AFTER our glimpse inside the decaying Locarno and Corn Exchange building we thought it was a good time to look back our archive pictures of the Mechanics' Institute, which closed in 1986 and the fate of which also hangs in the balance.

Paid for by rail workers, the institute - or institution - was built between 1853 and 1855 and contained the UK’s first lending library with the reading room in the centre of the building also used for lectures.

It provided health services to Great Western Railway workers and, later, to other local workers helping inspire the creation of the National Health Service.

Nye Bevan, mastermind of the NHS, which was founded in 1948, once said: "There was a complete health service in Swindon. All we had to do was expand it to the country."

Over the years our photographers have made many visits to the building with the most remarkable probably being on September 20, 2010, when Stuart Harrison documented the removal of the roof so that the structure of the building could be made safe.