The Mechanics’ Institute in Swindon, Wiltshire, is symbolic of the Victorian belief in self improvement. It was founded in 1854 by Great Western Railway workers to provide themselves with a library, lectures, classes and, in time, a library and health services. Yet sadly this historic building has fallen into a ruinous state since closing in 1986.

I paid tribute to the Mechanics’ Institute in a letter to The Times on Friday, prompted by a piece by columnist James Marriott praising Newcastle Upon Tyne’s Literary and Philosophical Society, where the father of the railways George Stephenson demonstrated his miners’ safety lamp in 1815.

Swindon was just a small village when the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel chose it as the location for the Great Western Railway’s locomotive works, which opened in 1843. Within a decade, over 2,000 people worked there, many living in a railway village close by the main line. The workers paid for the Mechanics’ Institute, an initiative that was replicated in countless towns and cities across Britain.

The health services provided at the Mechanics’ Institute – initially for railway workers, but later for the wider community – inspired the founder of the National Health Service. Aneurin Bevan observed, ‘There was a complete health service in Swindon. All we had to do was expand it to the country’.

The past sixty years have seen the sad demise of this historic, pioneering institute. In the 1960s, it merged with the British Railways Staff Association. (The GWR had become part of BR when Labour nationalised the railways in 1948.) The theatre closed in 1976, followed by the whole building in 1986, the same year the railway works closed. Over the last 39 years, it has lain empty, a target for vandals, vermin and Wiltshire rain.

The Victorian Society has warned that the Mechanics’ Institute is endangered, calling for action to save it:

‘This is an important building that needs protection and support. It also needs a workable plan, so it can survive long into the future. If the private owner isn’t willing to provide this, Swindon Borough Council, whose policy is to preserve the Institute, must step in forcefully.’

Swindon Council has agreed a plan to save the Mechanics’ Institute, although it warns that ‘there are no quick fixes and the costs of bringing it back to life are huge. The Mechanics is also privately-owned which adds complexity to our plans’.

Let’s hope that it isn’t too late to save a building of huge historic significance.

Swindon and me

I first visited Swindon on Boxing Day 1975. Dad took me to see Cardiff City play Swindon Town. We were shocked to see promotion-seeking City lose 4-0 to the lowly Wiltshire team. Looking back, the more historically significant memory was of the modest country road that linked the M4 at junction 16 to the town centre. Within a few years that A3102 gateway had become a dual carriageway fringed by industrial sites and housing estates as Swindon exploded in size. The bridge that carried the old Midland & South Western Junction Railway (Swindon’s ‘other’ railway) over the road into town was also later swept away.

The following year, my newly-married sister Beverley moved to Swindon, and I became fascinated by the town’s railway heritage. We went to two open days at Swindon Works, and I was intrigued by the workshops where the Great Western Railway’s famous King and Castle locomotives were born.

I remember hearing an intriguing rumour at the 1981 open day. I was familiar with the story of how the GWR converted its remaining broad gauge lines to standard gauge over a single weekend in 1892 – an extraordinary feat of organisation. The rumour was that some of the historic broad gauge locos had been buried at the back of Swindon Works. It was a good tall tale, but I wouldn’t invest in an expedition to try to find them…

GWR museums, Swindon

As a teenager, I enjoyed visiting the original GWR Museum in Farringdon Road, which included several engines in the cramped venue of an old chapel. Since 2000, Swindon has been host to the far bigger STEAM museum of the GWR in a surviving part of the old works. I blogged about a visit here. Four year old Owen enjoyed comparing his toy Duck with the GWR’s rather larger pannier tank! He also walked underneath 4073 Caerphilly Castle, the railway’s 1924 flagship.