As we continue to celebrate the Adver’s 160th anniversary we are pleased to present 160 reasons why we love Swindon.

No-one is saying Swindon is perfect and our town has sometimes been criticised for allegedly lacking history, character, heritage and culture.

In the next few stories you will find 160 examples of why the Adver thinks Swindon and the surrounding area has all of these and more.

We celebrate the festivals, institutions, achievements, facilities and environmental aspects that – in the opinion of the newspaper that has served Swindon since 1854 – make this town and its environs a colourful, multi-faceted and community-spirited place to live and work.

50 FESTIVAL OF LITERATURE: A Festival of Literature in Swindon? Surely not. There were doubters aplenty when it first emerged in 1994 but the 10-day jamboree led by founder and driving force Matt Holland has become an enduring annual event with leading authors and sold out venues.

51 FOLKSINGERS CLUB: Founded by husband and wife Ted and Ivy Poole in 1960 the Swindon Folksingers Club – 54 years old and still going strong – is the UK’s longest standing institution of its kind. Currently based at the Ashford Road Social Club it remains true to one of its original tenets of “fostering good singing and helping new singers and musicians.”

52 FOOTBALL HEROES: Harold Fleming (1887-1955) was the only Swindon player to represent England, playing 11 times and scoring nine goals. Don Rogers waltzed around the Arsenal defence to help Town take the 1969 League Cup. And John Trollope has made more league appearances for one club than anyone else – a staggering 770 games from 1960-1980.

53 FOUNTAINS AT ASDA WALMART: If public art is all about inter-acting with people then the Asda Walmart water fountains at the Orbital Shopping Park is a screaming fun-packed success. Kids and some grown-ups too can hardly help dashing into the spurting fountains, which can gush 30ft high, on sweltering sunny days.

54 GAY PRIDE: A popular and much anticipated event on Swindon’s summer calendar, hundreds of people every August descend on the Town Gardens for a fun and colourful festival that celebrates the creativity and diversity of the area’s gay, bisexual and transgender community.

55 GOLDEN CAVALIER: Having already lost two sons in the Civil War, Royalist Sir John St John of Lydiard House was shattered when his third lad Edward hobbled home from battle in 1645 mortally wounded. Heartbroken, he commissioned a magnificent full sized gilded effigy of him in full cavalry armour which can be admired at St Mary’s Church.

56 GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY: The town would not exist but God’s Wonderful Railway, whose impact on the West Country when it opened in stages from the late 1830s to the early 1840s was life changing – commercially, industrially and for recreational purposes. The same London-Bristol line still operates today.

57 GREYHOUND RACING: Both for the earnest punter and the clueless novice, a night at the dogs at Blunsdon Abbey is a great experience. At one of the West’s leading greyhound venues, you can holler for your hound from comfort of the restaurant and bar if you don’t fancy huddling on the terraces.

58 GWR MEDICAL FUND: When Health Minister Aneurin Bevan unveiled the revolutionary NHS in 1948 – our “cradle to the grave” state health and welfare care provision – it was nothing new in Swindon. The plan was inspired by the GWR Medical Fund, paid for and used by Swindon railway workers after it was created a century earlier.

59 HAMMERMAN POET: The remarkable Alfred Williams (1877-1930) was a self-taught scholar of Latin, Greek and French whose graphic descriptions of working in the tough, physically demanding environs of the GWR’s stamping shop have become a lasting document of industrial conditions in the late Victorian/early Edwardian period.