5. The Wolverton Whistle Words and Music by John Close
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Wolverton’s ‘whistle’ – also known as its ‘hooter’ or ‘siren’ - was the local community’s alarm clock signaling the day’s schedule for The Railway Works for over 100 years from the 1840s:
‘We used to have a Works’ siren before my time… It would go off at 7am to get everyone out of bed; and then again, to sound when people started work; and also when they finished, at 5.30pm. Over the years though, the signals got dropped off.’ Denis Young, Wolverton Worker and resident Another resident recalled ‘cycling to Wolverton every Friday to meet my dad out of the carriage works. When the hooter went, about five thousand men came out the gates.’ Mrs Pinfold, who lived and worked at The Engineer public house in Wolverton said that when the whistle blew, all the staff had to be on duty behind the bar: ‘I only went in the bar during the rush time when the men come out of the Works dinner time and then again at half-past five till six o’clock… There were two sets of pumps and taps all along - nearly all beer. It was good working class trade… The majority couldn’t stay very long as they had to go home for dinner. They all behaved themselves. When I was behind the bar you never heard no bad language’[1] John Close’s song2 focuses on how troubling was the ending of Wolverton’s daily life when the whistle shut down in 1939: ‘You couldn’t set your clock by that any more But you knew what time it was, it was a time of war.’ Its silence marked the end not only of the Works’ comfortable routines but also of community life - and it was the start of a new privation and terror… ‘And the thirties passed away…’ In 2013, Wolverton Works, still the world’s longest continually operating Railway Works, celebrated its 175th anniversary. Understandably perhaps, little remains of its ‘whistle’ – either physically or on record. However, the 175th celebration of the founding of GWR railway works in Swindon took place three years later in 2016. This included a celebration of its original ‘whistle’, perhaps not dissimilar to Wolverton’s: ‘For over 100 years the original hooter, which is still in position above the Swindon Designer Outlet, was part of the Great Western Railway history and would blast out several times during the day, every morning calling the men and women to work, every lunchtime for workers going home for lunch and every afternoon to let the workers and their families know the day was over… ‘At precisely 4.30pm today the sound of the Works Hooter was heard again, 30 years to the day that the famous Swindon Railway Works closed on 26th March 1986.’ The ‘Wolverton Whistle’ had had its moment of history too: in November 1925 – in a dispute predating the national General Strike - hundreds of workers staged a week’s sit-in. It all came to an end ‘with the call of the Railway Carriage Works whistle at 7.55 on Tuesday morning.’[3] [1] Go to Living Archive | A living history of Milton Keynes to hear the full interview. [2] A download is supplied on this webpage of the 1983 original performance with Lizzie Bancroft lead [3] From The Wolverton Express 6th November 1925 |
The Wolverton sit-in, 1925
Men leaving Wolverton Works
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