155 
Swindon and its Aleighbourhoo\— alo. 2. 
By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 
eH history of Swindon in former times, so far as I have been 
able to discover it, does not contain much that would be 
to it were read to you at our Meeting here in 1860, in a paper which 
was afterwards printed in the seventh volume of our Magazine. Mr. 
Richard Jefferies contributed a little more in the fourteenth volume. 
And there, so far as I know, our information stops. Those who 
lived here before you omitted to record the local events of their own 
time and within their own knowledge. They did not recollect, and 
people do not now recollect, that what happens to-day, and appears 
to us common-place and familiar, will in fifty years time be utterly 
forgotten, unless some one has taken the pains to preserve it. 
One of the objects of Societies like ours is to prevent things from 
being so utterly forgotten, and to encourage the taking of notes and 
memoranda about the various families that have held any position 
in a place, the various changes that have altered the place itself, and 
the like. It is, therefore, with much pleasure that I find you have 
among you—whether a native or not I do not know—but at any 
rate a resident, who is well acquainted with your modern history, 
who has an excellent memory, and the pen of a ready writer, and 
moreover has an easy and pleasant way of communicating his obser- 
vations and his stories, which ought to make his little book popular. 
To Mr. William Morris, therefore, I commend you for the history 
of modern Swindon. In truth, its real history is almost entirely 
modern. It is within the last fifty years that Swindon has, as we 
say, “come out.” From being a little quiet, out-of-the-way place 
it has grown rapidly to be one of considerable importance. Its 
affairs have taken a wonderful turn. Fortune, you all know, stands 
on a wheel. Swindon was at the bottom. By a sudden revolution 
