Taqi Spateen's artwork on the Brunel Goods Shed

I forgot to go to the Brunel Goods Shed on Sunday to hear a talk by Taqi Spateen, the renowned Palestinian street artist who is visiting Stroud for five days. He was also commissioned to produce a piece of his work whilst here, before moving on to the last of five UK venues in London.

I went to town to see what had happened, and parked near the station, where I saw that there was a painted section of the building, though it wasn't easily seen from the car park. I walked to the end of the station's platform 1, where I could take this shot, on the outside of the electrically powered shutters covering the former portals of the Goods Shed.

I have great affection for this building as I'm a trustee of Stroud Preservation Trust which took on the building when it was a near wreck and about to be abandoned by British Rail. It took more than twenty-five years to bring the building back into use, after raising more than £300,000 needed for repairs including a completely replaced roof. Eventually we decided to enclose the interior space to protect it, which necessitated these shutters being installed on three entrances.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed the building when he first built the railway from Swindon to Cheltenham, an extension of the mainline from London Paddington to Bristol and Wales. At that time the railway was wide gauge which meant that the railway tracks were further apart than today's network. As a result the building's opening portal seen here was for the wide gauge wagons and carriages to be brought into the shed for loading and unloading of goods, hence the name. The building, originally built in 1845, was still used as a goods shed until the late 1950s but then gradually fell into disuse and disrepair.

Once we had stabilised the building and brought mains electricity into its interior (which alone cost £25k+) we sought an end-user, which is the objective of the Trust, to hand on buildings with a new sustainable future use. Stroud Valleys Artspace (SVA), are based in the centre of town in an old industrial warehouse, but were seeking a performance centre. In 2011 we finalised an agreement to hand over the lease from Network Rail to SVA, which was a legal nightmare in itself. SVA are now well established in the building and hold a lot of music and art events in the Shed. They eventually agreed to purchase the building from Network Rail in 2014 for a small sum.

I was slightly underwhelmed by this artwork, but it possibly is only half finished, as the scaffolding is still up. We shall see. I think the symbol on which 'HOPE' is painted maybe modelled on one of the buffers of a train? Who knows.


On the Stroud Preservation Trust website you can read about the building and its history and see a variety of archival images, as well as some of my own. The overgrown vegetation is all on Network Rail property and I know from experience how difficult it is to get access to the rail side, without many men in yellow hi-vis jackets waving flags at trains! Nature takes its course here.

Brunel Goods Shed – phase 1
Brunel Goods Shed – phase 2