155 



jSfoirtton anfo its fj^jj&otttjoofc — §<r. 2. 



By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 



HE history of Swindon in former times, so far as I have been 

 able to discover it, does not contain much that would be 

 very interesting to a general audience. A few particulars relating 

 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 



