Groundwell Road in Swindon is mostly residential with some shops and more roads of houses coming off it.  Our photographs start at the 'town' end (as it marks the start of the town centre) at a very busy junction with Victoria Road (going up to Old Town), Clarence Street and Regent Circus.  Some of our photographs have a link under them to see more photographs of that building.

The first building (on the left) is called Empire House and currently the ground floor is divided into four units with different businesses in.  For many years there was a chemist/pharmacy trading in Unit 1 - we think called the Empire House Chemist, and Unit 4 was a laundrette.  Unit 2 (or was it 3?) was George Davis flower shop and we cannot remember what the other unit had in it.  The building was built in 1960 on the site of a glorious building - The Queen's Theatre, later named the Empire Theatre.  It was built in 1898 and could seat 1,600 people and was demolished in 1959.  All the stars of the day performed there including Laurel and Hardy, George Formby, Tommy Trinder and even Diane Dors aged just 5.  Follow these links to see photographs of this lovely Victorian building:  Hooper Photograph of inside,  Queen's Theatre (outside)  and Empire Theatre (outside)

Looking at photographs of the new and old building it is hard not to sigh at the loss of so many of Swindon's heritage buildings of character that have been demolished.  Oh how different it would look and perhaps we might have retained some pride in our buildings instead of the generic brick boxes that are replacing them.