From Construction to Campaign

 From the photograph taken below on-site in January last year at Regent Circus...

... to the full-size ad in December's Wiltshire Business magazine....

... and half-page ad in this March's edition.

Regeneration In Lights

More History Than You Can Smoke a Long Cigarette At

In preparation for repairs, the full ghost sign advert on Swindon's Manchester Road/Aylesbury Street has now been revealed.

We're Nearly There

Demolition Glow

The sun going down on Aspen House.

Mid-Summer Tower of Strength

Supermarket Slope

The new Morrisons store in Swindon's Regent Circus has a roof more like a ski slope.

Behind the Hoardings at Regent Circus

A taste of the views and scenes behind the hoardings at Swindon's Regent Circus development on the old Swindon College site.

The cinema building.

Back towards the Town Hall.

Towards Prospect Hill.

Aspen House, the Town Hall, Central Library, Wyvern Theatre, New Falcon House and the Whalebridge Car Park.

The view out from the supermarket building.

The huge supermarket roof supported in the centre by just two columns creating a vast and clear floor space.

Spot the Original Features

There's only three pre-1960s structures in this photo of Swindon's skyline. Can you spot them?

Wellington House, SN1 (previously Premier House), Station Square (previously 125 House), the Tri-Centre,  Milford House, New Falcon House, Plaza 21, the Telephone Exchange building, and Swindon College.

The old features are?

Day and Night at Whalebridge

Swindon's Kimmerfields phase 1 Whalebridge car park by Ed Howell and I, by day and by night.

Regent Revival

Some of the latest pictures from onsite at Swindon's Regent Circus development, including the Swindon Bear in the cinema.

Sunshine and Rain

A break in the weather at last today and a couple of sunshine and rain pictures of Swindon's Long shop building in the rail works site. The work on the Outlet Centre's expansion into the Long Shop is underway.

See Through Trees

The first phase of Swindon's Kimmerfield's development on the former police station site is now complete and there's a part that few have noticed.

The section that joins the Whalebridge car park and residential Kimmerfields Court block has a section of metal with punched out trees artwork on it. It's viewable from both the Princes Street and Gordon Road sides.

Right Beneath Our Feet : Swindon's Lost Library

It's not every day you discover a library lost for decades whilst walking to buy a loaf of bread.

But at the back of Aspen House, in the alleyway that links Regent Street and Granville Street, just a few inches below where the tarmac has broken away, is a double-line of bricks.

Looking at this map from the Swindon Collection, it's marked in 1956 as a 'Arts Centre and Junior Library'. It's shape and location makes it seem to be the Northern wall, running South-West to North-East.

In a similar way to the remains of Byron Street that we found just a few inches below the street surface, it makes you wonder how many other buildings in Swindon lie just below our feet, waiting to be discovered...

The broken red brick sits clearly amongst the broken tarmac and fag-ends.

To give some context, the close-up picture is about an inch to the left of the left gate-post of the back of the Aspen House site.

Shiny Pictures To Let

From a perfect day in March at Kembrey Park

The Lost Streets of Swindon

When Ed Howell and I photographed the demolition of Swindon College at Regent Circus, we didn't expect to find an entire street hidden on the site.

As we walked on a soaking wet day around the front of the site, passed the flat roof library, at the back of Byron Street, the mud had been churned up by the bulldozers. 

They'd scraped away the top layer of soil and just a few inches under the surface was the brickwork of the houses of the now (nearly entirely) lost Byron Street. 

The flat-roofed library building, which the original line of Byron street went through from left to right.

The double-brickwork of houses from the 1960s-demolished Byron Street.

Byron Street now exists as a small stub at Regent Circus, but the original street went north to south through the former Swindon College site.

How Byron Street use to look in 1957. This is looking south towards Old Town.

For more details on the photograph above, visit the Swindon Local Flickr account here.