Heritage building hosting workspace Carriage Works to share Historic England grant

By Peter Davison

27 November 2023

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Carriage Works Swindon

Carriage Works in Swindon is to get a share of a £685,000 grant from Historic England to restore heritage buildings in the town, which has been secured by Swindon Borough Council.

Units 3 and 5 of the Carriage Works will receive £100,000 to fund masonry and window repairs at the London Road workspace - originally part of GWR's railway works near Swindon station.

This follows the successful completion of similar repairs to Units 7, 9 and 11, also funded by a Historic England grant, in March 2023

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The bulk of the grant - £400,000 - will be used to undertake urgent roof repairs and repairs to sections of the façade of the Health Hydro – an innovative building that hosted health and leisure facilities for Victorian railway workers in the town and is said to have inspired the foundation of the NHS.

And £185,000 will be invested through a Partnership Scheme in Conservation Areas (PSiCA) to support a range of improvements to the Swindon Railway Conservation Area.

This will include new signage to tell the story of the area and help people find their way around.

All three projects are key elements of the Swindon HAZ, a £7.6 million investment by the Council and Historic England to breathe new life into the Railway Village.

Councillor Marina Strinkovsky, Swindon Borough Council’s cabinet member for heritage, art and culture, said: “I’m very pleased we’ve received additional funding for these important heritage projects.

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“While we’ve already done a lot of work to make sure our heritage is preserved for future generations to enjoy, we still have a long way to go.

Rebecca Barrett, South West regional director at Historic England, said: “We’re really proud to be working in partnership with Swindon Borough Council on the Railway Village Heritage Action Zone.

“It’s a place that’s rich in history, and we’re delighted that our investment will help repair two key buildings – the Health Hydro and the Carriage Works - supporting their continued revitalisation.”

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.