Focus on… Swindon
The train industry came and went but Swindon emerged stronger and with plenty of bang for your diversified buck. Gary Parkinson introduces the wonder of Wiltshire
“Swindon was not a town that its occupants readily moved from.” So says one history of the ancient hilltop settlement, whose first syllable comes from either the swine kept there or the swain (farmworker) who kept them.
Things stayed quiet until the 1840s, when Isambard Kingdom Brunel based his main Great Western Railway works at Swindon - two-thirds of the way from London to Bristol, and at the summit of the line. The burgeoning railway industry came to employ tens of thousands and the town boomed for a century or more.
The slow decline of the railways (Brunel’s works closed in 1986) prompted change. Employment has diversified into white-collar industries – multinationals headquartered in the town include Nationwide building society, Intel and Npower – and with plenty of solid housing stock from the Victorian boom, Swindonians came to enjoy one of the UK’s best ratios of income to house price.
Property types vary. Central and increasingly popular, the Old Town tends towards redbrick Victorian but can be pricier. Dispersed northwards for a couple of miles are newer builds, but mostly with sensitively protected greenery – Swindon has many parks. Further away are commuter villages and it’s worth remembering that Swindon is almost entirely surrounded by Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs), including the Cotswolds. No wonder its occupants are happy to stay.
Starting out You can’t get much more central than the mildly modernist Paramount building, where £105,000 buys a one-bed flat whose 17ft lounge features stunning, almost full-height double-glazed windows.
Great for families.... The bustling Old Town is increasingly popular with families for its solid Victorians: there’s a three-bed terrace on quiet Shelley Street for £215,000. Or move to the edge of town with a three-bed semi overlooking Diamond Jubilee Park in Blunsdon St Andrew for £249,950.
Just won the lottery? Head to The Fox on the outskirts of Purton, where a £1.35m farmhouse set in three acres features two semi-separate properties (linked via a gym and games room) with a total of seven beds and eight receptions.
HEAD FOR RURAL BLISS IN…
Castle Combe A regular winner of Prettiest Village competitions, postcard-perfect Castle Combe sits just off the M4 in the southern part of the Cotswolds AONB, 25 miles west of Swindon. Beauty and rarity makes property pricy: there’s currently a three-bed cottage for £895,000.
Avebury Travel 10 miles south and five millennia back to the world’s largest megalithic stone circle – and unlike Stonehenge, this one encompasses a village and encourages you to wander and wonder. Three-beds here have been going for around £350,000, slightly more if detached.
Ramsbury Twelve miles south-east, in the Kennet Valley at the heart of the North Wessex Downs AONB, is a Saxon village so deep-rooted that it staged two referendums over whether to replace a dead tree. A two-bed thatched terrace is around £270,000, with large detached houses reaching seven figures.
THE COST OF LIVING
Average rent: The Swindon-wide average of £741pcm is kept down by a lot of one-bed starters bobbing around the £560 mark. Two-beds are around £770, three-bed houses nudge four figures and four-beds average around £1,200.
Average house price: One-bed flats go from around £100,000 with four-beds averaging £400,000 - but prices vary widely: that four-bed cost could be halved or doubled depending on the specific property, while at a starter property might not even hit six figures. There’s no shortage, so shop around.
Average rental yield: A one-bed in the SN1 postcode (Old Town, south of the railway) might get yield towards seven per cent, dropping closer to six per cent for SN2 (north of the tracks) and the popular eastern suburbs of SN3. Yields will be lower on multi-bed homes, unless they’re also multiple-occupancy.
Average house price rise: Swindon’s overall average property price as of January 2020 is £257,948 – up 1.03 per cent on January 2019.
Average salary: £2.50 a week below the national average at £584.50 gross, which is £30,400 pa. Employment runs at 78.8 per cent (above the 75.6 per cent British average).
Average price of a pint: £3.50
Council tax: From £1,098 to £3,582 pa.
SWINDON AT A GLANCE
Connections: Hard by the M4, Swindon is 70 miles west of London and 35 miles east of Bristol. A Brunel-pleasing 3.6m people per year use the train station: London is an hour one way, Swansea two hours the other.
Amenities: 3/5 STEAM Museum (GWR), Museum of Computing, Swindon Designer Outlet, Brunel Shopping Centre, Wyvern Theatre, Swindon Arts Centre, MECA, Oasis Leisure Centre, gig venue Level 3.
Festivals and events: Festival of Literature (May), south Indian arts fest Mela, Children’s Fete (July), LGBT+ Pride (August), CAMRA beer festival (October).
Open space: 4/5 Lydiard Park, Stanton Park, Coate Water, Shaw Forest, Mouldon Hill, the Ridgeway national trail; Swindon also fringes the North Wessex Downs AONB and is 25 miles from the Cotswolds AONB.
Landmarks: The 21-storey David Murray John tower, named after a councillor big on regeneration, looms over the town centre - while near the football ground, wary drivers confront the bamboozling five-part “Magic Roundabout”.
Schools: Of 77 primaries, seven are outstanding and 43 good; secondaries aren’t as impressive, although SEN school Uplands is outstanding – its head was given an MBE in 2016.
Crime: 3/5 In the year to June 2019, there were 77.41 recorded crimes per thousand people – slightly below the national average.
Famous faces: Actresses Diana Dors and Billie Piper, Apprentice sidekick Nick Hewer, model/presenter Melinda Messenger and Moody Blues singer Justin Hayward were all born in Swindon.
Originally published in the Metro newspaper, 14 Jan 2020
