In 1948 Aneurin Bevan, Labour's Minister of Health, rolled out the revolutionary National Health Service, a cradle to grave safety net of state health and welfare care.

It was something GWR employees in Swindon had enjoyed for more than 100 years.

The Second World War coalition Government had debated the whys and wherefores of creating a National Health Service but it was the radical Welsh MP Aneurin Bevan who masterminded the plan having been inspired by the GWR Medical Fund at Swindon.

He had urged members of Clement Attlee's post war Cabinet to visit the town and see just how an employee's contributory scheme could work.

"There it was," Bevan is reported as saying, "A complete health service, all we had to do was to expand it to embrace the whole country."

Daniel Gooch, the Locomotive Superintendent at the railway works is acknowledged as the initiator of the GWR Medical Fund.

With men dismissed or put on short time working when a depression hit the industry in 1847 Gooch approached the directors of the GWR with a number of proposals.

Included in his letter is a request made by the men "one of the plans is to arrange with Mr Rae, (sic) Surgeon, to attend the whole for a small weekly payment by each man"

His first suggestion was that company doctor Stuart Keith Rea be paid an annual salary of £30 with a rent-free company house.

A shop on the corner of London and High Street was converted into a surgery and dispensary.

Dr Rea also received a fee of between 10-13s (50p-65p) according to the number of patients, out of which he had to pay for all medicines, bandages, splints and leeches!

By December 1847 the GWR Medical Fund was up and running. Membership became a condition of employment and subscriptions were deducted from the men's wages, 4d a week for a married man earning more than £1 and 1d for a boy earning less than 10s.

The implementation of the Public Health Act of 1848, prompted by a high rate of death and disease in rapidly expanding Victorian towns and cities led to a damning 1850 public inquiry into conditions in Swindon.

Although the inquiry concerned itself mainly with Old Swindon, conditions in the new settlement at the bottom of the hill were, if anything, worse.

With Railway Village residents receiving a water supply pumped from the Wilts and Berks Canal, also the repository for New Swindon's cesspools and ditches, it was no wonder the new churchyard at St Mark's was rapidly filling up.

In the summer of 1851 there were 13 burials. Life expectancy had plunged from 36 to 29.

The minutes of early Medical Fund committee meetings contain regular complaints against the GWR Company, the most pressing of which was the need to resolve the drainage and water supply problems in the Railway Village.

GWR company houses were regularly inspected, with the medical fund providing free carbolic acid and limewash in the battle against dirt and disease.

In the 1850s a Keeper Of Lime Brushes and Invalid Chair was appointed with a salary of £1.5s.

Washing facilities were created with eight baths in the Mechanics Institute, later moved to a yard at the back of the Barracks.

When this building was converted into a Wesleyan Chapel in 1868 the fund built 32 new baths on a piece of land between Taunton Street and Faringdon Road.

In 1871 the fund established an accident hospital, subscribing initially to St George's and St Mary's in London and Bath General Hospital, where their members could receive further treatment.

In 1887 the Medical Fund employed a dentist. Records show that in his first year he performed 2,000 tooth extractions.

That same year the fund appointed an undertaker. Members had free use of the horse and shiliber (funeral carriage) but if the funeral was for a dependant a charge was made for the horse.

From 1878 artificial limbs were produced in the trim shop for patients across the GWR system and returned for repair or alteration.

The GWR Medical Fund was unique in the wealth of services it provided. In 1948, at the time of its absorption into the National Health Service, the fund was providing health care for 40,000 residents.

Although such comprehensive health care provision would have been difficult to achieve without the support of the GWR Company it was the ordinary railway men who ran the complex system.

The position of president was held by the works manager and in 1911 committee members worked in the Loco Department, A Shop, the Carriage Department, the Wagon Department and the Traffic Department.