IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Sawyer Road, SWINDON, SN25 4WP

Catering for the recent influx of young families, to northern Swindon.

2000s houses in Abbey Mead.

One of a number of local paths and cycleways through grassy or wooded strips of land which have been left in between the housing.

The path marks the southern edge of the northern development area of Swindon. This view is facing west.

The Groundwell residential area sits on rising land north of the established Penhill estate. In this west-facing view out of the square the cycle track enters the image at the right just about on the western gridline of this square.

This is the northern edge of the large municipal housing estate developed in the 1950s. It may not have existed had it not been for a land acquisition problem on the east side of Swindon where the next housing estate was planned, Walcot. This resulted in an 18 month hiatus and, rather than break up the housebuilding machine that had formed to build houses for the Council, the decision was made to extend Penhill further north than had originally been planned. This took up the slack until work started on Walcot in 1955. Rightly or wrongly 'the valley' as it became known gained a reputation as a sink for 'problem families'. An attempt to remove the stigma was made by the Council by trying to rename the area as 'Lower Penhill'. I don't think it caught on.

Thresher Drive is part of a fairly new residential development in the northern part of Swindon. In this view we are close to the north-western corner of the square. The houses are in the next square north. The small road the opening of which is just visible at the right is just within this square. The unusual tube structure in the centre of the image is part of Motorola who have a manufacturing facility here. The end of the tube is at SU149893.

This is the interface between the 1950s housing estate of Penhill, out of shot to the right, and the 1990s northern development area.

Melksham Close is at the northern edge of Penhill. The estate was developed in the early to mid 1950s by the local council. I understand it had been intended to complete the estate a few hundred metres south of here but circumstances made the council decide to carry on down the northern slope of the hill the estate is mainly built upon. This northern extension became known as 'the valley' and soon acquired something of a poor reputation where it was suspected 'problem families' were housed. I have no way of knowing whether that is true or, if it is, was a deliberate policy on the part of the Housing department. It is true that there have been instances of some properties in the valley having been used as crack houses.

The building is home to Vygon, one of the UK’s leading suppliers of medical devices. Formerly the home of UK manufacturing for Motorola, it also starred as a Turkish oil platform in the James Bond film, The World Is Not Enough.