For there is no doubt that Swindon is superficially ugly. That pretty model village of the eighteen-forties has developed a red brick rash which stretches up the hill to Old Swindon and strangles it, and beyond Old Swindon it runs tentacles to the downs and it spreads with monotony in all other directions. It is now the biggest town in Wiltshire, sixty times the size of the original market town. But I would rather see a red brick rash like Swindon (for it has few, if any, slums) enlivened with Victorian towers and steeples sticking out of it, than I would see a gleaming glass city of architect-designed flats with never a church but instead only the humped backs of super-cinemas, the grand-stands of greyhound tracks and the bubbling cocoa fountains for the community workers.
Swindon is largely a Christian town and much of the credit for that goes to the priests and people of St. Mark’s. It is not Sabbatarian and smug. It has its cinemas and theatres and art gallery and library and sports grounds and the Swindon Town Football Club—but the churches too are part of its life.That is its distinction.
In the Centenary book of St. Mark’s which appeared in 1945, there is a photograph of Canon Ponsonby wearing side whiskers and a beard that ran under his chin but not over it. This saintly Victorian priest (who died in 1945 aged nearly 100), caused St. Mark’s parish so to grow in faith that it built four other churches in New Swindon. One of them, St. Paul’s, became a separate parish. He also caused the Wantage Sisters to open their mission house in Swindon. The work went on under the famous Canon Ross, his successor, and it continues. The most beautiful daughter church of St. Mark’s was built, called St. Luke’s. It was designed by W. A. Masters. Except for the railway works which are awe inspiring inside, St. Luke’s is the only fine interior, architecturally, in Swindon. But it is not with lovely St. Luke’s nor with little St. John’s nor with the mission which St. Mark’s supports abroad, nor with the many priests who have been Swindon men that I want to end. On the steep hill that winds from the old to the new Town there is a church built of wood called St. Saviour’s. It was erected in 1889–90 in six months by St. Mark’s men, mostly railway workers. They did this in their spare time and for nothing. Some of them sacrificed their holidays and their working hours were from 6.00 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. in those days. What faith must have inspired them to go out after a long day’s work and build a church.
Of course, with foundations of Faith like this, St. Saviour’s grew and in 1904 it had to be enlarged. Over a hundred men once again set to work and the church was extended entirely by voluntary labour and in spare time.
St. Mark’s parish for some reason hangs together and is a living community, full of life and spirit. Perhaps it is because Swindon is the right size for an industrial town, neither too big nor too small. Perhaps it is because the sort of work men do in a railway works—“inside” as they call it in Swindon—is not soul-destroying such as one sees in motor factories where the ghastly chain belt system persists. Perhaps it is not beneath the dignity of men. Whatever it is, I know that the people of Swindon first taught me not to judge people by the houses they live in, nor churches only by their architecture. I would sooner be on my knees within the wooden walls of St. Saviour’s than leaning elegantly forward in a cushioned pew in an Oxford College chapel—that is to say if I am to realise there is something beyond this world worth thinking about.
The church-crawler starts by liking old churches, but he ends by liking all churches and of all churches those that are most alive are often those hard-looking buildings founded by Victorian piety—churches like St. Mark’s, Swindon.
1 From My Native Village, N. T. Carrington, 1830.
2 From Essays in Rhyme on Morals and Manners (London: Houlston & Co., 1840).
14
COAST AND COUNTRY1 Ventnor
FAR too few people on the Isle of Wight have the sense to go by its railways.These delicious single lines wind through most of the best scenery of the island.Oh, let me advise you instead of sitting half-asleep in the luxury coach with your arm round your girl and the wireless on and the petrol pumps passing and the gear-clashing and brakes squeaking at dangerous corners—oh, let me advise you to go by train.And of all lines on the Isle of Wight, the fairest and wildest, the most countrified, the most romantic is that which runs from Cowes, not Ryde, to Ventnor West, not the main station of Ventnor.
It was by this line that I, almost the only passenger, first came to Ventnor. And if the Southern Railway had any sense it would put observation cars on this part of its system.
We glide through alder-bordered meadows, past the thatched farms and greeny-grey stone cottages of inland Wight. Little streams and meadow-sweet, Shorthorns and Friesians—an inland agricultural country that might not be an island at all; which is yet like neither Hants nor Dorset.
Then the chalky downs grow nearer, high and golden-brown
