The Golden Corridor

The late Forties and early Fifties were tough, however - as steam railways went right out of fashion. The Works stayed open, but only for repair and special projects.

In the late Fifties, the government took a hand, and decamped some 20,000 government office workers to Swindon - not so much for the benefit of the Wiltshire town, but because of the current panic about the over-population of London.

These workers were housed in typical Fifties dwellings - typically awful - designed, specified and built to the lowest bidder (who often cut a few more corners on the way to his first or second million).

The Sixties and Seventies were more of the same - with no single industry offering the same economic drive as the GWR had done.

But Swindon was still well-sited, and there were plenty of skilled workers in the area. By the Eighties, it was apparent that Swindon's future would not rely on a single huge employer, or on government re-location policies. That decade saw an explosion of small businesses - some originating in Swindon, some drawn there by an active local government.

Much of this new business was (and is) in computers and allied trades. In previous years, a lot of computer companies had set up their UK headquarters in the leafy Western fringes of London. . As time passed, new companies pushed further West, to Reading, Bracknell, Newbury, Swindon, Bath and Bristol, forming a "Golden Corridor" along the M4 motorway.

When the Swindon Works finally closed at the end of the eighties (the railways having been sold off to a ragbag of exploiters), the demolition squads were hardly finished before brightly-coloured "business units" started sprouting up on the hallowed site.

By the Nineties, it wasn't just small businesses anymore. Burmah-Castrol and W.H.Smiths (the UK's premier bookseller) had been there for some time. Honda set up their main UK factory, followed quickly by Renault - turning Swindon into Wiltshire's answer to Detroit, a sort of Wessex Motown.

Today, the most visible sign of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's influence on this town is Brunel Tower, an early-Seventies office block in the middle of town. When he was alive, Brunel could have designed a better building in his lunch-break. Come to think of it, he could probably design a better building now - from the grave.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel Numbers