HAVING nobly served the people of Swindon for almost a decade, ferrying countless thousands of passengers around town, our last surviving tram – a remarkable relic from a bygone age and a unique local heritage artefact – is slowly trundling towards the scrapheap unless an increasingly urgent solution is found.
IT is easy to imagine Horace Thompson breaking into a smile as he recalled nearly 70 years later that rare, wonderful moment of comfort and joy which magically materialised amidst the carnage and suffering on that most infamous of thoroughfares
JOHN Clinch gazed at the towering, aluminium-alloy structure that was radiant in its freshly applied coats of pinks, yellows, oranges and sky blues before revealing that his work in Swindon was not yet done. He had another idea and it was a good ‘un.
CHRIS Tarrant, the future presenter of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, was in brass monkey mode up on top, being exposed to a constant barrage of fresh air. His ears were ringing too. It was as if fellow ex-Brummie residents Black Sabbath were tuning up alongside him.
STEVE Rosier carefully considered the question before shaking his head. “If I’d have known in 2006 what I know now I would not have become involved.”
“I’LL take you on a little walk,” says Steve Rosier. Seconds later we are behind the mesh security fence and brushing our way through a tangle of weeds, bushes, nettles and trees while tramping over fragments of masonry and assorted rubbish. It is like entering some tumbledown, long-abandoned mansion that is being eagerly reclaimed by nature.
IT was a spectacle seldom witnessed in this country, commented the Swindon Advertiser on Monday, June 11, 1877. All of the shops had closed for two hours on their busiest day of the week, Saturday. And every other business activity was suspended between one and three o’clock. Throughout the town blinds were drawn in many windows.
THEY revolutionised life in our burgeoning town – helping to bridge the gulf both physically and psychologically between the old market settlement-on-the-hill and the industrialised community below… but they only lasted 25 years before being discarded for a younger, fitter model.
I AM off to meet that most esoteric, verging-on-mythological performer of the Big Top - a lion tamer. Sorry, lion trainer. But instead of turning right from the bottom of my street towards Coate Water where Gerry Cottle’s Circus is encamped, I am steering left.
SWINDON’S visionary, innovative and popular first ever arts officer Terry Court, who died last week aged 73, stipulated in his will that his funeral should be a colourful affair to reflect his outlook on life.
