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Alfred Street, SWINDON, SN1 2BP

The houses are on Medgbury Road which is behind the barrier.

Information below was added by a site visitor in March 2012. The Golden Lion Bridge Mural was painted on the end of a house near Whalebridge Roundabout, Swindon, by Ken White in 1976. It depicts the bridge that once spanned the canal where the Parade intersects with Regent Street and Bridge Street. The mural has recently been restored. http://www.swindonlink.com/features/famous-landmark-to-be-revived-by-swindon-artist

The mural is the work of the celebrated locally-based but internationally-known artist, Ken White http://www.kenwhitemurals.co.uk/home/ It depicts the Golden Lion Bridge which once carried people over the long-gone (from here) Wilts and Berks Canal. The original bridge was here http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/622406 Arguably Ken White's best-known work is the 'Scarlet Lady' to be found on Virgin Airlines planes such as this one photographed by Janet Lute http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/609040 The construction workers in the image are altering the road layout hereabouts as part of the regeneration of this part of Swindon.

Restored in 2009, 33 years after it was first painted, this was artist Ken White's first mural. Golden Lion Bridge crossed the Wilts and Berks canal at the junction of Regent Street and Bridge Street. It was demolished in 1918 following the 1914 closure of the canal. http://www.flickr.com/photos/swindonlocal/3693890062/

See Image for some additional notes.

A Victorian street of terraced housing in the town centre. The gardens on the south side used to back onto the Wilts & Berks Canal, which closed here around 1927. On its route Fleming Way has been built. This photograph was taken in April 1980, from the junction with Medgbury Place. Within a year or so, the south side of the street had been demolished, but the other side was left standing. The houses were built of red brick, and had two bedrooms upstairs. As can be seen, the entrance doors opened directly onto the street. Further along on this side were Cetus Buildings, which had been built as accommodation for canal workers. There was also the Whale Inn, but all these were demolished much earlier, to facilitate road improvements. Much of the site of the demolished terraced houses is now occupied by Cockram Court, a sheltered housing scheme owned by Swindon Borough Council.

Fleming Way is built on the line of a long-gone canal, the Wiltshire and Berkshire, which once ran through the heart of Swindon. Parts of it still exist outside the town and restoration is an ongoing project http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/496686 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1099315 and http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1362014 Thirty odd years ago at this viewpoint the view would have been quite different. Fleming Way was there but the residential block to the right wasn't. Instead you would have seen a row of rather jerry-built cottages that were demolished in what was the last of the clearance areas to be made in Swindon under the Housing Acts in about 1980. At the left was a large factory, Garrards, whose frontage came to the edge of Fleming Way and which would have obscured Jury's hotel just to the left of centre if it had been there, which it wasn't, as it was only completed in 2009 on the site of a Ford dealership. The office block further to the left would also have been lost to view although it may have been there then. It certainly looks 1970s in appearance. It is home to the Benefits Agency, formerly DSS, DHSS or simply 'the social'.

The roundabout provides pedestrian access across the junction of four main roads, Fleming Way (x2), Princes Street and Corporation Street - but not for much longer. As part of the regeneration of the centre of Swindon the roundabout is scheduled to be filled in and has already been so.

A few weeks on from May http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2547829 and the pedestrian subways are all filled in. The work on the roundabout has necessitated some lane closures and patience is required when negotiating the junction. The Ken White mural in the background can be seen in more detail here http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2548187