Geograph - photograph every grid square

Written by Brian Robert Marshall

Strictly speaking, Walcot is an area of south-east Swindon that includes the private housing estate between Queens Drive and Drove Road developed mostly between the wars and into the 1950s after WWII. It is shown on maps as Walcot West although no-one ever refers to it as that. Mention Walcot to most people locally and they will assume you mean the municipal estate of Walcot East. That estate was built mostly in the 1950s and is typical of many such estates constructed up and down the country in the aftermath of the second world war. Walcot was used primarily to provide housing for Londoners who had difficulty finding accommodation in the capital following the severe loss of housing caused by the Blitz of the early 1940s. Walcot has a long history. The first mention of it occurs in the Domesday Book when it was described as being three and a quarter hides in area, roughly 120 acres. In 1820 the Walcot estate was sold to the Goddard family, Lords of the Manor who once lived in the Lawn in a since-demolished manor house Link In 1958, a few years after the first houses were built, the local authority developed a small shopping centre on the south-western edge of Walcot East. It has gradually declined in relevance over the years since its heyday in the 1960s and it seems likely it will be demolished and rebuilt in the fairly near future Link