I grew up living in Goddard Avenue in the 60’s and I had heard that there had been a cricket club playing somewhere near Goddard Avenue.
While I was looking for something about Faringdon Road Park I came across an article (which has since moved from the website I found it) which I found fascinating as it ties up some loose ends that I have had in the back of my mind for a very long time. Download pdf
During my teenage years I had explored a wooden building at the rear of 153/154/155 Goddard Avenue that was clearly out of place and I had heard was a cricket pavilion. It certainly looked like it could have been a pavilion. (Noted Swindon Sculptor Carlton Attwood lived at 155 Goddard Avenue.)
The article talks about Swindon Cricket Club playing at Okus Fields, The Sands. Looking at the maps available to me 1885, 1899, 1959 and now, there is a building that remains on the same spot until today. This spot is the location of the wooden building I knew as a teenager in the 1960’s.
The old wooden building is no more; it is now a row of garages which occupy the same footprint as the old pavilion.
In the 1960’s the old pavilion wooden structure was being used by a local builder or plumber as a storage yard/base. I remember it well as I was able to climb a wall and get inside the loft (mezzanine) area for a nose about, which I did on a few occasions, once even with people downstairs.
I have since found a document on the Swindon Cricket Club website that is a pretty detailed history of the club from 1844 to 1988 and there are several references to the Okus Pitch which pretty much confirms the location of the pitch and pavilion to be the area shown, but not marked as a cricket pitch, on the 1885 map.
According to the Cricket Club History the club moved to the County Ground in 1895 but the Okus pitch was still used for the second XI, which is interesting as the 1899 map shows houses built on the pitch, it clearly didn’t last that long.
The Goddard family owned the land at Okus and the County Ground and had been generous with their Club with regards to rent leases etc.
So far I have not found any reference to why the pavilion remained when the houses were built as it took away some of the garden from two or three houses.
I moved away from Goddard Avenue and it was some years later I re-visited to find the wooden pavilion gone with garages in its place, I suspect that few knew it was the old pavilion and ever fewer cared. Site Geo code: 51.551501, -1.787009
