I WAS angry to read your article regarding this proposed use of the Mechanics. While it is quite clearly unsuitable for a skateboard park I am amazed such coverage was given to such a proposal.

While I see no reason the youngsters should not have such a place the Mechanics is most certainly not it.

Clearly the matter of the future of the most important building in the Swindon story is not being taken seriously enough.

I would therefore like to offer the following alternative venue for such activities as skateboarding, paintballing (a disgraceful abomination the Mechanics was once used for), pop concerts, continental style pubs and restaurants to name a few.

The venue I have in mind has great potential for all the above. It has the facilities needed such as flushing toilets, changing facilities, rooms to turn into first aid posts should anyone receiving injury from skateboarding etc require assistance, and proper security, necessary for places where children could be at risk.

The venue I suggest is situated in Euclid Street, namely the council offices, in spite of the fact that part of it is a typical 1930 style building which will soon probably be deemed unimportant and will be either neglected or pulled down like so many other structures connected with the Swindon story and replaced with an ugly modern facility.

The council chamber itself would make an ideal pop concert venue, and it is possible this site would then produce profit.

There are excellent attractive outdoor facilities for a continental cafe and bar within its grounds.

To return to the Mechanics itself I would like to suggest that perhaps the new owner should be made fully aware of the great importance of this Grade II* listed building as the pioneer of a library, college and many other benefits for the progress and wellbeing of Swindon and the hard work of the ordinary people of yesteryear in creating this institute in the first place.

It is the preservation of places of great historic value which give a town its character and the right to seek such things as city status.

Pubs and clubs and the systematic destruction of a town's history do not, and Swindon in its present state hasn't any chance at all of becoming possibly a City of Culture of the future, but merely the pub capital of the West.

I would therefore respectfully suggest that perhaps the new owner may like to read some or all of my late husband's publications relating to the Mechanics and to talk to such people as his brother and others deeply concerned that this building should be restored to its original state structurally and sympathetically used for the people of Swindon, particularly those who are not a part of the present culture so prevalent in this town.

The restoration of the most important building in Swindon cannot be undertaken lightly as cannot its future use. This is our heritage.

(Mrs) M P COCKBILL

Swindon