Swindon artist, Frank Quinton, was a prolific painter from the 80s through to the 2000s. Frank captured many street scenes of Swindon and surrounding area. Frank would often choose subjects that were not obvious candidates for works of art. For example, paintings showing the back streets of Swindon’s terraced houses with the lean tos with corrugated roofs and old sheds and derelict buildings. I thought about Frank when I chose to paint this building. A lovely buiding that has been home in more recent years to night clubs, Groove, Incognito, Fever, The Beach and Boutique Beach not necessarily in that order. I remember going in there in what must have been the late 90s early 2000s when it was a pub called the Litten Tree. Then it was packed with drinkers and doing a roaring trade. However, when I came to produce this picture, the building had been unused for several years and it was in a pretty sorry state. Mandy and Duncan’s website documents the decline in a series of photos taken from 2012 through to 2019. There is a link on Mandy and Duncan’s site to a photograph of this building from the 1930s when it served as the Boy’s YMCA Club.
I did read somewhere that planning permission has been given to turn it into bedsit accommodation. I know people need homes and I’m aware that having people live in the building is better than letting trees grow out of the masonry but it is quite sad in many ways that many the town’s best buildings that were once thriving businesses are being used in this way.
I really did enjoy doing this picture and loved painting the greenery sprouting out of the drain pipes and masonry and I can see why Frank Quinton would paint such buildings. They do have a charm that lends them to being painted even if the finished work can betray the sadness of the dereliction.