The North Star (at Swindon)
Has a connection with an existing pub name seen in a few places though not as far as I know Swindon: The Seven Stars. Those aren't just random stars, they refer to a railway of a particular sort: the underground railway that took escaped slaves from the southern states of the USA to Canada. The Seven Stars are the Plough (as we call it, perhaps in this context it would be more appropriate to give the American name, Big Dipper) which point the way north.
http://www.midlandspubs.co.uk/innsigns/seven-stars.htm - Midlands Pubs - tells us some more:
The Plough is the nickname of Ursa Major but is also known as The Great Bear or Big Dipper. The handle of the Dipper is the Great Bear's tail and the Dipper's cup is the Bear's flank. Technically however, The Big Dipper is not a constellation but an asterism, a term for a distinctive group of stars. The names of the seven stars which make up The Plough are Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Dubhe, Phad and Merak. If you have been a scout or served in the armed forces you've probably been taught how to locate The Plough because, for those living in the Northern Hemisphere, you can use it to find other important stars. For example, it is a great navigational tool when you draw an imaginary line from Merak [bottom right] through Dubhe [top right] out of the cup of the dipper you will arrive at Polaris, the North Star.
My thought for Swindon's pub as "North Star" was however based on the North Star locomotive - see -
http://www.broadgauge.org.uk/locos/loco_north_star.html - and on the area os Swindon that's taken its name from that too.