained a small market town, mainly for barter trade, until the mid-1800s. This original market area of Swindon is located on top of the hill in central Swindon and is now known as Old Town.

The industrial revolution was responsible for an acceleration of Swindon's growth. It started with the construction of the Wiltshire and Berkshire canal in 1810, and then the North Wiltshire canal in 1819. These two major routes brought trade to the area, and Swindon's population started to rise.

Probably the most significant event in Swindon's history occurred in 1840, when it was selected to house the large Swindon railway works for the Great Western Railway by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Legend has it that Brunel and his assistant were surveying the route of the London to Bristol line, and had stopped on a hillside for lunch. The assistant asked Brunel where he thought the railway works should be built, and Brunel threw a sandwich in the air, declaring that it would be wherever the sandwich landed. Reality is more mundane - it was situated at a point where engines would need to be changed. Eastwards towards London the line was gently graded, while westwards there was a steep descent towards Bath. Swindon was also at the junction of a proposed line to Gloucester.

Construction of the works was completed in 1842. Along with the railway works a small railway village was created to house some of the railway workers. This area became the present day area known as New Town (or the Town Centre). The original Railway Village houses are still standing and are occupied, and several of the original buildings which comprised the engineering works also remain (though many are vacant). The Steam Railway Museum now occupies part of the old works.

In the second half of the 19th century the new area (Swindon New Town) created by the railway works and the original area from the market trading years (Swindon Old Town) were merged to become Swindon.

During much of the 20th century the railway works was the largest employer in the town. In the late-1970s a large part of the works closed.

Geography and climate

The town itself has a total area of approximately 40 km² (25.33 mi²).

Swindon has a temperate climate, with roughly equal length winters and summers. The surrounding landscape is dominated by the chalk hills of the Wiltshire Downs to the south and east.

Government

The unitary authority (created in 1976 as the Borough of Thamesdown, but renamed in 1997 as the Borough of Swindon) has a much larger area as it encompasses surrounding villages and land. The town is therefore no longer under the auspices of Wiltshire County Council.

The executive is a leader (Cllr Rod Bluh) and cabinet - which is made up from the Conservative Group.

The current makeup of the Council is Conservative 42 Councillors, Labour 12, Liberal Democrat 3 and Independents 2. Five councillors have left the Labour group in the last few years, the most recent transferring to the Conservatives on the 19th of June 2006. Two have left the Lib Dems.

Demographics

As of the census of 2001 [1], there were 180,051 people and 75,154 occupied houses in the Swindon Unitary Authority. The average household size was 2.38 people. The population density was 780/km² (2020.19/mi²). 20.96% of the population were 0 to 15 years old, 72.80% were 16 to 74 years old, and the remaining 6.24% were 75 years old or over. For every 100 females there were 98.97 males.

The ethnic makeup of the town was 95.2% white, 1.3% Indian, and 3.5% other. Of the population, 92.4% were born in the UK, 2.7% in the EU, and 4.9% elsewhere in the world.

Swindon is considered to be an almost exact microcosm of the whole United Kingdom in its demographic makeup, to the extent that it has often been used for market research purposes and trials of new products and services. One example was the ill-fated Mondex electronic money.

It has been forecasted that there will be a 70,000 (38.9%) increase in Swindon's population by 2026; from the current 180,000, to 250,000[2].

Business

Major employers include the Honda car production plant at South Marston, BMW in Stratton, mobile phone companies such as Motorola and Ubinetics and the retailer W H Smith which has its distribution centre and headquarters in Swindon. The computer company Intel also has its European head office on the south side of the town. Several insurance and financial services companies such as Nationwide Building Society and Zurich Financial Services, and pharmaceutical companies such as Patheon and Cardinal Health also have head offices in the town. Several of the UK's science Research Councils have their head offices in Polaris House, adjacent to the rail station. Swindon is also the location of two Tyco Electronics (a division of Tyco International) sites, based in Dorcan and Cheney Manor.

Tourism and recreation

Media

Education

Museums and cultural institutions

Trivia

  • Approximately 300,000 people live within 20 minutes of Swindon town centre.
  • The critically-acclaimed rock band XTC are from Swindon and, since their inception in 1977, are widely regarded as one of the most quintessentially "English" rock-pop bands since The Kinks.
  • Noel Gallagher, the lead singer of the rock band Oasis chose the name of his band after visiting the Oasis swimming pool in Swindon (whilst working as a roadie for the band Inspiral Carpets, who themselves held a concert at the leisure centre in 1993).
  • The British television comedy series The Office contains many references to Swindon.
  • Swindon is referred to in singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock's song Ride.
  • Swindon is twinned with Ocotal, Nicaragua; Salzgitter, Germany and Toruń, Poland.
  • Swindon also has close ties with Chattanooga, USA, with which it started a friendship and cooperation agreement in 2006.
  • More people have joined the Hare Krishna movement in Swindon than in any other English town.
  • In Summer 2006, 51% of households in Swindon have broadband Internet access, the highest in the UK, according to this BBC report
  • Ravi Kandola, a very successful IT Contractor, now lives in Swindon having spent 3 years of his life in Livingston.

Sport

  • Swindon Town F.C., a football team who play in Football League Two (upon their relegation from League One in May 2006) at the County Ground.
  • Swindon Wildcats, an ice hockey team.
  • Swindon Robins, a speedway team who compete in the Elite League.

Swindon in fiction

Books set in Swindon include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (in which the main character's father describes it as "the arsehole of the world") and the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective, Sherlock Holmes, also ate lunch in the town in the novel The Boscombe Valley Mystery.

Robert Goddard's Into the Blue and Out of the Sun both feature the central character of Harry Barnett from Swindon, and both novels start in the town. The TV detective series A Touch of Frost starring David Jason is often set in or around Swindon (called "Denton" in the series) and early episodes feature briefings of the detective team in front of recognisable maps of the Swindon area.

James Bond

See also

Further reading

  • Swindon, Mark Child, Breedon Books, 2002, hardcover, 159 pages, ISBN 1859833225
  • Francis Frith's Swindon Living Memories (Photographic Memories S.), Francis Frith and Brian Bridgeman, The Frith Book Company Ltd, 2003, Paperback, 96 pages, ISBN 1859376568

External links