The Griffin family – another Swindon story

The national news this weekend has been dominated by the announced closure of the Tata Steelworks in Port Talbot, South Wales with the loss of more than 4,000 jobs, half that number going within the next 18 months. Steel production in Port Talbot dates back more than a century with 20,000 employed there during the peak of production in the 1960s. The people of Port Talbot are fearful for the future of their town and the prospects for their young people.

Does all this sound rather familiar? Here in Swindon, where the railway factory closed in 1986, we now have a whole generation who never knew Swindon when it was a railway town.

For the children of Rodbourne who attend Even Swindon School the history of the railway works is kept alive, but is this the same for other schools in the town where local history has a low priority on the national curriculum.

Once upon a time (and yes, this is beginning to sound like a fairy tale) whole families were employed in the Works. Take the Griffin family for example.

Phillip James Griffin was employed as a clerk in the railway factory and all four of his sons followed him ‘inside.’ Eldest son Frank Aldworth Griffin entered service in the Works as a clerk, passing his probationary period satisfactorily along with the Paddington examination on May 17, 1898. He was followed by Phillip William Griffin who embarked upon a 7 year Fitting and Turning Apprenticeship on his 14^th birthday in 1899.  Ralph Ernest Griffin was 15 years old when he began a Fitting and Turning Apprenticeship on April 16, 1903 and youngest brother Cyril Arthur started work on September 8, 1908 as an office boy aged 14.

The four brothers never married; Frank, Ralph and Cyril lived with their widowed mother Caroline in Clifton Street. Only Phillip William Griffin moved away, and when the time came he returned home to be buried with the family in Radnor Street Cemetery, the last resting place for so many of the railway men and their families.

Cyril died in 1934 and was buried with his parents in grave plot A742.

Frank, Ralph and Phillip Griffin are buried together in grave plot D440.