Gooch Street, Swindon

Image: © Brian Robert Marshall Taken: 10 Sep 2009

This area of Swindon was developed in the latter part of the 19th century primarily because of the coming of the railway from London to the west of England. Large numbers of terraced houses were built to provide accommodation for workers at the large railway factory built by I K Brunel to provide everything needed to run a railway. Many of these houses remain. Most of them have small front gardens http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/986163 but a few terraces have none as is the case here where the houses open directly onto the street. Gooch Street is named after one of Brunel's early recruits, Sir Daniel Gooch, who decided that Swindon would be an ideal location for the necessary works. There is an excellent wiki article that gives a potted history of the Swindon works here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swindon_railway_works

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