Town in Wiltshire, England

Swindon

Swindon is the town where a railway contract forced every train to stop, and where a roundabout made of five roundabouts keeps drivers guessing.

Key information

County: Wiltshire
Nation: England
Known for: Great Western Railway works, the Magic Roundabout, Swindon Town FC
What locals are called: Swindonians
Famous people: Diana Dors, Billie Piper, Richard Jefferies, Andy Partridge of XTC
Football clubs: Swindon Town (the Robins)

About Swindon

The town that trains had to stop at

When Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Daniel Gooch picked Swindon for the Great Western Railway's main works around 1840, it was a small market town on a hill. The railway made a new Swindon down in the valley, and the town has never really looked back. The station became famous for its stop. Under an arrangement with the refreshment room operators, trains were made to wait here for around ten minutes so passengers could eat and drink. For years, the pause was part of a journey from London to the west. That explains why Swindon has an Old Town on the hill and a New Town below: two places that grew up side by side with very different origins.

Building locomotives, and a model for the NHS

The works opened in 1843, and the first locomotive built there, Great Western, rolled out in 1846. Over the next century Swindon turned out thousands of engines, including the famous City of Truro, which was claimed to have reached 100mph in 1904. The last steam locomotive built for British Railways, Evening Star, left the works in 1960. The works closed in 1986, but its great sheds live on as the STEAM museum and the Designer Outlet. The GWR looked after its workers too. It built the Railway Village, using stone dug out of the Box Tunnel. The workers themselves set up the Mechanics' Institute, with a library, lectures and a theatre, and its purpose-built premises, financed by the New Swindon Improvement Company, opened in 1855. The Medical Fund Society, founded in 1847, gave workers healthcare for a small weekly payment, an idea often cited as a forerunner of the NHS.

The roundabout that is five roundabouts

Swindon's best-known landmark is a junction. The Magic Roundabout, beside the County Ground, opened in 1972 and puts five mini-roundabouts around a central island. Traffic can circulate in both directions, clockwise and anticlockwise, depending on which little roundabout you pick. It was designed by Frank Blackmore of the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, and it has become a point of pride and mild terror for drivers ever since. Locals will tell you it works perfectly once you stop thinking about it. It also gives anyone arriving by car a story to tell.

The Robins who beat Arsenal at Wembley

Swindon Town, founded in 1879 and known as the Robins, play at the County Ground. Their greatest day came in March 1969, when, as a Third Division side, they beat Arsenal 3-1 after extra time in the League Cup final at Wembley. Don Rogers scored two of the goals. They followed it that year by winning the Anglo-Italian League Cup against Roma, and beat Napoli in the final of the separate Anglo-Italian Cup in 1970. In 1993 Swindon beat Leicester City 4-3 at Wembley in the play-off final to reach the Premier League for a single season. The club's mascot is called Rockin' Robin, a nod to the bird on the club badge.

Blonde bombshells, Time Lords and Wiltshire's other voices

Swindon has produced a surprisingly starry list. Diana Dors, the 1950s film star dubbed Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe, was born here in 1931. Billie Piper, who found fame as pop singer and then as Rose Tyler in Doctor Who, was born in the town in 1982. The nature writer Richard Jefferies, born at Coate Farm in 1848, wrote about the Wiltshire countryside, and his farmhouse is now a museum. And the new wave band XTC, led by Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding, formed in Swindon in the 1970s. The town has even made it onto television: in The Office, Swindon is the rival branch that threatens to swallow up the Slough staff.

Parks, art and where to go when the engines stop

Swindon has more green space than its railway reputation suggests. Lydiard Park, with its Georgian house and walled garden, is a calm place just outside the centre, while Coate Water, the lake beside Jefferies' old home, is popular for walks and picnics. The Swindon Museum and Art Gallery holds an important collection of twentieth-century British art, and the Railway Village still has its tidy rows of terraced homes. In recent decades, Swindon has also become a home for big employers. Honda set up its Swindon operation in 1985, began making engines in 1989 and built cars there from 1992 until 2021, and the Nationwide Building Society has its headquarters in the town. For a place transformed by the railway, it has kept up the habit of making things and moving people.