Swindon's 160 greatest headline makers...part 4

Here you will find those whose work and achievements have helped raise the standing and profile of both the town and the borough, or who have striven to improve the lives of ordinary folk.

It includes the greats of industry, commerce and technology along with those who have gained prominence through sport, arts, culture and media.

We have attempted to cut through the strata of Swindon life to include some of the town’s many colourful characters…along with two horses, a dog and one or two who have brought infamy crashing down upon us.

Here is part four of ten in the series.

Fleming, Harold (1887-1955)

During its 135 year history only one Swindon Town player has ever been capped for England while still at the club.

Butcher’s son Fleming scored on his debut against Luton in 1907 and became Town’s leading scorer that season with 17 goals.

The free-scoring inside forward went on to to play 11 times for England – it would have been more but for injury – scoring nine goals, including a hat-trick in a 6-1 win against Ireland at Dublin in 1912.

Fleming helped Swindon to two FA Cup semi-finals. Retiring just before his 37th birthday in 1924, one-club man Fleming made 336 appearances for Town, scoring 204 goals.

A superb statue of the star adorns the County Ground foyer while Fleming Way was named in his honour.

 

Fleming, Ian (1908-1964)

He is the most successful author ever to have lived in the Borough of Swindon but died of a heart attack as he was just beginning to enjoy worldwide recognition.

The creator of James Bond acquired Warneford Place at Sevenhampton near Highworth in 1959 three years before the release of the first 007 film Dr No.

Several Bond novels and stories – all eventually made into films – were written during his final years, as was the children’s story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

He is buried at the parish church of St James where a gravestone obelisk bears a Latin inscription that, translated, reads: ‘You are rotting away now after having had a great life.’

Highworth boasts the only pub in the world called Goldfinger, after one of Fleming’s most popular Bond adventures.

 

Francome, John (1952-) MBE

The son of a Swindon railway fireman, Francome scorched a winning path around many a racecourse during an illustrious 17-year career.

One of Swindon’s most successful sportsmen, he became a stable-lad at 16 in Lambourn before going on to ride a staggering 1,138 winners.  

Francome was National Hunt champion jockey seven times between 1976 and 1985. His finest hour was probably winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1978 on Midnight Court.

After retiring he became a trainer, a well-known TV pundit and the successful author of an on-going series of equestrian themed thrillers.

 

Frederick, George (1871-1896)

As sporting celebrations go, few could match the hysteria that greeted George Frederick, winner of the greatest race of the year, the 1874 Epsom Derby.

Ridden by Harry Custance, the 9/1 three-year-old dramatically romped from the back of the field to win by two lengths.

A cheering throng met the thoroughbred’s entourage at Swindon station before they loudly accompanied the muscular “golden chestnut” to his Wroughton stable.

The village church-bells rang “merry peals,” the pubs were open for two days without respite, flags flew and the village brass band discharged Handel’s See The Conquering Hero Comes.
No-one who witnessed it ever forgot the triumphant homecoming of George Frederick.

 

French, George ‘Hooty’ (1841-1906)

Part of French’s job at GWR was to sound the famous works hooter but he was sacked, ironically, for poor timekeeping.

So he took to the streets selling paper windmills and other children’s toys that he had made while trawling his scant belongings along in a trolley concocted from a wooden tea chest.

Hooty, as he became known, had the knack of accurately imitating the works hooter by blowing through a small pipe to amuse passers-by for small change.

He was said to have slept in empty pipes at the railway site earning him the addition nickname of Hooty-up-a-gas-pipe.

Becoming something of a celebrity, the raggedly-attired Hooty appeared on several local postcards. He died at the workhouse aged 65.

 

Frost, Stanley (1918-)

Ex-prisoner of war Stanley Frost was so outraged at the demolition of Swindon’s classically styled 1886 built Baptist Tabernacle that he had the façade transported to a field near Malmesbury.

He devised a scheme to re-construct the 2,000-stone edifice into a grand house he intended to build in the countryside.

But after a ten year battle with planners, and having invested his £16,000 savings, he was forced to give-up.

Twenty years later Swindon council acquired the stones with the aim of incorporating the façade into the town centre redevelopment. If the scheme succeeds we should thank one man.

 

George, Reuben (1864-1936)

Socialist reformer and “champion of the underdog,” Reuben George was a Mayor of Swindon and high profile politician who strove to improve the lot of working class Swindon people.

He felt much could be achieved through education and in 1907 founded the Swindon branch of the Workers Educational Association, an organisation with which he was connected for the rest of his life.

It was said that no man had more friends among both Swindon’s ordinary people and its’ great and good than Reuben George.

The Advertiser wrote that his funeral “was the greatest public demonstration of spontaneous affection for a public figure that the town of Swindon had seen for very many years,” adding “men and women sobbed audibly.”

 

Gilbert, William (1831-1911)

For many years William Gilbert worked as a grocer in Swindon until he decided to revert to his earlier occupation of cabinet-maker and upholsterer.

Cabbages went out the window as the home furnishings business began to thrive in the rapidly growing town.

Over the decades all manner of furniture, fixtures and fittings were sold to Swindon people from the company’s prominent Old Town premises.

A cornerstone of Swindon’s retailing history and one of the town’s oldest shops, Gilberts has stood imposingly at the junction of Newport Street and High Street since the 1870s

 

Goddard Family (1563-1927)

Thomas Goddard from Upham in Aldbourne acquired the Manor of Swindon in 1563 and his descendants became the settlement’s presiding lords for nearly 400 years.

The 2,000 acre estate – the heart of today’s of Old Town plus adjoining Lawns park – included scores of houses, 100 orchards, two water mills and The Crown Inn that was later re-named The Goddard Arms.

Thomas Goddard II was in 1626 granted the right by Charles I to hold markets and fairs in Swindon, boosting the community’s standing, trading opportunities and the Goddard coffers.

Some 13 heads of the Goddard family – three of whom became local MPs – presided over Swindon until Major Fitzroy Pleydell Goddard, a diplomat and High Sheriff of Wiltshire, died childless at 74 in 1927. 

Known as The Manor House, then Swindon House and finally The Lawns, the family’s once grand mansion fell into dereliction and was demolished in 1952.

 

Gooch, Sir Daniel (1816-1889)

If this history was compiled in order of merit rather than alphabetically then the name of Daniel Gooch would stand at the very top.

It was Gooch, as the GWR’s young Locomotive Superintendent, who suggested to his boss Brunel that they build their loco factory on fields a mile from Swindon Hill (Old Town).

No Gooch, in all probability, no modern Swindon. He built the railworks and was in charge of it from 1837 to 1864, designing the first ever Swindon-made loco, Great Western. This, in turn, evolved under Gooch into the powerful Iron Duke class engine which achieved a remarkable 70mph.

Gooch also led the project to lay the first transatlantic cable for which he was knighted before returning to the GWR to turn it into a profit-making organisation.

 

Gore, Charles (1866-1951)

A GWR coach builder-turned-clothier, Gore was an avid collector who began with fossils before moving onto just about anything that took his fancy or captured his interest.

His collection became the stuff of local legend – military regalia, Roman coins, prehistoric arrowheads, stuffed animals.

Running out of space, he offered the lot to Swindon town council on the condition that they find somewhere to display it.

Appointing Gore as its curator, they created Swindon’s first museum at a former chapel in Regent Circus before re-locating it to the Bath Road site where the museum stands today.

In 1930 Gore was made a Freeman of Swindon as a mark of the community’s appreciation.

 

Gosling, William (1892-1945) VC

In Arras, France on April 5, 1917 Wanborough-born Sergeant Gosling, of the Swindon detachment of the Wessex Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, won the nation’s highest military honour.

When a faulty British mortar bomb flopped out of the barrel ten yards from his trench he sprang out, lifted its nose from the mud, unscrewed the fuse and hurled the missile away.

His “very gallant and prompt action”, said the Victoria Cross citation, “undoubtedly saved the lives of the whole detachment.”

Gosling received a heroes’ welcome back home which included a brass band procession, receptions at Swindon town hall and the Empire Theatre and £130 raised by Advertiser readers.

 

Gradwell, Angela (1906-1994)

Representing England at hockey in Germany in 1935, Angela courageously sparked a diplomatic incident when she alone refused to return a Nazi salute to a cordon of Hitler youth.

A journalist for left wing and trades union publications, she also wrote books highlighting the universal struggle of workers. Angela was an indomitable supporter of the cold war peace campaign and a well-known figure in Swindon playing her concertina to raise funds for the cause.

Married to Swindon Communist branch secretary Ike Gradwell, in her 80s Angela could often be found at the Greenham Common peace camp protesting against nuclear arms.

 

Gray, Cyril (1906-2001)

Well known for their Wiltshire Lardy Cake, Gray’s Bakery became a Swindon institution.

His father Samuel, a “high-class pastry cook”, opened a bakery in Bridge Street in 1919 before Cyril joined at the age of 13.

At its height in the late 1940s Grays had seven shops, eight delivery vans and 120 staff, plying Swindonians with cakes, rolls, sarnies and baps.

Cyril didn’t hang up his apron until he was 91 in 1998, signalling the end of Gray’s last remaining bakery shop in Devizes Road, Old Town.

According to the National Association of Master Bakers, Cyril was, since the 1980s, Britain’s oldest working baker.

 

Halcrow, Sir William (1883-1958)

Peering at Swindon from lofty Burderop Park, Wroughton, is Halcrow, a leading international civil engineering firm.

It was formed by Sir William Halcrow, one of the most notable British civil engineers of the 20th Century who initially specialised in tunnels.

He designed deep air raid shelters beneath London during World War Two and his knowledge of dams helped Barnes Wallis invent the bouncing bomb of Dambusters-fame.

Sir William was later involved in a string of global projects involving the provision of roads, bridges, harbours and other infrastructure.

In recent years the company has been party to pioneering projects such as the creation of international airports at Toronto and Abu Dhabi, the Channel Tunnel rail link and the Second Severn Crossing.

 

Harrod, Sheila (1944-) BEM

A naturally gifted singer, Sheila formed the Kentwood Choir in 1964 after giving private tuition to a handful of Swindon girls.

Over the decades the choir has sung all over the world and has drawn its members from hundreds of local singers tutored to Sheila’s exacting standards. 

The choir’s junior section in 1993 performed in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, starring Philip Schofield, at the London Palladium and also at that year’s Royal Variety Performance.

The Kentwood Choir marked its 50th anniversary with a performance at the Royal Albert Hall while Sheila was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to music.

 

• This feature is the serialisation of the souvenir supplement that appeared in the Adver on June 24. Limited copies are still available from our reception desk on a first come first served basis.