Swindon's first post-war council estate was built at Penhill and provided homes under the Government-sponsored London overspill housing scheme for scores of families who had endured sub-standard living conditions in the capital.

Mr and Mrs R Aitken and their seven-year-old son Dennis, and Mr and Mrs DC Adams and two-year-old David were the first families to move in. For each couple their previous home had been a single room.

THE 1950s were among the most significant decades Swindon has seen.

New estates were built at Penhill, Walcot East and Parks. And hundreds of families who had existed since the war in overcrowded and sub-standard housing, some without such basics as running water, moved here as part of the London overspill scheme.

It was forecast that within 10 years the population would grow from under 70,000 to at least 132,000.

With the homes came jobs as new companies set up factories and offices here. No longer was Swindon facing the economic risks posed by being a one-industry town.

It became common for mothers to go out to work, even though magistrate Mr Arthur Leighfield blamed them for juvenile delinquency and condemned the government for encouraging women to seek jobs.

Coronation Day in June 1953 dawned damp and cold. But the bleak weather did not prevent Swindon from enthusiastically celebrating the start of the new Elizabethan age.

All over town people festooned homes and offices with flags, bunting and large pictures of the young Queen.

Pictured above are children from Gorse Hill School celebrating the big occasion.

FOR women all over war-ravaged Europe, the launch of Christian Dior's 1947 New Look collection was the start of a return to feminine frills.

However, even when clothes rationing ended in March 1949, Britons were restricted in what could be created.

But with a few compromises in the width of their skirts, as the 50s began British women made their own versions of the haute couture originals.

Wide skirts and lace trim, furs and pretty underwear, buttons and bows, were all back.

Key pieces were capri pants, pencil skirts, circular skirts, conical bras, peep-toe shoes, puffball skirts, net petticoats and pedal pushers.

WHEN Princess Margaret laid the foundation stone on May 16, 1957, of the hospital that was to bear her name, the town had had a long wait for a modern medical centre.

Most sick people in need of in-patient treatment had been treated at the red brick Victoria Hospital in Old Town, at St Margaret's Hospital in Stratton and at the tiny Great Western Hospital, which was originally provided for the railway workers who'd been hurt in accidents.

But not everyone was pleased when plans for the new hospital at Okus were announced. Some people protested that it was too far from the town centre and would be difficult to get to.

The Princess arrived by train at Swindon station. A special coach had been attached to the 11.05 from Paddington to Cheltenham.

After declaring the foundation stone "well and truly laid" she was presented with the inscribed silver trowel.

THE standards of care received by 50,000 Swindon people under the GWR Medical Fund were held up as a national example in 1946.

The Fund became regarded as a model for a proposed free national health scheme for the whole of Britain.

In January that year the town's Labour MP Tom Reid spent several hours with Medical Fund Society executives, discussing its past, present and future role and inspecting its buildings and equipment.

Afterwards he said the GWR scheme, which provided health care for railworkers and their families, was the forerunner of the Government's plans for a free health service.

"Swindon should be proud," he said, and added that the GWR scheme's members probably received better care than wealthy patients in London.

The Fund helped pay for the Great Western Hospital in Faringdon Road, which was initially set up to care for rail workers injured in the course of their jobs, but later treated their families too.

In 1947, Labour MP Aneurin Bevan, acknowledged as the principal architect of the NHS, visited Swindon to see for himself how the Great Western Medical Fund worked.

Shortly afterwards, the National Health Service as we know it - with its principle of free care for all - was born.

IN the late 1940s you could have bought a modern three-bedroom semi in the Drove Road area for less than £2,000.

Estate agent Frances Holmes of Victoria Road was advertising one with two reception rooms, kitchenette and bath "in nice order" for £1,975.

Most prospective purchasers seemed to regard a hot water system as more important than a garage.

In November 1947, motor dealer WG Green, who had showrooms in Marlborough Road where the HSBC bank now stands, was proudly announcing the arrival of the new Hillman Minx, with synchromatic fingertip gear change. The price was £385, plus purchase tax of £107 13s 11d.

That month, an ad for shoe shop Greenaways on the corner of Victoria Road and Prospect Place announced that the firm had been "selling fashionable shoes for exactly 100 years".

And clothes shops were advertising bargains.

Willsons of Bridge Street proclaimed that its bargain of the week was a rayon crepe afternoon dress, ideal for parties, at 28s 3d (£1.41), plus seven clothing coupons.

At the beginning of April 1945 the Savoy in Regent Street, now the Savoy bar, was showing Shine on Harvest Moon, a smash hit musical starring the "glamorous, amorous marvellous" Ann Sheridan, pictured, a British star whose name was guaranteed to pull in huge audiences.

Meanwhile Swindon's other big cinema, the Regent, owned by Gaumont British and later to become a bingo club, was featuring Paul Muni, Merle Oberon and Cornel Wilde in A Song to Remember, described as the "picture of pictures in magnificent Technicolor".

Swindon people who wanted to spend a night at the pictures had plenty of choice in those days. The town had six cinemas, plus film shows at the Empire Theatre and the Playhouse and most of them changed their programme every three days.

WITH rationing still in force after the war, make do and mend was the rule many women followed.

In 1945 the Advertiser was running its own pattern supply service. Readers could pay 1s 3d (6p) for a paper pattern and instructions for making a frock in candy striped cotton.

Girls modelling swimsuits in 1947

Swindon's only female mail porter at Swindon Station

Flower shows in the 1950s. Picture courtesy of Jane Pattison.

Swindon Moravian Church in years gone by