THE changing face of Swindon was the theme of several Adver stories this week in 1966.

The evolution of the town centre from a network of Victorian streets into a modern shopping area was well under way, and we sent a photographer to the top of what is now the Debenhams building.

His images included a shot of the parade looking from the underpass end to the junction where the water feature now stands. A square of concrete is being prepared for another water feature, the notorious concrete Cube whose troubled history lasted until the end of the of the 1970s.

A nearby location was still much as it had been for well over a century, but all that was about to change – or so we were told.

We reported: “The 124-year-old railway station at Swindon, once described as the town’s worst advertisement, is to be given a ‘facelift,’ it was announced today by British Rail.

“Though he said that plans were in an early stage and it was too soon to give details, a spokesman for the Western Region management at Paddington told an Evening Advertiser reporter that the station is one of several to be improved.

“’We have been considering the condition of the existing junction station for some time,’ he said. ‘It is one of the stations where it is intended to present a good impression to people visiting Britain for the first time. Plans are now in the course of preparation but it is too early to give details.’”

The project was subsequently hit by delay after delay, and it wasn’t until well after the turn of the 1970s that work began in earnest.

In direct contrast furniture and household fittings firm Gilberts of Swindon extended its presence at the corner of Newport Street and Marlborough Road, adding a showroom in the modern building known as Market House.

More than half a century later, Gilberts remains one of the town’s oldest and best-known businesses, although Market House is now home to The Bike Rooms.

The interior of the building is readily recognisable from the images we ran that week in 1966, which was Gilberts’ centenary year.

Our advertising feature included a striking example of the era’s advertising. A woman is pictured pointing what appears to be a flintlock rifle at her husband, who is on his hands and knees, measuring a floor.

The caption says: “He’s really on the CARPET. Soon it’ll be CURTAINS for him. He’d better go to GILBERTS before his wife gets him!”

A rather more unusual story involving a building came from Penhill Drive, where the council managed to find new occupants for a house whose previous tenants had fled in terror months earlier, claiming it was haunted.

As in so many things, Swindon was ahead of the curve; it would be a decade before a certain house in Amityville, New York State, became famous for much the same reason.

Unlike the Lutz family of Amityville, the frightened Swindon family – we won’t name them or reveal the house number after all these years – didn’t report being trampled by demons or having pig-like monsters with glowing red eyes peer in through upstairs windows. They did, however, say there were strange noises, a sinister atmosphere and the odd apparition.

The family was rehoused and an exorcism held, although it was not clear whether the cleansing was organised by the council.

A number of prospective new tenants looked around the property and rejected it, apparently without knowing its history.

Once a new family moved in, the mother of the previous one got in touch to let them know what had happened.

She told us: “I told him, ‘For your sake and the children I hope you are happy here.’”

The house has since passed into private hands.

Seven years later there would be another exorcism in Penhill – this one was filmed for a TV programme about the paranormal – when a couple living in Westbury Road reported poltergeist activity.

Back in the world of the living in 1966, Swindon was visited by a woman whose extraordinary courage was immortalised in a film starring Ingrid Bergman.

In 1938, while working in China, London-born Gladys Aylward famously led 100 children to safety across mountainous terrain, preventing them from falling into the hands of invading Japanese forces.

The deed was committed to celluloid in 1958 film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.

By 1966, and having been denied re-entry to China, she was running her own orphanage in Taiwan.

She brought one of her young charges, called Gordon, with her when she visited Ferndale High School during a British speaking tour.

She told an Adver reporter that British young people seemed to bother themselves too much with trivial things, adding: “They aren’t bothering about the things that matter, and the things that don’t matter are taking up their time.”