D & S for Rye &Co New Swindon

Hello all,

One of the thing that I like about saws is that on occasion, one thing leads to another. And so it is with this saw. The saw itself is a good brass backed Drabble and Sanderson and I have found out nothing about Rye and Co except their dates. It is the New Swindon bit that set me searching.

Warning - if you have no interest in Swindon, do not read the rest as it will be incredibly boring for you. Just look at the saw.

Swindon, as it is now, is a town in the southwest- ish of England. The old town is built on high ground and dates back to Saxon times, but the new town of Swindon developed at the bottom of the hill, around the developing canals at first and then the Great Western railway of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It was one of the three important railway junction and manufacturing towns of Britain until the railways declined in the post-war years.

Not only does this saw introduce you to a piece of "proper" history, it also (I hope) introduces what I describe as cultural inertia viz:-

Edwards Boys and Rye (EBR) emerged as an ironmongers in New Swindon sometime between 1889 and 1898. It is interesting to note that although the administrative areas of Old and New Swindon were not amalgamated until 1900 Kelly's Directories of 1898 and 1903 refer to the town as Swindon. EBR is mentioned in the 1903 Directory and sometime between 1903 and 1907 Rye, Arthur Joseph and Co superseded EBR at their address at 40 Farringdon Street.

Now Rye and Co was definitely formed after the amalgamation of the two towns into Swindon and yet he insisted on having his company stamped on the saw as New Swindon. I like to think that this is because he had an affiliation for, and with the name and the place, and so continued to use it after it ceased to have any geographic meaning.

There were plenty of examples of such cultural inertia after the local government reorganisation in the UK in 1974 when people insisted on using old Counties and addresses that had ceased to exist.

Fred