Regeneration In Lights

We're Nearly There

Demolition Glow

The sun going down on Aspen House.

The Disappearance of Aspen House

With demolition on the smaller sections of Aspen House underway, the tower is wrapped up ready to vanish from the Swindon skyline.

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.

David Murray John

A well-designed landmark building has a surface appearance that changes depending on the weather and time of day.

In Swindon, that's the much unappreciated David Murray John building.

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.

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.

New & Old History

It's only been two years since these photographs were taken and already the regeneration has taken a bite out of the past. Some places and views have changed markedly, and others are exactly the same.

For New Falcon House, time stands still.

Whalebridge with the roundabout slowly vanishing. This view is no longer possible as the first stage of the Kimmerfields development sits in the wasteground at the front of the picture.

Don't trip over the kerb.

Broadgreen.

1980s Brutalism

1980s Brutalism (with shoulder pads)

Rail, Retail & Rubble

The former Clares site at North Star use to be a carriage works building before turning to making retail equipment. Although the buildings were demolished, the ground still yields lots of recent history.

This Isn't Just Any Shopfront... This Is An M&S Shopfront

One of the most decorative shopfronts on Swindon's Regent Street.

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.