Summary
Shop with accommodation above, built in 1846 for the Great Western Railway Company.
Reasons for Designation
The Bakers’ Arms, a public house built in 1846 as a shop and accommodation 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 (listed Grade II), formerly the GWR Medical Fund hospital, and the rows of workers’ cottages (listed 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 Bakers’ Arms lies to the western side of Emlyn Square, and occupies one of the end blocks completed in 1846, at the eastern end of the north side of Bathampton Street (originally Bath Street), facing the open green space later occupied by the GWR Mechanics’ Institute (built in 1853-1855). The building's address was 12 High Street until the street was renamed in 1893, becoming 16 Emlyn Square from then. The Bakers’ Arms occupies one of the corner plots, its ground floor originally constructed as a shop. The first tenant, who signed his lease in July 1846, was William Perris, a baker from Chippenham, who converted two of the rear rooms to a bakehouse and oven. Plans of 1846 show the shop unit, accessed via the canted corner of the building, with the bakehouse and two ovens to the rear, and a china pantry and sitting room alongside. The next recorded occupier was Richard Allnatt, who in 1848, took over the lease of this building and that of the newly-constructed, larger, purpose-built GWR bakehouse in Taunton Street, a short distance to the south. Allnatt converted the Bath Street building back to a retail shop and living accommodation. In 1855, Allnutt was noted as beer retailer and baker; the diversification into beer selling might have been prompted by the additional footfall in the High Street engendered with the opening of the Mechanics’ Institute, in 1855, and the convenient position of the shop he leased. Allnatt continued to ply his twin trades until at least 1875. The business was entirely given over to a beer house by 1881, and from then was run by a series of beer sellers. In the 1960s, local brewery Arkells took on the lease and refurbished the building. It traded as the Bakers’ Arms until 2012, when the lease was handed back to the local authority. In 2018, the ground floor was converted to a café and events venue.
Details
Shop with accommodation above, built in 1846 for the Great Western Railway Company.
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 Bathampton Street. The main building is adjoined to the rear by separate, square-plan section formed by the roofing-over of the former yard, and a small 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 a gable to the pitched roof. 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, and an incorporated fascia. Above this, a tripartite, multi-paned sash window, 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 half-glazed. The first floor has a narrow casement window. The canted bay to the corner houses the half-glazed, C20 double entrance doors to the former shop unit with rectangular overlight and fascia above. Set into the wall directly above the door is a ceramic plaque for Arkells brewery, depicting a ship and the date of 1843, marking its foundation. The first floor of this bay is blind, with a narrow casement to the second floor. The elevation to Bathampton Street is in two sections, that to the right a single bay with a similar shop window to that on the Emlyn Square elevation, and narrow casement windows to each of the ground and first floors. 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. A doorway to the far left is a later C20 insertion, with the hoodmould to the adjacent window modified and continued over it. The wall terminates in a parapet behind which the roof ends in a hip to the right, over the canted bay.
INTERIOR: the ground floor retains its original plan in part. The former shop unit has an internal, canted storm porch formed from matchboarding. A later C20 continuous bench seat runs under the window to the east side. The fireplace remains in situ with its plain timber fire surround, the mantel carried on brackets. The former kitchen has been partially opened up into the main shop space. To the rear, the passages to the ancillary spaces are panelled in matchboarding to dado height. The former courtyard to the north has been roofed over. The shop unit extends into one ground-floor bay of the adjacent cottage, accessed by a short flight of steps down from the shop. This space has been opened up from two small rooms, with the wall stub remaining, and retains two fireplaces with timber surrounds, similar to that in the shop unit. The upper floors remain in use as accommodation.
