As Old Town celebrates the 45th Christmas lights switch on in Wood Street this week, Advertiser readers may remember another annual event of Christmas past when Horders switched on their own seasonal window display.

With the blinds drawn for maximum effect, the big reveal across the three shop windows was all part of the Old Town Christmas experience.

Albert Horder, was born in Donhead St Mary, near Salisbury, in 1831, the son of William and Sylvia who farmed 200 acres at Lower Winchcombe Farm. As the couple’s sixth son, it was highly unlikely Albert would ever inherit the farm, so he carved out a career in the drapery business, and never looked back.

In 1861 Albert employed four assistants and a house servant at his shop in the High Street, Shaftesbury where his sister Mary acted as housekeeper.

He married Mary Ellen Jeeves, the daughter of Oxfordshire farmer Edward Jeeves, in 1865 and the 1871 census shows the family living above the shop in Shaftesbury. However, change was in the air and the following year Albert opened his new establishment in the High Street, Swindon in premises once occupied by Thomas Strange, next to the Lodge at the entrance to the Goddard’s Lawn home.

Business flourished and the autumn and winter fashions of 1882 included “a good assortment of Tailor-make Ulsters, Jackets, Dolmans in Plain & Broche Cloth, Velvet, Sealskin & Fur” and “an inspection was respectfully solicited.”

By the 1890s Horder Bros, Drapers, Milliners, Mantle Makers and Costumiers boasted an expansive three-bay shop frontage.

Towards the end of the 19th century Albert handed over the reins to his son Edward Jeeves Horder. Albert and Ellen retired to a house in Devizes Road which Albert named Winchcombe after the family farm where he had grown up. He died there in 1902 aged 72 and is buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.

In a 1953 advert published in the Advertiser, the House of Horder attributed their 80 years successful trading in Swindon to “the quality and very real value of all the merchandise offered and attention given willingly by a thoroughly experienced and courteous staff.”

The 1960s saw the shop undergo some major structural alterations when the top floor was discovered to be unsafe and had to be removed but more devastating changes were on the horizon.

The modern High Street was a very different place to the one in which Albert had set up shop and the family faced some difficult decisions as the economic pressures of the 1970s took their toll.

Horder’s eventually closed, shortly before the firm’s centenary. Today a block of modern flats stands on the site of Albert’s draper’s shop, his name immortalised in the access road, Horder Mews.