Summary
Public house with accommodation above, built in 1846 for the Great Western Railway Company.
Reasons for Designation
14 Emlyn Square, formerly The Cricketers, a public house built in 1846 for the Great Western Railway Company at its New Swindon Works, is listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* the building is well handled, in the recognisable Tudor Gothic GWR house style, and forms a suitable set-piece corner to Emlyn Square, rising above the adjacent rows of cottages by an additional storey;
* despite its intensive commercial use since its opening, and the associated ground-floor alterations, the building remains clearly legible.
Historic interest:
* as an integral part of the planned GWR railway village, one of Britain’s best-preserved and architecturally most ambitious railway settlements, which offered accommodation, leisure, health and welfare facilities for the workers at the railway works from the 1840s to the mid-C20.
Group value:
* with the neighbouring Mechanics’ Institution (Grade II*), the Central Community Centre (Grade II), formerly the GWR Medical Fund hospital, and the rows of workers’ cottages (Grade II), and the other listed buildings of the railway village, in particular the other, similar, corner buildings to Emlyn Square.
History
The Great Western Railway works in Swindon were established in 1841, to provide a central repair facility for the various locomotives which had been sourced to run on the railway line from London to Bristol, whose construction had begun in 1840. The Great Western Railway (GWR) village was established in Swindon from 1841, aiming initially to provide 300 homes and associated health, welfare, lodging and education facilities for a new community of workers and their families arriving from across the country to staff the railway works, which came to house an extensive and integrated design, engineering, construction and repair plant for locomotives and other rolling stock, and rails. At its peak in 1925, the workforce numbered over 14,000. The works remained in use by GWR and, following the nationalisation of the railways, British Rail, until 1986.
In order to house the workforce for the new Great Western Railway works, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) designed a new village to the south of the railway line. Brunel’s early layout drawings of 1840 show a grid similar to the final plan of 12 terraces in six blocks on either side of the High Street (from 1893 known as Emlyn Square). Construction started in 1842, and by 1855 most of the buildings had been completed. Houses and cottages of different types were built, as well as lodging houses. Brunel himself designed only the first block of 1842 (4-25 Bristol Street); as it was visible from the railway line, this is in a more decorative style than the others. The financial difficulties of the contractors JD and C Rigby, who undertook to build 300 cottages but only completed 130, delayed the completion of the village until the 1850s. The cottages to the west of Emlyn Square were built first (1842-1843), followed by those on the east side (1845-1847). The end blocks towards Emlyn Square, containing corner shops on the ground floor, were built in 1845-1847, and the remainder, mostly end blocks on the outer ends of the streets, were built in 1853-1855. In 1966, the local authority, then Thamesdown Borough Council, acquired the cottages from British Rail and restored them.
The Cricketers (for most of its life known as the Cricketers’ Arms), completed in 1846, is a corner building in one of those end blocks, on the western side of Emlyn Square, at the junction with the north side of Exeter Street, facing the open green space later occupied by the GWR Mechanics’ Institute (built in 1853-1855). Its name derived from the close proximity of the GWR cricket ground, in GWR park, at the opposite end of Exeter Street. Cricket was popular among the staff of the GWR works, and matches were played between workers from the various shops within the GWR complex, and a GWR Swindon team played against sides from local towns and villages, including Swindon Cricket Club, with whom the works maintained a healthy rivalry. The building was first leased from the GWR by E W Cripps and Co (later the Cirencester Brewing Company), a brewery from nearby Cirencester, in 1847, operating from the beginning as a fully licenced public house, in contrast to most other purveyors of alcohol in the railway village, who ran beer houses. Beer was transported from Cirencester by canal and later by railway. As a licenced premises, Coroner’s Courts were held here until 1891, hearing the circumstances of local deaths. By at least 1885, the pub had taken in and adapted the adjacent four-roomed cottage to its north on the High Street, and outbuildings had been constructed in the small rear yard, including a building which appears to have housed stabling and a hayloft, later extended further and converted to upper floor accommodation. The building maintained its strong connection with cricket and the works’ cricket team: in advertisements, the location of the pub is described as ‘near the cricket field, New Swindon’; and in 1866, the pub’s landlady, Martha Dixon, financed a cup for races held on the GWR field. The subsequent tenant-landlord, Richard Skerten, in his advertisement of 1869, reported that extensive alterations and improvements had been made, possibly referencing the incorporation of the adjacent former cottage’s rooms into the public house. Via a series of brewery mergers in the C20, the Cricketers’ Arms became a Simonds house, and later Courage. In 1966, Thamesdown Borough Council took over the freehold of the Cricketers when the entire railway village was sold by British Rail, though the lease remained with Courage until a merger in 1991, when Ushers of Trowbridge took a long lease on the pub. It was at this time that the ceramic Ushers plaque was installed alongside the corner entrance. The Cricketers, as it was known by the later part of the C20, continued to trade until its closure in 2015. It was repaired and alterations made in 2023-2024, for conversion to an events venue on the ground floor, and flexible use in the upper floors.
Details
Public house with accommodation above, built in 1846 for the Great Western Railway Company, incorporating the adjacent contemporary railway workers’ cottage.
MATERIALS: coursed limestone rubble with limestone dressings; slate roofs.
PLAN: corner building, roughly square on plan, with a canted corner to the junction of Emlyn Square and Exeter Street, and various extensions and outbuildings set into the rear re-entrant corner. The building also incorporates the adjacent cottage to Emlyn Square, creating an additional range running north-south.
EXTERIOR: the building, mainly of three storeys, is in a Tudor Gothic style, with projecting quoins and hood moulds to the window openings, and gables to the pitched roofs. The east elevation, to Emlyn Square, is a wide single bay, the ground floor with a wide shop window with a moulded stone surround under a moulded cornice, divided into two lights by a matching mullion, with arcaded columnar glazing. Above this, paired two-over-two sash windows, and to the second floor, a narrower two-light multi-paned casement. The wide gable has a blind, oval, keyed oculus in the apex. To the right is a lower, two-storey section of one narrow bay, with a parapet roof. To the ground floor is a domestic entrance doorway, giving access to the stair to the accommodation on the upper floors. The door dates from the C20 and is four-panelled. The first floor has a narrow one-over-one sash window. To the right of this is the former cottage, now incorporated into the pub. It is of two storeys, with three two-over-two sash windows under hood moulds to the ground floor, the central window opening converted from a doorway. The outer bays each have a two-light casement window to the first floor. The canted bay to the corner houses the early C20, multi-panelled double entrance doors to the bar with shaped overlight and timber sign for the PUBLIC BAR above. Set into the wall to the right of the door is a ceramic plaque for Ushers brewery. The first floor of this bay is blind, with a narrow casement window to the second floor, and a gable above. The elevation to Exeter Street is in two sections, that to the right a single bay with a similar ground-floor window to that on the Emlyn Square elevation, and a two-over-two sash window to the first floor. The second floor has a two-light, multi-paned casement window, and a gable above with a blind, oval, keyed oculus to the gable. To the left is a matching two-bay section set back very slightly, but otherwise similar to the rest of the main building. This section has a narrow bay to the right, and wider bay to the left, with a window on each floor of each bay. Windows to the first floor are all four-over-fours sashes, and the second floor has multi-paned casements. The outermost bay has a gable with a keyed oculus matching those to the rest of the building.
INTERIOR: the former public bar is a single room, with a matchboarded storm porch set within the canted entrance bay, with a moulded cornice to the top. This has a multi-paned glazed inner door, dating from later in the C20. This room has a moulded chair rail. Its fireplace survives, with a later C20 brick fire surround. The bar fittings all date from the late C20. To the north of this room is the stair hall, with a straight stair with turned newel and balusters. There has been some reordering of the rooms beyond; access has been created at the foot of the stair to give access to the former cottage to the north; its original two rooms have been opened up into a single space, with the wall stub remaining. The north end has a chimney breast flanked by arched niches. The finishes date from the C20. A new doorway to the western wall leads into a space created by the roofing over of the former yard and modification of the former cellar, including a cast-iron column. To the west again, the original opening from the bar to the ancillary spaces to the rear has a chamfered and stopped doorway. The rear stair rises from in the inner hall at the centre of the building, beyond which a quarry-tiled corridor gives access to stores. The room to the north has a window, now internal, marking the original extent of the building; the other side of this end of the corridor is occupied by the outbuilding which might have housed stabling. The premises extends into one ground-floor bay of the adjacent cottage on Exeter Street, to the rear of the bar. This room retains its high timber fire surround, its mantel carried on moulded brackets, the opening partly infilled to reduce its size. The floors above were designed as accommodation. Where historic doors survive, these are generally four panelled. The majority of the fire surrounds have been removed and the fireplaces closed. The room above the public bar was probably intended as a function room. It has been partly reordered, with a later wall inserted to create two separate rooms, but the former arched opening half way along its length survives within the eastern room. The rooms within the former cottage retain chair rail and picture rail. That to the north has a small inter-war tile fire surround. The rooms to the rear are less regular, installed within the later extensions, and have been further modified. Two of the second floor rooms retain plain timber fire surrounds. There has been some minor subdivision in this area.
