Stand in the shadow of the long brick walls running alongside London Street, and it is impossible not to feel the echo of something larger than the town around you. Swindon has always been a place shaped by work, not just any work, but the kind of ambitious, scale-defining work that built Britain’s industrial modernity.
A century and a half ago, The Works was a place where locomotives that transformed global travel were designed, built and tested. Today, the same land is reshaping itself again, this time into an ecosystem for digital creativity, sustainable technologies, academic collaboration and small-business innovation.
Across the UK, local authorities are trying to find identities rooted in something meaningful. Swindon never had to look far. It already had one. It just needed to be told again, clearly and confidently. This is the story of The Works, not a logo, not a marketing invention, but the original place brand that defined Swindon’s past and is now shaping its future. And with the Carriage Works entering a new chapter, there has never been a more fitting moment to revisit it.
The Works: A Town Within a Town
Long before Swindon grew into the commercial and commuter hub it is today, its fortunes were tied to a single decision made by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the Great Western Railway. In 1841, Brunel chose a patch of Wiltshire farmland as the site for a vast engineering campus that would employ tens of thousands of people over its lifetime.
But The Works was never merely a factory. It was a complete urban organism. Inside its walls, locomotives were built, tested and repaired. Outside them, the GWR funded housing, hospitals, clinics, churches, educational societies and social spaces. The Mechanics’ Institute, opened in 1844, offered workers lectures, technical training, concerts, loans and one of the earliest worker-run libraries in the country.
Few buildings illustrate the social ambition of the GWR community more clearly than the Health Hydro in Milton Road. Funded largely by workers’ own subscriptions and opened in 1891, it provided what was, for its time, a remarkable range of facilities: swimming baths, Turkish baths, medical treatment rooms, social spaces and a programme of physical wellbeing long before the NHS existed. The Hydro became a symbol of the Works’ belief that industry had a responsibility not only to employ people but to sustain their health, dignity and quality of life. Even today, the building remains one of Swindon’s most distinctive civic landmarks, a reminder that the town’s industrial success was always rooted in a deeper, collective investment in its people.
This wasn’t corporate welfare. It was a belief that work and life belonged together, that communities were strengthened when learning, culture and purpose were woven into them. The Works was the beating heart; Swindon was everything it made possible.
A Culture of Ingenuity
What is often forgotten is just how inventive the Swindon Works culture was. While railway history tends to be told through the lens of London, York or the great Scottish foundries, Swindon was responsible for some of the most significant practical achievements of the age. Locomotives built here were shipped to South Africa, India, Egypt, Australia and beyond. The Works developed improvements in boiler systems, workshop layout, standardisation techniques and repair cycles that influenced engineering practices far beyond the GWR network.
Swindon became a byword for solving practical problems at speed, a culture that would become just as valuable today for startups and tech companies as it once was for engineers. Many families recall stories of inspectors walking through the workshops, pointing at a part and asking a fitter to redesign it on the spot. Apprentices were not just trained; they were challenged. They learned to innovate because the company relied on it.
As one former worker once put it: “It wasn’t just a place where trains were made. It was a place where people were made.”
The Decline and Dispersal of a Giant
The closure of the main engineering Works in 1986 was a moment of enormous emotional and economic upheaval. Thousands of jobs disappeared, and with them, a way of life that had shaped generations. Yet the closure did not erase The Works. It scattered it.
Today, the former 170-acre site is an ecosystem of cultural, commercial and civic institutions: STEAM Museum, McArthurGlen Designer Outlet, the Carriage Works, Workshed, Create Studios, iCAST, a range of heritage units and nearby National Trust offices.
Collectively, they tell the story of an industrial superstructure that fragmented but never faded. Pieces of the original Works identity are everywhere, even if Swindon has not always talked about them as one coherent whole.
A Modern Cluster Emerging From Victorian Foundations
If the old Works was a self-contained industrial city, the new Works is becoming a network of innovation spaces echoing the original ethos in contemporary form.
Workshed opened in renovated railway buildings as a flexible workspace for startups and freelancers. It has quickly become a place where ideas collide, advice is shared and collaboration feels natural.
iCAST, backed by the Universities of Bath and Oxford, focuses on sustainable technologies, chemistry and applied innovation. Victorian apprentices learned metallurgy and steam physics. Their modern counterparts explore polymer science, bioplastics and circular manufacturing.
Create Studios brings a creative dimension rooted in digital media, youth development and commercial production. What began as a local community initiative now plays a role in shaping Swindon’s creative identity for a new generation.
The Carriage Works: A Site Between Past and Future
Among the sites on the old Works land, few carry as much emotional resonance as the Carriage Works. Once home to the construction and refurbishment of rolling stock, the buildings are now progressing through a multi-phase restoration programme.
Phase 1 and 2 brought forward heritage units for creative, commercial and specialist tenants. Phase 3 will expand this into a larger hub bringing together academia, industry, community groups and next-generation workplaces. With its new brand identity, the Carriage Works could become the symbolic centrepiece of Swindon’s next economic chapter.
Why The Works Still Matters
What Swindon has, that many regeneration zones lack, is a coherent story rooted in lived experience. The Works is not a marketing idea; it is an identity that shaped generations.
The Works story continues to shape how people understand Swindon. The town’s Heritage Action Zone and the GWR Heritage Trail link together many of the surviving buildings and public spaces created by the railway era, from the Carriage Works and the Health Hydro to the Mechanics’ Institute and the Works Wall that runs like a spine through the district. These landmarks form more than a string of historic sites; they are a physical reminder of a culture built on learning, craftsmanship and community responsibility. For residents and visitors, the trail offers a way to reconnect with the town’s roots at a moment when place identity has become an economic asset as much as a cultural one. In reconnecting these pieces, Swindon isn’t trading in nostalgia. It’s asserting the heritage foundations that make the town distinctive, investable and confident about the future.
Regeneration succeeds when people feel the identity is theirs. Swindon’s industrial heritage is not nostalgia. It is infrastructure, memory and pride. From an economic perspective, place identity affects how investors, talent and businesses perceive a town. Places with clear stories attract confidence.
The Next Chapter: A New Identity for the Carriage Works
Swindon Borough Council is now preparing to enter the next phase of the Carriage Works regeneration, a stage that includes a new brand identity designed to support the growing mix of organisations, events and development activity taking place on the site. The identity has not yet been made public, but those close to the project say it is shaped by the legacy of The Works while giving the Carriage Works a distinct voice of its own.
Rather than leaning on nostalgia, the new identity is said to interpret the site’s heritage as a living asset - something that can guide future ambition rather than anchor it to the past. A spokesperson from Bravedog, the brand consultancy appointed to develop the Carriage Works strategy, brand identity and design system, describes the approach as “Rooted in Heritage, Redefined for Now”, reflecting the idea that the Carriage Works brand honours it's past, but is very much forwards facing.
They note that the emerging identity is shaped by the character of the place itself: strong, industrial and confident, yet unmistakably human in its tone and energy. “Carriage Works has always been a destination for people who create things,” the spokesperson says. “Its next chapter is about bringing creators, innovators and educators together in a setting built on industry, craft and community.”
A Place Moving Forward by Looking Back
The rediscovery of The Works as a unifying narrative comes as towns across Britain try to rebuild local confidence. Few places have as clear a story as Swindon. The Works teaches three lessons: that places thrive when work, learning and community are connected; that heritage is a renewable resource; and that identity is uncovered rather than invented.
The place that made Swindon once is making it again. As the Carriage Works prepares for its next chapter, it carries the weight of history and the promise of a future still being built.
