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 (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

, writer 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 in Wiltshire, England. At the time of the 2021 Census the population of the built-up area was 183,638, making it the largest settlement in the county. Located at the northeastern edge of the South West England region, Swi ...

, UK. He was almost entirely self-taught, producing his most famous work, '' Life in a Railway Factory'' (1915), in his spare time after completing a gruelling day's work in the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...

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, 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 in the collection of

Swindon Museum and Art Gallery Museum & Art Swindon, formerly Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, is a museum and gallery in Swindon, England. It is run by Swindon Borough Council and since 2024 has been housed within the Swindon Civic Offices, council's offices at Euclid Street, ...

References

External links

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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