Swindon Museum

Museum & Art Swindon sits on the first floor of the town’s Civic Offices in Euclid Street, a building completed in 1939 that Historic England calls a fine example of Moderne design. The gallery grew from a 1944 gift by local benefactor H. J. P. Bomford, who donated a group of artworks to start the collection. For decades it occupied Apsley House in the Old Town, a 19th-century building on Bath Road and Victoria Road. In 2021 the council decided the house needed major repairs and closed it to the public. The artworks went into storage while the council planned a new home. The collection centres on 20th- and 21st-century British art, with pieces donated by the Art Fund and the Contemporary Art Society. Among the artists represented are Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Gwen John, L S Lowry, Grayson Perry and Maggi Hambling. Paintings, photographs and studio pottery fill the displays. Before the move, the museum also showed local archaeology, geology and social history, tracing Swindon’s Jurassic past, Roman links and town development. Visitors now find bright galleries on the first floor of the Civic Offices building. The new space shows the modern British art collection alongside changing displays. The building’s Moderne lines and tall windows give a clear view across Swindon. The gallery continues to host events such as the Swindon Festival of Literature.