Sunday 7 December 2008

Evening falls on Clifton Street

The corner of Clifton Street and Radnor Steet in Kingshill area of town, as the winter sun goes down. The building on the corner used to be a dairy and across the road (where I stand to take the picture) is a building that looks as though it may have once been a stable. Across the road on Radnor Street stands a red brick building that was once Clifton Street Primary School - now a small electonics workshop. A slightly ramshackle part of town that holds clues to the history of 'new' Swindon as it spread uphill with the coming of the Great Western Railway. My own small house, which is nearby, was built in 1884.

Clifton Street today - not hard too hard to imagine how it might have been when the terraced houses were still quite new, a century a so ago. Corner shops; horse drawn delivery carts and homes that did not need to be locked.

Overlooking the back gardens of Clifton Street through the railings of Radnor Street Cemetery. The winter sun sinking fast even though it is only mid afternoon. A half moon is visible in the clear cold sky. Later as I return home in the early evening, it is dark and crisp with a thick frost forming on the pavements.