No. 6 Emlyn Square in the Railway Village as it was when I lived there
My name is John Williams and I am now aged 71. I was born at 18 Bathampton Street in 1937 and my family moved almost immediately to larger premises at 6 Emlyn Square. I lived at 6 Emlyn Square for 21 years until 1958 when I married and moved to rooms in Dean Street. It seems very grand to see "the village" at the present time so clean and tidy because, in my day, all the houses were a uniform grimy black.
These pages give an impression of what it was like to live in the GWR Railway Village at Swindon from 1937-1958. Most of the incidents are trivial. The only accurate dates I have are those on my School Reports and the date I left the Railway Village. For this reason I have arranged the material as a series of general topics on separate pages.
Having left school with no qualifications and not having achieved fame in subsequent life, I hope that my experiences will nevertheless be of use to those interested in the Railway Village. Whenever I read history, I am always more interested in the lives of ordinary people than in those of the rich, powerful and famous. My memories are necessarily fragmentary and incomplete after so long a time.
My wife and I emigrated from Swindon to Australia in 1965. When we returned in 1971, we took our four children to visit the "Railway Village" to show them where their Dad had been born and raised. What a shock that 1971 visit turned out to be! By way of introduction, the following section in italics is taken from some notes I made at that time.
"The bulldozer roared and lurched inexorably towards the heap of rubble which a few minutes before had been number 6 Emlyn Square. A cloud of dust and exhaust fumes belched in all directions as the bulldozer revved, slewed around and crushed the rubble to a uniformly flat level. With a final effortless flourish, accompanied by the cracking of stone, brick, wood and glass, the last remnants were crushed into the ground and 6 Emlyn Square had ceased to exist."
"Gone too were the other houses of which number 6 was the end one of a terrace. Where was number 7, the Rees's house? Where was number 8, the house where old Mrs Lack used to live, perpetually dressed in her black silk and white lace? Where had number 9, the Osborn's house gone, and where was Wakefield's house and the nurse's home? The whole terraced block had been reduced to a single stretch of rubble on which some cars were already parked."
"I was astonished and slightly confused. Astonished, because number 6 had always been there in the past when I had wanted it and now it was gone forever. Confused, because I had always been certain that I hated the place, but now that it was actually gone I wasn't so sure. Bemused, I stared at the space above the rubble and reconstructed the house in my mind. There, about four feet above the bulldozer driver's head was my bedroom. A few feet in front of him was the area of the so-called kitchen. The dark, winding stairs, which I had looked on with awe and fear as a small child, passed right through the space now occupied by the throbbing heart of the bulldozer. And where would that tall, leaning chimney have been, that chimney which my father had worried about for years? He feared that it would come crashing down through the roof some dark and windy night, killing us all in our beds in a chaos of tiles, roof timbers and chimney bricks. Many a stormy night, when the wind raged outside, I had lain awake waiting for the crash which fortunately never came. Yes, where would the chimney have been?"
"The last time I had seen 6 Emlyn Square was in 1965 when my wife, myself and our two children had stayed there with my parents prior to emigrating to Australia. We had remained in Australia for six years, gained two more children, returned to England, and now we were on a day trip to see the place in which I was brought up. Now it was gone and the whole trip was aborted. We looked half-heartedly around the Railway Museum opposite and then went back home."
And now for some impressions of those 21 years from 1937 to 1958 as I recall them 50 years or so later.
Mum and Dad would undoubtedly have been termed, "characters" these days. Click HERE for an introduction to my family.
In April 1937 I was born in the upstairs bedroom of 18 Bathampton Street, Swindon, Wiltshire but I have no personal memory whatsoever of the place. This is because my arrival as a third child made a rapid move to larger premises very necessary. Apparently, 18 Bathampton Street was very limited in its accommodation, being "one up, one down and a kitchen."
The larger house we moved to was No. 6 Emlyn Square, now demolished. It faced the entrance to the Mechanics Institute and was on the corner diagonally across from The Gluepot pub. It is now a walled car park! In my time, the heavy front door opened into a dog-leg passage running from front to back. First on the left was the front room, next on the left was the middle room, and on the right was a staircase up to the bedrooms. The front bedrooms overlooked the front of the Mechanics Institute and the back bedroom looked over the morgue of the GWR Hospital. This was quite a spooky sight on moonlit nights if I allowed myself to imagine the corpses lying quietly under that roof!
The dog-leg passage ended at the kitchen, which was a glass-roofed lean-to in the back yard. This lean-to left us with a very small walled-in back yard which housed the coal bunker, washing line, a shed and an outside toilet. There was no inside toilet or bathroom.
My older brother, Doug, usually kept his motorbike and bicycle in the front passage until the rent collector called one day and saw them there. He quietly said to my Father, "That won't do, Mr. Williams, that's a fire hazard," and from then on Doug had to keep them in the already cluttered back yard. Just as well really because the smell of petrol throughout the house was very strong and a fire could easily have started.
Our lives were ruled by the GWR Works hooter which gave us getting-up, getting-ready and you-should-be-here-by-now signals every working day. This was replaced on Sundays by the bells of St. Marks' Church which I always found to be quite pleasant.
Dad repaired clocks and watches for people. It was an absorbing hobby for him and was also useful as a way of making a little pocket money. My younger brother, Maurice, bought old clocks at the auction rooms in Victoria Hill that nobody else would bid for. He then refurbished them and sometimes sold them for a profit. Our house was full of old clocks of all shapes and sizes, with different ticks and chimes, all telling different times and not one of them right. I remember my mother saying in desperation one day, "All these clocks about and we don't even know what the right time is!" She was very patient with us and had need to be.
Emlyn Square and the Railway Village became very interesting in wartime. Click HERE for more details.
Fights at home were common when Dad had too much to drink. Click HERE to learn more.
As a family we were nearly always very poor. With money so scarce, I was always on the lookout for ways to make a little pocket-money. These methods were all failures. Click HERE for some examples.
Many things were available in the Railway Village under the broad heading of "Amusements." Click HERE for more details.
The GWR Baths, Swimming Baths and a variety of other water-based recreation places accessible from the Railway Village are described on another page. Click HERE for more details.
Illness was common in our family. The house was damp at all times and the atmosphere around Emlyn Square was always sooty, smoke-laden and generally unhealthy, especially when the wind blew directly from the vicinity of the factory. Coughs colds, sore throats and influenza were the norm for all of us. Only on exceptional days could washing be hung out to dry and it was normal to have the drying clothes draped around the fire on clothes airers. This, of course, added to the dampness of our house.
The worst conditions came with still days and nights during the Winter. Added to the factory grime was the smoke from the coal fires all around. At such times a thick yellow fog would build up, irritating the throat and eyes and making breathing very difficult.
The GWR Medical Fund was a God-send and a life-saver. A small amount of money was deducted from Dad's pay which entitled him and his family to use the facilities provided by the GWR Medical Fund situated in Milton Road. We could also use the GWR Hospital, the rear of which ran parallel with our back alley. The hospital nurses had a house allocated to them a few doors along from No. 6 Emlyn Square. I think it must have been No. 10, demolished now along with No. 6.
Someone loaned me a three-wheeler bicycle for a few hours when I was a small child and within a few minutes I had fallen off and bashed my head on the kerb outside our house. Bleeding profusely, I was marched in the back door of the GWR hospital and the nurses stitched me up. Back I went to play on the bike and again I fell off and was marched, yelling, back to the hospital for another stitch. When this happened for the third time, the nurses insisted, as they put yet another stitch in my scalp, that my Mother, who had accompanied me each time, should not let me out any more that day. Battered and bruised as I was, I was secretly rather glad about this, even though I could no longer enjoy the borrowed cycle.
With the GWR Hospital just across the alley from our back gate, visits there for minor injuries were frequent.
The schools I attended as a child were College Street Infants School, Sanford Street School, College Street Primary Mixed School, Chelworth House at Cricklade (a convalescent home and not really a school) and Westcott Secondary Modern School in Westcott Place. Later on, I attended Swindon College in Victoria Hill. Click HERE for more details.
Anything to do with cinemas, films and film-making was always of great interest to me, so click HERE for the details.
Okus Quarry was a very important place to me. Click HERE to discover why.
Shortly before leaving Westcott Place School, Mr. Hunt, one of our teachers, said that as we would be leaving school soon, we should have some idea of what work we would like to do. He then proceded to ask each one of us in turn what we wanted to do. Nobody had much idea. When he asked me the question, I said that I wanted to be a Commercial Artist. He swiftly replied, "Think again, Williams, where do you think your parents would get the money for that sort of thing?"
I didn't dream of questioning authority in those days so I simply accepted what he said and gave up that idea. This of course left me at a complete loss and I simply went where I was put on leaving school.
So it was that I gained an apprenticeship with the grand-sounding title of "Journeyman Electrician." This was rather unusual because my Father and my elder brother were employed by the GWR "inside" and it was expected that I would do the same. My younger brother also became a GWR insider. The firm offering the apprenticeship was Teesdale and Jones Ltd., at 27-28 Fleet Street in Swindon and thus began six years of "serving my time," starting at the grand rate of sevenpence-halfpenny an hour.
I tried at various times to get out of that job because of the low pay but my Mother, bless her, always insisted that I stick it out. As soon as it began to pay off when I was twenty-one, I was called up for National Service at four shillings a week.
One of the jobs I wanted was that of Messenger Boy at the GPO. Why? Because they paid £3.10s a week and taught you to ride a motorcycle (a BSA Bantam) into the bargain.
Another job I would have liked was that of a Projectionist at the Savoy cinema. The reason? Because I would then have access to any bits of film that were being thrown out!
The best thing that ever happened to me is a rather lengthy tale, so click HERE for the details.
To view a picture of me taken on the last morning of the last day of my continuous residence at 6 Emlyn Square, click HERE
Click on any of the pictures below for a larger version.
| Me being held by my sister at 18 Bathampton Street. My elder brother, Doug, is on the left. |  |
| 18 Bathampton Street in more recent times. |  |
| The corner which once contained 6 Emlyn Square. Compare this with the picture at the top of this page. |  |
| The present site of 6 Emlyn Squares' front room! |  |
| A view from Emlyn Square along Exeter Street towards the GWR Park. |  |
| Mum in the kitchen at 6 Emlyn Square. |  |
| A friend and I in the GWR Park. I am on the left. This was taken with my first box camera and it had taken me weeks to save up for the film. It took more weeks of saving to get it developed and printed so I didn't use it much! A passer-by took the picture for me. |  |
The Swindon Society. Many pictures and information on Swindon from the beginning.
The Evening Advertiser Swindon's own newspaper with news and archives.
The Swindon Web General information about Swindon.
I have created other web sites which you may like to visit:
For that neglected British classic car the Standard Vanguard visit The Standard Vanguard
For the remarkable 1957 Morris Oxford De Luxe visit The 1957 Morris Oxford
For Robin Hood visit Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest and Edwinstowe
For my National Service visit National Service, RAF Marham, V-bombers and 207 Squadron
For thoughts on the meaning of life visit God's Viewpoint
Home address of this page: http://www.johnw55.freeuk.com/village
Page updated 26 July 2008