IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Mildenhall Way, SWINDON, SN2 5NT

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

2000s houses in Abbey Mead.

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

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.

The avenue is the spine road of 'the valley' area of Penhill, that part of the estate developed last. The entrance to Imber Walk is visible at the left behind the silver car. The pillar box is unlikely to be a Victorian post box or a Georgian post box or an Edwardian post box.

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.

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

These terraced houses are at the higher end of the avenue which drops down from here into a small valley to the north.

Using the zoom feature of my camera reveals little signs of these modern times. Satellite TV dishes are everywhere now beaming the dirty digger's output into homes the world over. The deployment of a CCTV camera on a modest terraced house tells us much about the fear of crime nowadays. Neither feature was in anyone's mind when the estate was developed over 50 years ago.

This section of the avenue is climbing up the hill from 'the valley' to its junction with Downton Road. This is close to the western gridline of the square and the upper half of the image is in the next one west.