Great Western Railway Works water tower, Swindon

Camilla invited me to attend today's meeting of SWAPT, the south-west Association of Preservation Trusts, which was being hosted by the Mechanics' Institution in Swindon, Wiltshire.  She was acting as the Chair and told me there would be some good invited speakers as well as the other representatives of the various trusts.  As a trustee I have attended some of these occasional meetings and was particularly pleased to go to the venue at the heart of the old Railway Village Conservation Area. There were senior representative speakers from The National Trust, the Architectural Heritage Fund,  Historic England and the local conservation group.

I learnt a lot especially that these other organisations were all changing and becoming much more flexible which to my mind is totally appropriate for the years to come.  I have gained confidence that the sector is becoming more powerful and that there work will enable a lot of key regeneration throughout the country, and not just for the traditional recipients of funding.

After a wonderful lunch we given a short tour of the Railway Village built to hose the workers for the engine and carriage works which were at the heart of the Great Western Railway.  As a kid I went on a steam train trip to visit and have a guided tour of the still fully functioning steam engine repair works at Swindon, just a couple of hundred yards from this venue.  The whole Rialway Village area has luckily been restored by the local preservation group whose lead person was out host.

On the walk he showed us a variety of the buildings for both the workers to live in and the industrial sites where they were engaged.  This wonderful water tower was built in 1870 and may be well known to travellers on the railway lines through Swindon, lying just to the west of the station, beside the old carriage works.  It measures 8 metres square by 23 metres in height and holds a 1.8 metre deep water tank on the top, which was replaced in 1979-80.