Regent Circus College, technically a six storey extension to the Technical College in Victoria Road, opened in 1961 and closed in 2006.  According to 'The Swindon Book' by Mark Child, it cost £402,000 and at one time had seventy tutors, twelve technicians, and six departments:  arts, building, commercial studies, engineering, household arts and science and mathematics.  The reason for mentioning this is because when trying to find information about when it opened all we seemed to see was negative comments about how awful the building was - an eye-sore that was ripe to be demolished and we just wanted to remind people that in its time it was an excellent facility for Swindon.

When it was built, it must have been viewed so differently.  How lucky Swindon was to have such a modern facility to educate its adult population.  How many people improved their education by attending the College?  Mandy certainly did - she attended classes for about three years in the late 1990s gaining a Royal Society of Arts Diploma with Distinction in Word, Text, Medical and Legal Processing.

Sadly we don't have many photographs of the college before its decline.  We do have many photographs of it during its demolition - during the summer of 2012 it must surely have been the most photographed place in Wiltshire!  In fact we have so many photographs of the demolition we have decided to put them on their own page  demolition photos,  with just a taster on this page. We also took photographs of the site as it was being developed into a shopping and entertainment complex (named Regent Circus) and after it opened.  As yet only our photographs of the  Construction  are on this site.