IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Castle Dore, SWINDON, SN5 8PQ

Another of the many residential no through roads which make up this area.

In the 17th century, Whitehill Farm was a 65-acre dairy farm. Then, together with Mannington and Toothill Farms, it was bought by Thomas Sutton, and formed part of the Charterhouse estate in Lydiard Tregoze. The rents from the tenant farmers went to fund Charterhouse School, which started as a charitable venture for the education of poor boys. In 1919, the three farms were sold to Wiltshire County Council and broken up into smallholdings for the use of ex-servicemen returning from WWI. In the 1970s, they were engulfed by modern housing after westward expansion of Swindon was approved. Whitehill Farmhouse is now a Swindon Borough Council property.

Taken February 2015 on 35mm Kodak film.

The B4534.

The Oliver Tompkins Schools are Church of England Voluntary Aided schools. The Infant School is in the distance on the left; the Junior School is nearest the camera.

The cottages aren't particularly remarkable. They were probably farm-workers' dwellings built perhaps between the wars. At that time the road they are on was the main route from Swindon to the west country. That remained the case until the early 1970s when a new road south of here was built and the whole area now known as Toothill and Freshbrook was developed as large housing estates, surrounding the cottages with new houses. The once main road became just suburban in character, servicing the residents of the new dwellings. The cottages survived the succeeding forty years (in whose ownership I'm not sure) but now it seems their life is to come to an end. The now-empty cottages and their gardens are soon to be sold at auction, probably to a developer who will demolish them and construct four new housing units. For another view see Image