Alfred Owen Williams (7 February 1877 – 10 April 1930) was a

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

, author and a collector of folk song lyrics who was born and lived most of his life at

South Marston South Marston is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Swindon, Wiltshire, England. The village is about north-east of Swindon town centre. History The earliest documentary evidence for continuous settlement dates from the 13th centur ...

, near

Swindon Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon un ...

, UK. He was almost entirely self-taught, producing his most famous work, ''

Life in a Railway Factory Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy transf ...

'' (1915), in his spare time after completing a gruelling day's work in the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

works in Swindon. He was nicknamed “The Hammerman Poet”. Williams was born in Cambria Cottage in the village of

, the son of a carpenter, and grew up in poverty after his father abandoned his wife and eight children. He became a farm labourer at eleven, and then, when he was fourteen, he entered

Swindon Railway Works Swindon railway works was opened by the Great Western Railway in 1843 in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. It served as the principal west England maintenance centre until closed in 1986. History In 1835 Parliament approved the construction of th ...

, where he worked as a steamhammer operator for the next twenty-three years. Married in 1903, he pursued a demanding schedule of full-time work and private study. He published his first of book of poems, ''Songs in Wiltshire'', in 1909, but his health declined and he left the factory in 1914. Williams published six volumes of poetry and a series of prose books about his home villages and others nearby, but died in poverty in 1930 in South Marston. ''Life in a Railway Factory'' has been described as “undisputed as the most important literary work ever produced in Swindon, about Swindon.” There is a bust of Williams by the artist

Harry Carleton Attwood Harry may refer to: TV shows * ''Harry'' (American TV series), a 1987 American comedy series starring Alan Arkin * ''Harry'' (British TV series), a 1993 BBC drama that ran for two seasons * ''Harry'' (talk show), a 2016 American daytime talk show ...

in the collection of

Swindon Museum and Art Gallery Swindon Museum and Art Gallery is a mothballed museum in Swindon, Wiltshire, England, which is currently closed while a new venue is sought. Collections The Swindon Art Gallery collection was established in 1944 by a local benefactor, H. J. P. ...

References

External links

* *
Alfred Williams Heritage Society

Alfred Williams biography
at SwindonWeb
Alfred Williams images
in the Swindon Local Studies Flickr Gallery 1877 births 1930 deaths People from Swindon English male poets Writers from Wiltshire 20th-century English poets Great Western Railway people English folk-song collectors {{England-poet-stub