In an isolated spot along the north side of the Wilts & Berks Canal, immediately east of the Whale Bridge (built in 1804 as a stone arch bridge) across the canal on a field called Little Medgbury, a terrace of a dozen properties was built c.1841-42. These cottages were called Cetus Buildings, or Cetus Cottages (In ancient Greek, the word ketos - Latinised as cetus - denotes a large fish, a whale, or a sea monster) a pun on Whale Bridge, which had been named because of its hump-back shape.
These properties were built at right angles to the track that joined Lower Eastcott Farm and Upper Eastcott Farm. The back entrances to Cetus Buildings had steps at intervals leading down to the canal. The building was quite imposing with a classical pediment. It was visually similar to Falcon Terrace in Westcott Place, a Wilts & Berks Canal Company development that also backed onto the canal.
This circumstantial evidence has helped to maintain the long-held view of historians that the terrace was built by the Wilts & Berks Canal Company for bargees and other canal workers. Research carried out in 2014 by canal historian Jan Flanagan proved that Cetus Buildings was a private business venture by William Dunsford, who was one-time superintendent of the Wilts & Berks Canal, Edward Roden (Roden’s Sun Brewery in Highworth was associated with the Wilts & Berks Canal Company) and James Crowdy.
In 1841, the canal company sold land on either side of the Whale bridge to this trio, on which they built cottages in ‘brick, stone and slates’. Dunsford died in 1845, the same year that twelve Cetus Cottages, said to have been ‘newly erected’ and were put up for sale as part of the Crowdy estate. The 1851 census records the occupations of the cottagers (some properties were unoccupied, others had more than one worker) as:
William King, 24, coal haulier
Robert Day, 46, carter
Jacob Haines, 32, agricultural labourer
Henry Hill, 29, iron drilling labourer
George Aldridge, 26, boilermaker’s labourer
William Cook, 54, shoemaker
John Cook, 22, boilersmith
Elizabeth Cook, 19, dressmaker
George Smith, 16, groom
Thomas Garrett, 26, cattle dealer
Anne Weeks, 23, washerwoman
Thomas B. Newman, 22, groom
What is obvious is an absence of workers on the Wilts & Berks Canal.
At about the same time that Cetus Buildings were built, the Whale beer house was built adjacent, with a large yard. Here the bargees tethered their horses. Its first keeper was Jonas Head, who was first mentioned in 1841 when he was a 25 year-old beer house keeper of Eastcott. When he left in 1845, the Whale was taken over by Richard Dunn (b. Marston, Wiltshire, 1812). He titled himself ‘publican’, but at the same time was otherwise occupied as a railway plate layer for the GWR, in whose works two of his sons were also employed, one was an engine apprentice boilermaker, and the younger was a boilermaker’s labourer.
The Cetus Buildings became the south-western end of Medgbury Road when this was built in 1878 by the Trowbridge Building Society on the field formerly known as Great Medgbury. It had a terrace of 32 properties on the northern side, 35 on the southern side backing onto the canal next to Cetus Buildings, and a further 8 at right angles at the east end of the street. The Cetus Buildings were renumbered, with 1 Cetus Buildings becoming 80 Medgbury Road.
The Whale Bridge was rebuilt in 1893 as a flat span steel bridge by Swindon Corporation at a cost of £1,200. The Cetus Buildings and The Whale Hotel, as it had become known, survived until 1962 when they were swept away as part of the preparations for the construction of Fleming Way and would have stood on what in now its east bound carriageway. Whale Bridge continued to span the old and long abandoned canal bed for a few more years and was eventually removed in 1965 during the construction of Whalebridge Roundabout, which itself was removed in 2011/12 and turned into a junction as part the Kimmerfields development. The houses on the south side of Medgbury Road were demolished in the early 1980’s and replaced by Cockram Court, a council owned sheltered housing scheme, but apart from a few houses demolished in the 1960’s, the northern terrace still stands today.
Article written by Adrian Fisher