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Date of photo: 2018	Picture source: Google Streetview
The Cricketers was situated on Emlyn Square. This pub closed in 2015.
From Historic England:
The Great Western Railway works in Swindon were established in 1841, to provide a central repair facility for the various locomotives which had been sourced to run on the railway line from London to Bristol, whose construction had begun in 1840. The Great Western Railway (GWR) village was established in Swindon from 1841, aiming initially to provide 300 homes and associated health, welfare, lodging and education facilities for a new community of workers and their families arriving from across the country to staff the railway works, which came to house an extensive and integrated design, engineering, construction and repair plant for locomotives and other rolling stock, and rails. At its peak in 1925, the workforce numbered over 14,000. The works remained in use by GWR and, following the nationalisation of the railways, British Rail, until 1986. In order to house the workforce for the new Great Western Railway works, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) designed a new village to the south of the railway line. Brunel’s early layout drawings of 1840 show a grid similar to the final plan of 12 terraces in six blocks on either side of the High Street (from 1893 known as Emlyn Square). Construction started in 1842, and by 1855 most of the buildings had been completed. Houses and cottages of different types were built, as well as lodging houses. Brunel himself designed only the first block of 1842 (4-25 Bristol Street); as it was visible from the railway line, this is in a more decorative style than the others. The financial difficulties of the contractors JD and C Rigby, who undertook to build 300 cottages but only completed 130, delayed the completion of the village until the 1850s. The cottages to the west of Emlyn Square were built first (1842-1843), followed by those on the east side (1845-1847). The end blocks towards Emlyn Square, containing corner shops on the ground floor, were built in 1845-1847, and the remainder, mostly end blocks on the outer ends of the streets, were built in 1853-1855. In 1966, the local authority, then Thamesdown Borough Council, acquired the cottages from British Rail and restored them. The Cricketers (for most of its life known as the Cricketers’ Arms), completed in 1846, is a corner building in one of those end blocks, on the western side of Emlyn Square, at the junction with the north side of Exeter Street, facing the open green space later occupied by the GWR Mechanics’ Institute (built in 1853-1855). Its name derived from the close proximity of the GWR cricket ground, in GWR park, at the opposite end of Exeter Street. Cricket was popular among the staff of the GWR works, and matches were played between workers from the various shops within the GWR complex, and a GWR Swindon team played against sides from local towns and villages, including Swindon Cricket Club, with whom the works maintained a healthy rivalry. The building was first leased from the GWR by E W Cripps and Co (later the Cirencester Brewing Company), a brewery from nearby Cirencester, in 1847, operating from the beginning as a fully licenced public house, in contrast to most other purveyors of alcohol in the railway village, who ran beer houses. Beer was transported from Cirencester by canal and later by railway. As a licenced premises, Coroner’s Courts were held here until 1891, hearing the circumstances of local deaths. By at least 1885, the pub had taken in and adapted the adjacent four-roomed cottage to its north on the High Street, and outbuildings had been constructed in the small rear yard, including a building which appears to have housed stabling and a hayloft, later extended further and converted to upper floor accommodation. The building maintained its strong connection with cricket and the works’ cricket team: in advertisements, the location of the pub is described as ‘near the cricket field, New Swindon’; and in 1866, the pub’s landlady, Martha Dixon, financed a cup for races held on the GWR field. The subsequent tenant-landlord, Richard Skerten, in his advertisement of 1869, reported that extensive alterations and improvements had been made, possibly referencing the incorporation of the adjacent former cottage’s rooms into the public house. Via a series of brewery mergers in the C20, the Cricketers’ Arms became a Simonds house, and later Courage. In 1966, Thamesdown Borough Council took over the freehold of the Cricketers when the entire railway village was sold by British Rail, though the lease remained with Courage until a merger in 1991, when Ushers of Trowbridge took a long lease on the pub. It was at this time that the ceramic Ushers plaque was installed alongside the corner entrance. The Cricketers, as it was known by the later part of the C20, continued to trade until its closure in 2015. It was repaired and alterations made in 2023-2024, for conversion to an events venue on the ground floor, and flexible use in the upper floors.
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