IN 1974 the old Highworth Rural District Council and Swindon Borough Council issued their own obituaries in advance.

On April 1 that year, both were to be absorbed into the newly-created Thamesdown Borough Council.

The change, imposed by Westminster, would be resented by councillors and electorate alike until Thamesdown gave way to the new Swindon Borough Council 23 years later.

The impending abolition of the old Highworth Rural District Council, which had existed since 1894, was marked in a special Highworth edition of Civic News.

One of the few surviving copies has come to us courtesy of a Rewind reader, Mr Greenaway, who discovered it among the effects of his late father-in-law, Gordon Hancock.

Mr Hancock, a former railway worker who lived in Hunt Street, died aged 95.

The newspaper includes a list of the parishes which until 1974 came under the control of Highworth Rural District Council.

They were Bishopstone, Blunsdon, Castle Eaton, Chiseldon, Hannington, Haydon Wick, Highworth, Inglesham, Liddington, South Marston, Stanton Fitzwarren, Stratton St Margaret, Wanborough and Wroughton.

Rural district council chairman Mr A Burke Jones wrote in a front page article: “The reduction in the number of rural representatives from 25 to 16 on the new Thamesdown Council, whilst inevitable, has resulted in a loss of direct representation for many of these parishes, thus making local government more remote.

Parish councils will become much more important and they must see that adequate lines of communication are quickly established with the Thamesdown Council.

“Highworth Rural District Council has always solved its problems by consensus within the council. In the future the issues will be decided on a party political basis where the abrasive party confrontation and opposition will reduce the power and influence of the council to the effective strength only of the majority party.”

Pictures inside show places then administered by the rural district council, including Highworth itself, the Greenbridge Industrial Estate, council homes in Blunsdon’s Lonsdale Close and the Ellendune Shopping Centre in Wroughton.