Started off as cheese factory
The building started out as a cheese factory, built between 1841 and 1876, and was owned by the London based Aylesbury Dairy Company, founded in 1865. The factory supplied dairy products to London via the Great Western Railway, situated opposite. In 1876 the Company commissioned the Swindon based architect William Herbert Read to draw up proposals for a small extension to the factory with a mill & butter dairy. It is not known whether this was ever built (it is now no longer there).
In June 1891, after the cheese factory closed, its contents were sold through public auction, and subsequently the building was converted to become the Swindon Steam Laundry Company, owned by Robbins and Renshaw (Kelly's Directory Wiltshire, 1895). Plans of 1891, signed by the Swindon based architect Ellis Herbert Pritchett of Bishop & Pritchett Auctioneers & Architects (Kelly's Directory Wiltshire, 1895), with the proposed alterations marked in red, show an L-shaped building that follows the footprint of the cheese factory shown on Read's block plan of 1876. Pritchett's plans show two parallel ranges, one of single storey height and one of two storeys, both with pitched roofs. To the rear was a delivery and distribution yard, lined with horse boxes, a ‘Carpet Beating Room’ and an ‘Open Van Shed’. From here the dirty laundry was to be delivered to the ‘Receiving and Sorting Room, with its adjacent ‘Office’ and ‘Board Room’, then passed to the ‘General Wash House’ with its adjacent boiler room which had a tall chimney. The clean laundry was then brought to the ‘Mangling, Drying and Ironing Room’ on the ground floor, and/or the ‘Airing Room for Flannel & Woollen Goods’, which occupied the entire first floor. This was flanked to the rear by the ‘Women’s Mess Room’ and ‘Hats and Cloak Room’ (early C20 photographic evidence shows that the Laundry employed mostly women). Once the laundry had dried, it went to the ‘Finishing Room’ and then the 'Packing Room' on the ground floor before being re-distributed.
By 1942, as indicated on the Ordnance Survey map published in that year, the rear yard appears to have been filled in. In the c1960s (prior to it being listed), the building remained in use as a commercial laundry, and was altered and extended to the rear, incorporating the site of a former row of terraced houses along Haydon Street. This resulted in the loss of the rear of the steam laundry including the distribution yard with the boiler room, chimney, parts of the General Wash House, the Receiving and Sorting Room, and the Office and Board Room. The 1960s extensions that replaced this part of the C19 building, have recently been demolished with Listed Building Consent (November 2012).
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1355881?section=official-list-entry
