Summary
Public house, formerly shop, built in 1846-1847 by the Great Western Railway Company; extended in the later C19, with minor internal alterations in 1966; bar refitted in 1986-1987.
Reasons for Designation
The Glue Pot, a public house built in 1846-1847 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 (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 acquired the cottages from British Rail and restored them.
The Glue Pot stands on the eastern side of Emlyn Square, and occupies one of the end blocks completed in 1847, at the western end of Reading Street, facing the open green space later occupied by the GWR Mechanics’ Institute (built in 1853-1855). The building's address was 6 High Street until the street was renamed in 1893, becoming 5 Emlyn Square from then. The earliest occupier of the commercial unit was a draper, David Dunbar Jnr, who was succeeded in 1850 by William Warner, also a draper. However, by 1856, Warner is recorded as a beer seller, perhaps capitalising on the additional footfall in the square caused by the opening of the Mechanics’ Institute. For most of the following century, the Thomas family ran the pub: initially, from the 1860s, William Thomas and his wife Arabella, who named it the London Stout House; and then from 1897 to 1946, their son Charles. Although the London Stout House was its official name, the pub was frequented chiefly by workers from the GWR carriage works, just a stone’s throw away on the north side of Emlyn Square; they would bring with them the glue pots they used in construction, to keep their contents warm and pliable until they resumed work, and from this, the informal name of The Glue Pot grew up. The pub was formally renamed The Glue Pot in 1950, since which time it has been run by a succession of breweries. In 1966, following the sale of the entire former railway village to the then Thamesdown Borough Council, some minor internal alterations were made to the pub, and in 1986-1987, the brewery then responsible for the building, Archers, refitted the bar and seating. The building continues (2024) in use as a public house.
Details
Public house, formerly shop, built in 1846-1847 by the Great Western Railway Company; extended in the later C19, with minor internal alterations in 1966; bar refitted in 1986-1987.
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 Reading Street. The main building is adjoined to the rear by separate, square-plan section formed by the roofing-over of the former yard.
EXTERIOR: the building, of three storeys, is in a Tudor Gothic style, with projecting quoins and hood moulds to the windows, gables to the pitched roofs and a continuous, deeply-moulded hood over the whole of the three-sided commercial shop front. Each bay has a gable with blind, keyed, oval oculus set in the apex, apart from the canted bay to the corner, which has a straight parapet. This bay houses the entrance to the public house: paired, arched-headed, half-glazed doors with a rectangular overlight, and timber fascia carrying the pub name above. The west elevation, to Emlyn Square, is a wide single bay; the ground floor has a door for off sales to the left, with a four-light window of columnar glazing to the right, with the pub name on a timber fascia above. The right return, to Reading Street, is of two bays; it has a similar two-light arcaded window to the left, with the pub name on a timber fascia above, and a tripartite, multi-paned sash window to the right. Otherwise, windows are tripartite, multi-paned timber sashes, decreasing in height towards the attic, one to each bay on each floor. The rear of the building is irregular, with a single-storey extension with pyramidal roof set in the re-entrant corner between the two wings making up the pub building. The pub also occupies the westernmost bay of the adjacent two-storey former cottage on Reading Street, which has similar tripartite windows, one to each floor, under a shallow-pitched slate roof.
INTERIOR: the public bar is a single room, with a matchboarded storm porch set within the canted entrance bay, and a C20 half-glazed inner door. The plain bar and bar back are replacements added in the 1980s, during a remodelling. Seating is in matchboarded booths added as part of the same refurbishment. The former ladies’ lounge to the rear (east) is now occupied by the kitchen, which includes a rail from the nearby railway works used as a ceiling beam, probably added in the 1966 remodelling. Beyond this, the ladies’ lavatories occupy one bay of the adjacent cottage. The cellar, which is set about 45cm below the floor level of the rest of the ground floor, is divided from the adjacent passage by a breezeblock wall. The painted rubble walling includes rough corbelling to carry the stair above. To the north of the bar lies a passage from the doorway in the west elevation, leading to the area latterly used for off sales. The exterior door appears to have been modified to allow the upper, glazed portion to hinge back, so that jug and bottle sales could be made at the window thus created. The stair, which turns tightly, has plain stick balusters and a toadback handrail. The upper floors are given over to domestic accommodation. The doors are four-panelled, and fireplaces remain in the majority of rooms, with plain, mid-C19 timber surrounds. The first floor has been slightly reordered, creating a wide landing from which the stair, with turned newel and plain stick balusters, rises to the second floor, and creating two slightly smaller rooms to the east. The accommodation extends into the first floor of the adjacent cottage, with the room accessed by a few steps to allow for the change in floor level. The second floor rooms are similar to those on the first floor, but retain their original layout. Two have built-in full-height cupboards with panelled doors.
