HE walks past that fading, threadbare little shop, with its cracked and rotting wooden frames, grimy windows, crumbling plaster and peeling pink paint, at least a couple of hundred times. Glenn Mason nearly always stops and stares in, even though nothing ever changes. The box of Whiskas Cocktail cat food, as always, is sandwiched between the family-sized packets of Corn Flakes and Quaker Oats.

On a set of rickety, yellowing shelves that perpetually seem on the verge of collapse are other household essentials: boxes of Surf and Daz washing powder and packets of Oxo cubes and Uncle Ben’s Rice.

Peering further in Glenn can see a poster extolling the virtues of Swindon’s Hong Kong Fish Bar and he just makes out a large bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate – still only 5p – along with a couple of sun-faded boxes of Pickwick Flaked Rice.

The entire stock should have been condemned years ago. Several cans of Heinz Baked Beans (57 Varieties) have turned rusty red with corrosion.

But everything is still on display in wilting, decaying, dust-smothered containers. Where are the customers? Where is the owner? When did the till last ring (yes, it is one of those hefty, old fashioned ones like typewriters.) With its gloomy, cob-webbed interior, the premises that are passed by several hundred people every day have become a ghost shop, he thinks. And in a way, he is right.

Ten years ago Glenn turned his growing obsession with Number 66 Manchester Road – the Swindon retailing equivalent of the Mary Celeste – into an award winning art project.

Tracey Emin has her rumpled bed, Damien Hirst his shark in formaldehyde and Gilbert and George their pilfered newspaper billboard posters; they are among the leading lights of contemporary art.

But there is something deep, mysterious and somehow rather touching bordering on tragic about Glenn’s project which still resonates – at least, for me – a decade later. His fixation sees him delve into the life of an elderly, isolated woman whose self-inflicted solitude can easily come out of the pages of a Dickens novel.

In the heart of 21st Century Swindon widow Edna Brain, presumably frail and white-haired, lives without hot water, telephone or heating in a flat with an outside toilet and no bathroom. Speaking to Glenn at the time I recall writing the phrase “Swindon’s Miss Havisham” – the character from Great Expectations who locks herself away in her creaky, decaying mansion after being jilted.

For many years – it is never established exactly how many – Mrs Brain and her husband run a traditional grocery shop in Manchester Road in an era when every street has such an establishment before they are obliterated by superstores.

But when her husband dies in the late 1970s Mrs Brain simply shuts up shop, retires to their modest upstairs flat and never serves another loaf of bread or jar of coffee again.

She leaves the shop exactly as it is and never – judging by the untrammelled coat of dust on the floor – sets foot in it again.

The entire stock remains in situ on the shelves and in the window while Mrs Brain lives the spartan life of a hermit in the flat above.

And that is how it stays for more than a quarter-of-a-century until the reclusive widow’s death at 90 in 2003.

During the late Seventies and Eighties Glenn, then a handyman, lives in Manchester Road and becomes increasingly aware of the “old curiosity shop,” with its odd assortment of time-warp goods that have been mysteriously left to rot.

During his late teens he pops in once. He later recalls that even then it has an “eerie depression about it.” He says: “I went in to buy some bread and baked beans. “The elderly shopkeeper, presumably Mr Brain, didn’t seem to want to sell anything. I felt very uncomfortable and got out quickly. That’s the only time I remember it being open.” He later moves to Gibraltar but the mystery of the Manchester Road convenience store is always nagging away at the back of his mind. Returning a few years later Glenn in 1999 enrols as a mature student to study drawing and fine art at Swindon College. Intrigued to discover whether anything has changed at the shop he finds it in exactly the same state: Whiskas, Corn Flakes, Quaker Oats etc all in order if somewhat more sun-blanched and faded.

His continued interest in the ‘store that time forgot’ coincides with Mrs Brain’s death in March 2003.

With the help of the estate agent dealing with the property’s disposal, Glenn gains access, takes photographs and makes a video recording of the ghostly, disquieting premises.

“It was absolutely fascinating,” he says at the time. “I think perhaps Mrs Brain left the shop as it was as some form of tribute or shrine to her husband. Over the years it became something of a curiosity for local people.”

Imagine, if you will, the feelings of Swindon estate agent Austen Gray who becomes the first person to enter the shop in around 25 years. Today Austen, now a valuation manager of Castles in Commercial Road, says: “How can I forget it.

“It was like stepping back in time. I felt like I had walked onto the set of a period television drama. The shop was completely untouched. It was exactly as it had been left – except that it was dirty and there was dust everywhere.

“The tins of food were heavily corroded. The tins of fruit had actually exploded. I remember the till – it was one of those old fashioned ones with big buttons.”

Austen, who works for Colin Pike estate agents at the time of his tentative steps into the shop where time stood still, says Mrs Brain lived upstairs without central heating or a bathroom. “She lived a very humble and insular life. In the kitchen there was a small water heater over a Belfast sink. Her only form of heating was an open fire. “I spoke to one of the neighbours who said her laundry, coal and food were all delivered – presumably at the back door because no-one had been in the shop at the front of the premises for years. She never left the property.

“You tend to see a lot of odd things in this business, but this was a one-off.”

Glenn’s photos and video earn him a prize in Swindon’s Think Art competition. Father-of-two Glenn, 37 at the time, buys the shop counter for £60 at auction and acquires much of the 1970s stock with the aim of “recreating the essence” of the Brains’ shop as part of a further arts project.

At the time the Adver speaks to Mrs Brain’s neighbours but they are unable to throw any light upon the enigmatic loner or her cloistered lifestyle. Unsurprisingly, no-one knows or can remember the name of her long dead husband.

Sheila Clark, 66, a Manchester Road resident for 22 years, tells us: “The last time I saw her was nine years ago. She didn’t say anything and kept her head down. She was so private, nobody around here knows anything about her.”

Ten years since her passing, Mrs Brain’s self-imposed prison has been ironically resurrected as Club Little Vegas, a shiny “drink and play” emporium complete with darts, bar, live football and slot machines.