Swindon facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Swindon
Swindon's town centre skyline seen from Radnor Street Cemetery
Swindon
Population	185,600 (built-up area in 2011)
OS grid reference	SU152842
• London	71 miles (114 km)
Unitary authority	Swindon
Ceremonial county	Wiltshire
Region	South West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	SWINDON
Postcode district	SN1–SN6, SN25, SN26
Dialling code	01793
Police	Wiltshire
Fire	Wiltshire
Ambulance	Great Western
EU Parliament	South West England
UK Parliament	North Swindon South Swindon
Website	Borough Council
List of places UK England Wiltshire 51°34′N 1°47′W / 51.56°N 1.78°W / 51.56; -1.78

Swindon is a large town in Wiltshire, South West England, lying between Bristol, 35 miles (56 kilometres) to the west, and Reading, the same distance to the east. The town is 71 miles (114 km) west of London. The population of the Swindon built-up area was 185,600 in 2011.

The Town Development Act 1952 led to a major increase in its population.

Swindon railway station is on the line from London Paddington to Bristol. Swindon Borough Council is a unitary authority, independent of Wiltshire Council since 1997. Residents of Swindon are known as Swindonians. The town is home to the offices of English Heritage, the Historic England Archive (formerly the National Monuments Record Centre) and the headquarters of the National Trust (all three are on parts of the site of the former Great Western Railway's Swindon Works), and the head office of the Nationwide Building Society.

History

The Wilts and Berks Canal near Rushey Platt

Early history

The original Anglo-Saxon settlement of Swindon sat in a defensible position atop a limestone hill. It is referred to in the Domesday Book as Suindune, believed to be derived from the Old English words "swine" and "dun" meaning "pig hill" or possibly Sweyn's hill, where Sweyn is a personal name.

Swindon was a small market town, mainly for barter trade, until roughly 1848. This original market area is on top of the hill in central Swindon, now known as Old Town.

The Industrial Revolution was responsible for an acceleration of Swindon's growth. It started with the construction of the Wilts and Berks Canal in 1810 and the North Wilts Canal in 1819. The canals brought trade to the area and Swindon's population started to grow.

Railway town

Swindon Community Centre - Railway Village

Between 1841 and 1842, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Swindon Works was built for the repair and maintenance of locomotives on the Great Western Railway (GWR). The GWR built a small railway village to house some of its workers. The Steam Railway Museum and English Heritage, including the English Heritage Archive, now occupy part of the old works. In the village were the GWR Medical Fund Clinic at Park House and its hospital, both on Faringdon Road, and the 1892 health centre in Milton Road – which housed clinics, a pharmacy, laundries, baths, Turkish baths and swimming pools – was almost opposite.

From 1871, GWR workers had a small amount deducted from their weekly pay and put into a healthcare fund – its doctors could prescribe them or their family members free medicines or send them for medical treatment. In 1878 the fund began providing artificial limbs made by craftsmen from the carriage and wagon works, and nine years later opened its first dental surgery. In his first few months in post the dentist extracted more than 2000 teeth. From the opening in 1892 of the Health Centre, a doctor could also prescribe a haircut or even a bath. The cradle-to-grave extent of this service was later used as a blueprint for the NHS.

The Mechanics' Institute, formed in 1844, moved into a building looking rather like a church and included a covered market, on 1 May 1855. The New Swindon Improvement Company, a co-operative, raised the funds for this path self-improvement and paid the GWR £40 a year for its new home on a site at the heart of the railway village. It was a groundbreaking organisation that transformed the railway's workforce into some of the country's best-educated manual workers.

It had the UK's first lending library, and a range of improving lectures, access to a theatre and a range of activities from ambulance classes to xylophone lessons. A former Institute secretary formed the New Swindon Co-operative Society in 1853 which, after a schism in the society's membership, spawned the New Swindon Industrial Society that ran a retail business from a stall in the market at the Institute. The Institute also nurtured pioneering trades unionists and encouraged local democracy.

When tuberculosis hit the new town, the Mechanics' Institute persuaded the industrial pioneers of North Wiltshire to agree that the railway's former employees should continue to receive medical attention from the doctors of GWR Medical Society Fund, which the Institute had played a role in establishing and funding.

Swindon's 'other' railway, the Swindon, Marlborough and Andover Railway, merged with the Swindon and Cheltenham Extension Railway to form the Midland & South Western Junction Railway, which set out to join the London & South Western Railway with the Midland Railway at Cheltenham. The Swindon, Marlborough & Andover had planned to tunnel under the hill on which Swindon's Old Town stands but the money ran out and the railway ran into Swindon Town railway station, off Devizes Road in the Old Town, skirting the new town to the west, intersecting with the GWR at Rushey Platt and heading north for Cirencester, Cheltenham and the LMS, whose 'Midland Red' livery the M&SWJR adopted.

During the second half of the 19th century, Swindon New Town grew around the main line between London and Bristol. In 1900, the original market town, Old Swindon, merged with its new neighbour at the bottom of the hill to become a single town.

On 1 July 1923, the GWR took over the largely single-track M&SWJR and the line northwards from Swindon Town was diverted to Swindon Junction station, leaving the Town station with only the line south to Andover and Salisbury. The last passenger trains on what had been the SM&A ran on 10 September 1961, 80 years after the railway's first stretch opened.

During the first half of the 20th century, the railway works was the town's largest employer and one of the biggest in the country, employing more than 14,500 workers. Alfred Williams (1877–1930) wrote about his life as a hammerman at the works.

The works' decline started in 1960, when it rolled out Evening Star, the last steam engine to be built in the UK. The works lost its locomotive building role and took on rolling stock maintenance for British Rail. In the late 1970s, much of the works closed and the rest followed in 1986.

The Community Centre in the Railway Village was originally the Barrack accommodation for Railway Employees of the GWR. The building became the Railway Museum in the 1960s, until the opening of the STEAM Museum in the 2000s.

Railway Town is also the name of a feature-length documentary made by local filmmaker Martin Parry about the creation of the town around the railway works.

Modern period

Swindon in 1933

Swindon in 1959 - grid squares are 1km

David Murray John, Swindon's town clerk from 1938 to 1974, is seen as a pioneering figure in Swindon's post-war regeneration; his last act before retirement was to sign the contract for Swindon's tallest building, which is now named after him. His successor was David Maxwell Kent, appointed by the Swindon/Highworth Joint Committee in 1973. He had worked closely with David Murray John and continued similar policies for a further twenty years. The Greater London Council withdrew from the Town Development Agreement and the local council continued the development on its own.

There was the problem of the Western Development and of Lydiard Park being in the new North Wiltshire district, but this was resolved by a boundary change to take in part of North Wiltshire. Another factor limiting local decision-taking was the continuing role of Wiltshire County Council in the administration of Swindon. Together with like-minded councils, a campaign was launched to bring an updated form of county borough status to Swindon. This was successful in 1997, and Wiltshire is now divided into two Unitary Councils, both of equal status. One is Wiltshire Council, succeeding the former Wiltshire County Council and the Wiltshire district councils other than Thamesdown, while the other is Swindon Borough Council, covering the area of the former Thamesdown and the former Highworth Rural District Council.

The closure of the railway works (which had been in decline for many years) was a major blow to Swindon.

Because of this and the major growth in population diversification was continued at a rapid pace and the Town now has all the features of a successful urban/rural Council in the Outer South East Zone.

In February 2008 The Times named Swindon as one of "The 20 best places to buy a property in Britain". Only Warrington had a lower ratio of house prices to household income in 2007, with the average household income in Swindon among the highest in the country.

In October 2008 Swindon made a controversial move to ban fixed point speed cameras. The move was branded as reckless by some but by November 2008 Portsmouth, Walsall, and Birmingham councils were also considering the move.

In 2001 construction began on Priory Vale, the third and final instalment in Swindon's 'Northern Expansion' project, which began with Abbey Meads and continued at St Andrew's Ridge. In 2002 the New Swindon Company was formed with the remit of regenerating the town centre, to improve Swindon's regional status. The main areas targeted are Union Square, The Promenade, The Hub, Swindon Central, North Star Village, The Campus and the Public Realm.

Swindon hosted Radio 1's Big Weekend in May 2009 at Lydiard Park. Building on the work of Radio 1, Swindon Borough Council organised the Big Arts Day in 2010. Aiming to be an annual event celebrating the arts it was held at Lydiard Park in July for three consecutive years before being cancelled due to lack of funding.

2016 saw the resurrection of the Children's Fete at GWR Park Faringdon Road on what would have been the events 150th anniversary.

Geography

The town has an area of about 40 square kilometres (15 sq mi).

The landscape is dominated by the chalk hills of the Wiltshire Downs to the south and east. The Old Town stands on a hill of Purbeck and Portland stone; this was quarried from Roman times until the 1950s. The area that was known as New Swindon is made up of mostly Kimmeridge clay with outcrops of Corrallian clay in the areas of Penhill and Pinehurst. Oxford clay makes up the rest of the borough. The River Ray rises at Wroughton and forms much of the borough's western boundary, joining the Thames which defines the northern boundary, and the source of which is located in nearby Kemble, Gloucestershire. The River Cole and its tributaries flow northeastward from the town and form the northeastern boundary.

• Nearby towns: Chippenham, Royal Wootton Bassett, Cirencester, Cricklade, Devizes, Highworth, Marlborough, Malmesbury, Calne
• Nearby villages: Aldbourne, Badbury, Blunsdon, Broad Hinton, Chiseldon, Hook, Lambourn, Liddington, Lydiard Millicent, Minety, Purton, Ramsbury, South Marston, Wanborough, Wroughton
• Nearby places of interest: Avebury, Barbury Castle, Crofton Pumping Station, Lydiard Country Park, Silbury Hill, Stonehenge, Uffington White Horse
• Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Swindon include Coate Water, Great Quarry, Haydon Meadow, Okus Quarry and Old Town Railway Cutting

Climate

Swindon has a maritime climate type, like all of the British Isles, with comparatively mild winters and comparatively cool summers considering its latitude. The nearest official weather station is RAF Lyneham, about 10 miles (16 km) west south west of Swindon town centre. The weather station's elevation is 145 metres, compared to the typical 100 metres encountered around Swindon town centre, so is likely to be marginally cooler throughout the year.

The absolute maximum is 34.9C (94.8F) recorded during August 1990. In an average year the warmest day should reach 28.7C (83.7F) and 10.3 days should register a temperature of 25.1C (77.2F) or above

The absolute minimum is −16.0C (3.0F), recorded in January 1982, and in an average year 45.2 nights of air frost can be expected.

Sunshine, at 1565 hours a year, is typical for inland parts of Southern England, although significantly higher than most areas further north.

Annual rainfall averages slightly under 720 mm (28 in) per year, with 123 days reporting over 1 mm of rain.

Demographics

The 2011 census recorded a population of 209,156 people in the Swindon unitary authority area (including the town's urban area, Highworth, and other nearby parishes), with a 50/50 balance of males and females. By mid-2019, the estimated population of the unitary authority area was 222,193.

As of 2011, 57.5% of Swindonians identify themselves as Christians, a reduction from 70% in 2001. This is followed by those of no religion (31%), Muslims (1.7%), Sikhs (0.6%), Hindus (1.2%), other (0.5%) and Judaism (0.1%).

In 2015, Public Health England found that 70.4% of the population was either overweight or obese with a BMI greater than 25.

In 2011, the area of the town was 46.2 km² (17.8 sq mi) or 3,949 inhabitants per square kilometre (10,230/sq mi).

In 2011, 16.7% of the population of Swindon were non-White British compared with 15.4% in the surrounding borough. There was also little difference between the percentages of Black and Asian residents. Swindon is one of the most ethnically diverse towns in South West England: 4.6% of the population registered themselves as 'Other White' and 2.5% of the population was either mixed race or of another ethnicity. The most ethnically diverse areas outside the town centre are to the north and east, such as Eastcott, Walcot and Gorse Hill.

There are three definitions of the town of Swindon for statistical purposes. The most accurate and widely accepted is the Built Up Area Subdivision, which had a population of 182,441 in 2011. Another definition is the Built Up Area, with a slightly higher population of 185,609 which includes outlying areas not often referred to as being part of the town, such as Wanborough. The final definition is the unparished area, with a population of 122,642. As its name suggests it reflects the former unparished area, now covered by the parishes of West Swindon, Central Swindon North and South, and Nythe, Eldene and Liden; thus it omits suburbs to the east and north, namely the parishes of Covingham, Stratton St Margaret and Haydon Wick.

St Helena community

By 2018, Swindon had a concentration of people originating from Saint Helena. Therefore, it got the nickname "Swindolena", and people of St Helena origin celebrate St Helena Sport Day.

Polish community

After the end of World War II, Polish refugees were temporarily housed in barracks at RAF Fairford, about 25 km (16 mi) to the north. Around 1950, some settled in Scotland and others in Swindon rather than stay in the barracks or hostels they were offered.

The 2001 UK Census found that most of the Polish-born people had stayed or returned after serving with British forces during World War II. Swindon and Nottingham were parts of this settlement. Data from that census showed that 566 Swindonians were Polish-born. Notes to those data read: ‘The Polish Resettlement Act of 1947, which was designed to provide help and support to people who wished to settle here, covered about 190,000 people ... at the time Britain did not recognise many of the professional [qualifications] gained overseas ... [but] many did find work after the war; some went down the mines, some worked on the land or in steelworks. Housing was more of a problem and many Poles were forced to live in barracks previously used for POWs ... The first generation took pains to ensure that their children grew up with a strong sense of Polish identity.'

In 2004, NHS planners devising services for senior citizens estimated that 5% of Swindon's population were not 'ethnically British' and most of those were culturally Polish.

The town's Polish ex-servicemen's club, which had run a football team for 45 years, closed in 2012. Barman Jerzy Trojan blamed the decline of both club and team on the children and grandchildren of the original refugees losing their Polish identity.

Transport

Swindon's Magic Roundabout

At the junction of two Roman roads, the town has developed into a transport hub over the centuries. It is on the historical GWR and on canals. It also has two junctions (15 and 16) on the M4 motorway.

Swindon railway station opened in 1842 as Swindon Junction, and until 1895 every train stopped for at least 10 minutes to change locomotives. As a result, the station hosted the first recorded railway refreshment rooms.

Swindon bus operators are Thamesdown and Stagecoach. The former Stagecoach Bus Depot on Eastcott Road has been approved for development as a housing site.

Swindon is one of the locations for an innovative scheme called Car share. It was set up as a joint venture between Wiltshire County Council and a private organisation and now has over 300,000 members registered. It is a car pool or ride-sharing rather than a car share scheme, seeking to link people willing to share transport.

The town contains a large roundabout called Magic Roundabout. There are five mini-roundabouts within this roundabout and at its centre is a contra-rotational hub. It is the junction of five roads: (clockwise from South) Drove Road, Fleming Way, County Road, Shrivenham Road and Queens Drive. It is built on the site of Swindon wharf on the abandoned Wilts & Berks Canal, near the County Ground. The official name used to be County Islands, although it was colloquially known as the Magic Roundabout and the official name was changed in the late 1990s to match its nickname.

On 8 October 2019, GWR posted a modern speed record when an Intercity Express Train took just 44 minutes to travel from Swindon to London Paddington.

National Cycle Network Route 45 runs through the town.

Tourism and recreation

Events

Swindon Mela in the Town Gardens

• Swindon hosts a number of festivals such as the Swindon Festival of Literature, the annual Swindon Mela (an all-day celebration of South Indian arts and culture) in the Town Gardens – an event which attracts up to 10,000 visitors each year.
• The Summer Breeze Festival has been held annually in the town since 2007 with headliners ranging from Toploader to KT Tunstall. The family-friendly music event is run by volunteers on a non-profit basis with any funds raised going to charity.
• An annual Gay Pride Parade called Swindon And Wiltshire Pride is held in the town. The parade has been held in the Town Gardens since 2007. Popular Swedish DJ Basshunter performed in the 2012 celebrations which c.8,000 people attended.
• The town has a live music scene, venues such as Baila Coffee & Vinyl, The Castle, The Beehive, Level III and The Victoria attract local acts as well as touring national acts. Collectively they host an annual music festival the Swindon Shuffle. The Oasis Leisure Centre and the County Ground are used for some major events. MECA is a 2,000-capacity music venue in the former Mecca bingo hall.
• The Arts Centre is a theatre in Old Town which seats 200 and has music, professional and amateur theatre, comedians, films, children's events, and one-man shows.
• The Wyvern Theatre has film, comedy, and music.
• In 2012 Swindon: The Opera was performed at the STEAM Museum in Swindon by the Janice Thompson Performance Trust, after a successful 2011 Jubilee People's Millions Lottery bid. It charted Swindon's history since 1952 until the present day. Over twenty songs were written by Matt Fox, with music by internationally acclaimed composer Betty Roe MBE.

Shopping

McArthur Glen Designer Outlet, a shopping complex built within the disused Swindon railway engine works

• The Brunel Centre and the Parade are shopping areas in the town centre, built along the line of the filled-in Wilts and Berks Canal (where a canal milepost can still be seen).
• Swindon Tented Market located in the Town Centre, close to the Brunel Centre, was built in 1994. It reopened in October 2009, having been closed for two years.
• Regent Circus, which opened in 2015 on the site of the former Swindon College building. It contains a Morrison's superstore, along with a Cineworld cinema and several restaurants.
• Retail parks include Greenbridge (although not located within the township of Swindon but in the urban parish of Stratton St. Margaret, Mannington which is the location of a John Lewis at Home store, Bridgemead, West Swindon Shopping Centre and the Orbital Shopping Park in Haydon Wick Parish
• McArthur Glen Designer Outlet is an indoor shopping mall for reduced price goods (mainly clothing), using the buildings of the disused railway engine works. The outlet is adjacent to the Steam Museum and the National Trust headquarters. The Swindon Designer Outlet has around 100 shops and is the biggest covered designer outlet centre in Europe.
• Craft shops within Studley Grange Craft Village, inside Blooms Garden Centre, just off junction 16 of the M4 motorway.
• Small specialist shops within BSS House in Cheney Manor Industrial Park and Basepoint Business Centre.

Green spaces

• Public parks include Lydiard Country Park, The Lawns, Stanton Park, Barbury Castle, Queens Park, Town Gardens, Pembroke Gardens and Coate Water.
• Shaw Country Park currently being developed in West Swindon.

Other

• The English Heritage Archive is based in Swindon. The Science Museum has its large objects stored on the disused airfield at Wroughton as well as housing the Museum's Library and Archives.

Museums and cultural institutions

• National Museum of Science & Industry, Wroughton.
• Railway Village Museum.
• Richard Jefferies Museum, dedicated to the memory of one of England's most individual writers on nature and the countryside.
• Steam Railway Museum.
• Swindon Collection, Central Library. Extensive local studies and family history archive.
• Swindon Arts Centre, a 212-seat entertainment venue located in the Old Town of Swindon.
• Wyvern Theatre, the town's principal stage venue.
• Swindon Museum and Swindon Art Gallery, next to each other.
• The Museum of Computing the first computer museum in the UK.

In popular culture

• The 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is set in Swindon.
• Thursday Next, a character in Jasper Fforde's novels, was born in Swindon.

Economy

Hagley Hall, a Swindon-built locomotive, on display in the eating area of the McArthur Glen Designer Outlet, Swindon

Havelock Square, near the Brunel Centre

Major employers in the town include BMW/Mini (formerly Pressed Steel Fisher) in Stratton, Dolby Labs, international engineering consultancy firm Halcrow, and retailer W H Smith's distribution centre and headquarters. The electronics company Intel has its European head office on the south side of the town. Insurance and financial services companies such as Nationwide Building Society and Zurich Financial Services, the energy companies RWE Generation UK plc and Npower (a company of the Innogy group), the fuel card and fleet management company Arval, pharmaceutical companies such as Canada's Patheon and the United States-based Catalent Pharma Solutions and French medical supplies manufacturer Vygon (UK) Ltd have their UK divisions headquartered in the town. Swindon also has the head office of the National Trust and the head office of the UK Space Agency. Other employers include all of the national Research Councils, the British Computer Society, TE Connectivity, Lok'nStore and consumer goods supplier Reckitt Benckiser.

From 1985 to 2021, Japanese car manufacturer Honda had its sole UK plant at South Marston, just outside Swindon. In March 2021, it was announced that logistics firm Panattoni will move to the former Honda site.

Previously Swindon was a centre of excellence for 3G and 4G mobile telecommunications research and development for Motorola, Alcatel, Lucent Technologies, Nokia Siemens Networks and Cisco.

Sport

The Stratton Bank at the County Ground

Football

Swindon Town F.C. are based at the County Ground near the town centre. They play in League Two, the fourth-highest tier of the English football league system, after being relegated from League One in 2021. The affiliated women's club, Swindon Town W.F.C., play in Division One South West of the FA Women's National League; their first team play home games outside the town at Fairford Town's Cinder Lane ground.

The town also has a non-league club, Swindon Supermarine F.C., playing in the Premier South division of the Southern League at their South Marston ground. New College Swindon run a football academy for both sexes, usually alongside academic courses; until the summer of 2020 they fielded New College Swindon F.C., which played in Division One of the Hellenic League and was based at Supermarine's ground.

Rugby

Swindon has two rugby union teams, Swindon Rugby Football Club and Supermarine Rugby Football Club.

Swindon St George are a rugby league team playing in the West of England Rugby League. The kit consists of black and red shirts with black shorts and socks. It was founded in 2007.

English Rugby player Jonny May lived in Chiseldon and attended The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College located in Wroughton, both nearby villages to Swindon.

Ice hockey

The Swindon Wildcats play in the second-tier English Premier Ice Hockey League. Since their inception in 1986, the Wildcats have played their home games at the 2,800-capacity Link Centre in West Swindon.

Motor sports

Swindon Robins is a speedway team competing in the top national division, the SGB Premiership, where they were champions in the 2017 season. The team has operated at the Abbey Stadium, Blunsdon since 1949. There was a speedway track in the Gorse Hill area of Swindon in the early days of the sport in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Foxhill motocross circuit is 6 miles (9.7 km) southeast of the town and has staged Grand Prix events.

Athletics

Swindon has two athletics clubs affiliated to England Athletics, Swindon Harriers (running, track and field) and Swindon Striders (running). There is also a group called Swindon Shin Splints. Two Hash House Harrier runnung groups are centred on Swindon, North Wilts Hash House Harriers (who run every sunday) and the Moonrakers Hash House Harriers (who run every other Wednesday evening). There is a Park Run is held every Saturday at Lydiard Country Park.

Climbing

Swindon Mountaineering Club is affiliated to the British Mountaineering Council and organise meets for walking, rock climbing and mountaineering in the UK and abroad. Members train on an indoor climbing wall at the Rockstar Climbing Centre in Swindon.

Education

The borough of Swindon has many primary schools, 12 secondary schools, and two purpose-built sixth-form colleges. Two secondary schools also have sixth forms. There is one independent school, Maranatha Christian School at Sevenhampton.

Secondary schools

• Abbey Park School ages 11 – 16
• Commonweal School ages 11 – 18
• The Deanery CE Academy NEW BUILD – year 7 (ages 11 – 12 only in 2019/2020)
• The Dorcan Academy ages 11 – 16
• Great Western Academy
• Highworth Warneford School ages 11 – 16
• Kingsdown School ages 11 – 16
• Lawn Manor Academy ages 11 – 16
• Lydiard Park Academy ages 11 – 18
• Nova Hreod Academy ages 11 – 16
• The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College ages 11 – 18
• St. Joseph's Catholic College ages 11 – 16
• Swindon Academy ages 3 – 18
• UTC Swindon ages 14 – 18

Further education

New College and Swindon College cater for the town's further education and higher education requirements, mainly for 16- to 21-year-olds. Swindon College is one of the largest FE-HE colleges in southwestern England, situated at a purpose-built campus in North Star, Swindon.

Swindon also has a foundation learning programme called Include, which is situated in the Gorse Hill area. This is for 16- to 19-year-olds who are currently not in education, employment or training.

Higher education

Swindon is the UK's largest centre of population without its own university (by comparison, there are two universities in nearby Bath, which is half Swindon's size). In March 2008, a proposal was made by former Swindon MP, Anne Snelgrove, for a university-level institution to be established in the town within a decade, culminating in a future 'University of Swindon' (with some touting the future institution to be entitled 'The Murray John University, Swindon', after the town's most distinguished post-war civic leader). In October 2008, plans were announced for a possible University of Swindon campus to be built in east Swindon to the south of the town's Great Western Hospital, close to the M4-A419 interchange. However, these plans are currently mothballed.

Oxford Brookes University has had a campus in Swindon since 1999. The campus offers degrees in Adult Nursing and Operating Department Practice (ODP). The Joel Joffe Building opened in August 2016 and was officially opened in February 2017 by Lord Joel Joffe, a long-time Swindon resident and former human rights lawyer. From 1999 to 2016 the Ferndale Campus was based in north-central Swindon. The main OBU campus is about 27 miles (43 km) northeast of Swindon. The university also sponsors UTC Swindon, which opened in 2014 for students aged 14–19.

Between 2000 and 2008 the University of Bath had a campus in Walcot, east Swindon.

The Royal Agricultural University has its Cultural Heritage Institute in the former railway carriage works.

Images for kids

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  Former lodging house in the Railway Village, now a community centre

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  Swindon Town Hall, now a dance theatre

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  St Mark's Church (Church of England)

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  King George V pulling the 'Bristolian' passenger train at the Swindon Steam Railway Museum.

See also

In Spanish: Swindon para niños