Whitworth Road Cemetery

When Alderman Edwin Jones formally opened the new cemetery at Whitworth Road in 1914 he made a gesture of remembrance, uniting the two cemeteries and Swindon’s history. He planted an oak sapling grown from an acorn dropped by ‘the magnificent oak tree which is such a prominent feature of the Radnor Street cemetery’ reported the Faringdon Advertiser.

Today the mature shrubs and trees in Radnor Street Cemetery create a green oasis in the town centre, but where is that magnificent oak tree?

We believe this is the oak tree, pictured at the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1881 the cemetery was laid out on a piece of managed woodland called Howse’s (previously Wibley’s) Coppice. Local historian Kevin Leakey has kindly shared his work on plotting the fields as they appeared on the Tithe Map in 1841.

Kevin explains that the land on which the cemetery was later laid out was part of tithe free land. You can read more about Howse’s Coppice here.

How old was the oak tree in 1914. A hundred years old, two hundred, who knows? Sadly, it does not survive in 2022, but looking through the images in our archive Andy recently came across this one, sent to us by Robin Earle. Taken sometime in the 1980s this photograph captures an oak tree, heavily pruned but still there. We can only assume it was later deemed unsafe and eventually felled.

Swindon’s new cemetery on the Whitworth Road, which has cost the Town Council £7,283, was formally opened by Alderman E. Jones (chairman of the Health Committee) on Saturday.

The Council have acquired 35 acres of land, and laid out ten acres for immediate provision, and upon this they have erected a chapel at a cost of £760, and a superintendent’s lodge will be built at a cost of £400.

After an inspection of the grounds already laid out with drives, fencing, rockeries and shrubs, the chapel was visited, and appreciation of the compactness and pleasant appearance of the building was expressed by the members of the Health Committee present. To commemorate the occasion a tree was planted by Alderman Jones – a 12 years old oak sapling which grew from an acorn dropped by the magnificent oak tree which is such a prominent feature of the Radnor Street cemetery. Alderman Jones, in an interesting speech, remarked that that week commenced his twenty-third year in connection with the work of the town, and in looking back upon that long period he was sorry to recollect how many had passed away with whom he had been associated in public office.

In 1881 Swindon commenced to utilise the Radnor Street interment ground, and since that time there had been 13,500 persons buried in that cemetery; 1,800 grave plots had been purchased; 1,200 monuments had been erected, and the area contained 7,000 glass wreaths. This cemetery had cost the town £10,000, but it was recognised by the Town Council some years ago that other provision would have to be made for the growing needs of the community.

Negotiations for this further accommodation were commenced in 1907, and out of several sites this one, which combined an advantage of situation and Local Government Board requirements, was selected. It was hoped that this portion would last at least 40 to 50 years.

The Faringdon Advertiser, Saturday, May 2, 1914.

Swindon Society Summer Outing

We were delighted to welcome members of the Swindon Society to a guided cemetery walk yesterday evening. And although there was a chill in the air, it was a sunny evening with beautiful views across the cemetery. There is always a different atmosphere during a summer evening cemetery walk, something we have not attempted for several years now. Perhaps it is an event we will consider holding again.

The Swindon Society celebrates its 50^th anniversary in September. While other local history groups in Swindon are struggling with falling numbers post Covid restrictions, the Swindon Society is thriving. Yesterday marked the end of their season of talks for a brief summer break before gearing up for their 50^th celebrations.

More than 30 members joined us for our walk and heard stories about Emily Peddle, W.J. Nurden (the latest CWG headstone to be erected in the cemetery) and William Harvie inventor of the amazing Multiple Cake Cutting Machine. We later adjourned to the Ashford Road Club who kindly provided tea and biscuits alongside their usual bar facilities.

Thank you to Graham Carter for the photographs.

James ‘Raggy’ Powell – one of nature’s princes.

The re-imagined story …

My father loved a bargain. Our house was full of them. But sadly, everything he bought home was broken and he wasn’t what you’d call ‘handy.’ In a town full of men who could make and mend anything, usually ‘on the quiet’ in the Works, my father was the exception.

“They can see you coming,” my mother said. She was the fixer in our house.

My mother loved a bargain too and as fast as the battered and broken objects came into our house, mother got rid of them.

“Is that Raggy on his rounds,” she would call to me at play in the street. “Ask him to stop by.”

Raggy regularly came round the streets with his horse and cart, ringing his bell, buying the flotsam and jetsam of people’s lives. He would take most items, a bit like my father, and he always gave mother a fair price. He particularly liked a painting in a broken frame she sold him. That was the only thing father was ever really angry about, that painting of the Old Parish Church.

“I was going to mend the frame and hang it in the front room.”

Mother raised her eyebrow. We both knew he would never have got the job done and the painting would have stood in his shed behind the door forever.

“And if you don’t do something with the marble maiden in the garden, I’ll see what Raggy will give me for that as well,” mother threatened. “Blooming thing gives me the creeps.”

*Image published courtesy of Local Studies, Swindon Central Library.*

The facts …

Little is known of the early life of James Powell who was born in Dublin in about 1850. It was previously thought he had not arrived in Swindon until the 1890s but he is found living at 15 Rolleston Street with his parents and five boarders at the time of the 1871 census. Then aged 21, James was working as a hawker, another word for an itinerate street seller. James never moved far from the town centre. In 1881 he and his first wife Theresa lived over a green grocer’s shop at No 1 Byron Street. Theresa Clancey Powell died in 1889 and she is also buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.

By the 1890s James had set up home in Regent Close where he worked as a Marine Store Dealer. This was the name given to a licensed broker who bought and sold used rags, timber and general waste material; a rag and bone man, an occupation that earned him the nickname Raggy. In 1891 he married his second wife Harriet Maggs, a widow with two children, and it is with her that he is buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.

James had received little education but he constantly sought to improve himself by attending lectures at the Mechanics’ Institution and he turned to that other great champion of the people, Reuben George, who taught him how to read.

Although James was uneducated he appreciated the pieces of artwork he came across on his rounds, repairing broken frames and putting the paintings in good order before donating them to Swindon’s first museum housed in a former Catholic Church called Victoria Hall in Regent Street. Paintings by local artists George Puckey, John Hood and David Gaddon, donated by James still form part of the collection once housed in the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery in Bath Road.

Perhaps one of the most extraordinary objects donated to the people of Swindon by James is the statue that stands in the foyer of the Town Hall. The white Carrara marble statue by Italian sculptor Pasquale Miglioretti depicts Charlotte Corday who in 1793 stabbed and murdered Jean-Paul Marat, a radical journalist during the period of the French Revolution. How James came across this work of art on his Swindon rounds remains unknown but it surely deserves a more prominent position where more people can see it.

James stood for election following the incorporation of the Borough of Swindon in 1901 and served as a councillor for both the North and West Wards until the 1920s. One of his fellow Councillors later described him as ‘one of nature’s princes.’

He was an Alderman and also made a Freeman of the Borough in 1920 along with George Churchward, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway, the first two men to be so honoured.

James owned various tracts of land, which he later gifted to the people of Swindon. A parcel of land in Savernake Street was given ‘for the benefit of scholars’ along with a plot in Gorse Hill.

James Powell was at the very heart of fund raising in Swindon during the Great War, arranging flag days and working with the Central Cinema and the Empire Theatre, organising family events. In 1917 he arranged numerous tea parties held in Town Gardens for members of The Social Club for the Wives and Mothers of Members of the Armed Forces.