Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 23/04/2020

SU 1484 NW
SU 1484 NE
5/21 and 6/21

SWINDON
BRISTOL STREET (south side)
Nos. 4 - 25 including yard walls

17.2.70

GV
II
In order to house the workforce for the new Great Western Railway works, IK Brunel designed a new village to the south of the railway line. Brunel’s early layout drawings of 1840 show a grid similar to the final plan of 12 terraces in six blocks on either side of the High Street (from 1893 Emlyn Square). Construction started in 1842, and by 1855 most of the buildings had been completed. Houses and cottages of different types were built, as well as lodging houses. Brunel himself designed only the first block of 1842 (4-25 Bristol Street); as it was visible from the railway line, this is in a more decorative style than the others.

The financial difficulties of the contractors JD and C Rigby, who undertook to build 300 cottages but only completed 130, delayed the completion of the village until the 1850s. The cottages to the west of Emlyn Square were built first (1842-1843), followed by those on the east side (1845-1847). The end blocks towards Emlyn Square, containing corner shops on the ground floor, were built in 1845-1847, and the remainder, mostly end blocks on the outer ends of the streets, were built in 1853-1855. In 1966, the local authority acquired the cottages from British Rail and restored them. The village is one of Britain’s best-preserved and architecturally most ambitious railway settlements.

Terrace of 22 cottages, 1842 for Great Western Railway Company. Coursed limestone rubble with ashlar quoins and dressings. Slate roofs. Ashlar stacks with diagonal shafts set on party walls. Two storey, each house one bay with side passage, two rooms deep. Chamfered and painted window and door surrounds, latter with pyramidal stops. Doors inset on splay under bracketed canopy. Alternate pairs of cottages have gables over slightly projecting window bays. Ground floor casement windows with upper panes. Four-pane casements to first floor. Rubble stone outbuilding and brick walls to rear yards with hogs-back blue copings. C20 continuous rear lean-to. Extensively renovated c1974. Similar to Nos. 30-51 Bathampton Street (q.v.).

Listing NGR: SU1446284760

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26274442

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Setting up a Listed Building Heritage Partnership Agreement: Historic England Advice Note 5
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings