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Swindon's transformation from a market town of around 2,500 people to a major Victorian industrial city happened because Isambard Kingdom Brunel chose a point on the Great Western Railway line where gradients required a locomotive change, and the Great Western Railway Company built its main repair and manufacturing works there in 1843. By 1900 the works covered 320 acres and employed 14,000 people in what was effectively a self-contained factory town with its own hospital, mechanics' institute, and the famous 'Swindon Market' where workers could buy subsidized food. The STEAM Museum, housed in one of the original Victorian engine sheds, tells this story with one of the finest collections of GWR locomotives in existence, including the Iron Duke and King George V.

The Old Town, on the hill above the Victorian railway works settlement, predates all of it.

The Church of Christ Church in the High Street, the old market square, and the streets around the Old Town have the character of a Wiltshire market town that the railway happened to engulf rather than replace. The contrast between Old Town's Georgian architecture and the New Town's Victorian terraces tells you something about how fast Swindon grew: a medieval settlement and an industrial city separated by a hillside and fifty years.