Among the more unusual collectable items to recently appear on a well known internet auction site was a coat hanger. Not any old coat hanger but one imprinted with the name of W Clappen – Tailor & Outfitter, Tram Centre & Wood St Swindon.

William Clappen was born in Cirencester in 1855, the son of a tailor, William and his wife Sarah. Like his brothers, the younger William joined the family firm in Cricklade Street, Cirencester, where his father employed six men and three women in 1861.

In 1881 William married Hannah Prior, a farmer’s daughter from Kemble. In the census of that year the couple were living over their outfitters business at 14 Wood Street. As the Clappen business empire grew, so did the family, with three sons and two daughters born between 1883 and 1892 above the shop in Old Swindon.

During the 1880s William submitted a number of building applications to both Old and New Swindon Local Boards, among them a plan to convert the Baptist Chapel on Fleet and Bridge streets into shops. In 1887 he applied to make alterations to his property in Wood Street and two years later he made another application to build a warehouse in Henry Street.

William’s shops were at the retail centre of both Old and New Swindon. His premises at the junction of Fleet Street and Bridge Street was at the site of the tram centre when it opened in 1904. Here the tram drivers used the clock set in the wall of shop to check their departure times and the area became known as Clappen’s Corner.

By 1901 William and Hannah had moved to a house called Pinehurst, in Rodbourne Cheney. Their daughters Sarah and Ethel were both employed in the family firm as clerks. Their second son, William James, completed his drapery apprenticeship at Alfred Herington’s shop in Arundel, Sussex, before returning home to Swindon. But, unlike previous generations, not all the sons went into the family tailoring and outfitter's business. The eldest son Allan Victor Clappen, born in 1887, was to become a solicitor and practised at various addresses in Winton, Bournemouth. Wilfred Joseph, William and Hannah’s youngest son, was born in 1892. He attended Durham University where he gained a BSc in agriculture and was Master in Agriculture at North Eastern County School in Barnard Castle at the outbreak of the First World War. Wilfred joined the Durham Light Infantry in January 1915. He died on September 22, 1916, aged 24, of wounds received during the Battle of Flers Courcelette during the infamous 1916 Somme offensive. He is buried in the Heilly Station Cemetery, Mericourt-L’Abbe, near Albert.

William and Hannah retired to Southbourne near Bournemouth and a house they named Cotswold after the place of their birth.

William died in 1920 and Hannah in 1928.