On your left, look for a red-brick Victorian building with a broad round-arched entrance, pale stone trim, and a tall clock tower rising above the roofline.
This is Swindon Town Hall, opened on the twenty-first of October, eighteen ninety-one, when New Swindon wanted a civic headquarters with some presence. The local board chose this spot in Regent Circus very carefully: halfway between the Railway Village and Old Town, a place meant to say, yes, this is the center now. Colonel William Vilett Rolleston sold the site, and from twenty design competition entries, the architect Brightwen Binyon of Ipswich won the job.
The building repaid that ambition in full. Right in front of you, the main entrance is framed by a big rounded arch, with paired fluted brackets - decorative supports with vertical grooves - and a balustrade, a low rail of little stone posts, above. Then your eye climbs to the ninety-foot clock tower, fitted with a clock by Thwaites and Reed. If you want a cleaner view of the whole composition, take a glance at the image in the app.
This place also sat at the center of a political tug-of-war. It replaced the old town hall in Old Town, and when New Swindon and Old Town finally merged in nineteen oh one, this became the borough council’s home until nineteen thirty-eight. Later it hosted magistrates’ hearings, housed the reference library until two thousand and six, and now serves Swindon Dance, a national dance agency. It is also Grade Two listed, meaning the building is legally protected for its historic character.
So this town hall marks the moment Swindon tried to pull its two halves into one story. When you’re ready, continue on to the museum and art gallery.
