The work at the Civic Offices to transform part of the upper floor into a new art gallery and museum is expected to last until late September.

It gives the possibility that the new exhibition space will open by the end of the year, three and a half years after Swindon Museum and Art Gallery closed its doors in Old Town.

The borough council has posted an invitation to tender for the bids, saying the work is valued at £230,000, and that it is expected to take 16 weeks from May.

The invitation to tender says: “The works consist of building refurbishment works to the 1st floor of the Swindon Civic Building to create four new museum display areas, three storage areas and a meeting room.

"The works are to include internal demolition works, fire-rated doors, screens, mechanical and electrical works, secondary glazing to the display areas and decoration."

The council’s estimate of the length of the work is that it will take from May 30 to September 18.

After the work is finished the collection of historic artefacts and artworks, which includes a nationally important collection of modern 20th-century paintings, will be moved into the display spaces.

An accessible passenger lift to take visitors from the building’s lobby to the upper floor will also be installed.

Opposite the lift will be the orientation, and shop, and then round one side of the open square will be large galleries used for different displays of the art in the Swindon collection.

To the other side of the lift will be what the borough council is calling the “corridor of time” linking six galleries of a permanent display, telling the history of Swindon from the earliest times, through the bronze and iron ages, the Roman occupation, Saxon Swindon, the civil war and its growth through industrialisation to contemporary Swindon. 

The Friends of Swindon Museum & Art Gallery held a “party” last week marking the closure of the facility at the start of the Covid-19 lockdowns. It has never re-opened.

The borough council decided that Apsley House, a Grade II-listed Regency building needed too many costly repairs and did not have an accessible layout.

Chairman of the Friends, Linda Kasmaty said: “We want to council to get on with the work at the Civic Offices.

"It’s important to get the museum and gallery open as soon as possible.”