I live in Gloucestershire, so Gloucester is my county town and one of the two big towns near me. Whenever I go there these days I try to take a minute to walk around the bak of Northgate Street to look at the concrete mural on the old Sainsbury’s building, which is currently empty pending redevelopment as apartments. I have always liked this mural and I hope plans to remove it before the redevelopment starts and display it somewhere else come to fruition. I think it’s an object lesson in making something memorable out of a blank wall and using the opportunity to commission talented artists.
The artists concerned were Henry and Joyce Collins and 40 or 50 years ago they were quite well known for this sort of decorative work. Henry Collins married Joyce Pallot in 1938 and from 1948 on produced a number of public artworks in Britain. They are best known for murals made of concrete, the first of which was for Sainsbury’s in their home town of Colchester in 1969. The Gloucester mural followed in 1970. The couple produced about 30 such murals during the ensuing decade.*
They were well aware that many people found concrete dull and grey, so countered this both by the vigour of their designs (the concrete is often deeply cut to produce strong patterns of light and shade) and by using colour, especially brightly coloured mosaic tiles, to enliven their designs. They were also keen to make their murals express something specific to their location, often the history of the town where they were located. This explains the subject matter of the Gloucester Sainsbury’s mural, which features that city’s rich Iron Age, Roman, Medieval and later history.
The section in my photograph, which represents slightly more than one quarter of the whole artwork, shows how they did this using patterns, symbols, heraldry, and figurative art. Starting at the far left, the vertical band of zig-zag pattern is taken from prehistoric Beaker Period pottery. The small roundel next to it and the octagon just above and to the right are motifs from a Gloucester Roman mosaic and recur at other places in the mural. The larger roundel with a sun-like design is a device they used on murals for Sainsbury’s. Beneath are two coats of arms, both for the city of Gloucester, the first granted under Henry VIII, the second from the time of Oliver Cromwell. Beneath the coats of arms is a plough, with the inscription, ‘Success to the cultivation of waste lands,’ in honour of the area’s rich agriculture, a point also made by the wheatsheaf to the right. The roundel next to this shows a coin from time of William the Conqueror. Above, and dominating this section of the mural, are two figures against a background of vibrant orange† mosaic tiles: a medieval abbot of Gloucester (the building that’s now the cathedral was an abbey before the time of Henry VIII) and a Norman soldier. To the right of the soldier are images that allude to Gloucester’s maritime and riverine history: a Severn coracle and paddle, and a sailing ship. The latter is based on a token produced in 1795 to mark the start of work on the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal. The bell-like object to the right of the token is based on a cup illustrated in a local Roman mosaic, but turned upside-down to symbolise the town’s bell-founding industry. Above the sailing ship and cup-bell are the words ‘GLEAWE CEASTRE’ the city’s Saxon name.¶
The mélange makes for an engaging mix of images, and forms in my opinion a fine tribute to the city’s history in the idiom of the 1960s and 1970s. It’s bold, well designed, and its use of colour works well. It has livened up a dull part of the city (it overlooks a car park) for over 50 years. Removing this fine piece of public art from the wall it’s attached to is going to be a delicate operation that needs to be done by experts. One hopes that this process, when it happens, is successful, and that the mural is properly resited. I have a certain anxiety over all this because another work of Henry and Joyce Collins, from Gloucester’s branch of British Home Stores, has been similarly removed and now languishes in storage ‘awaiting a suitable site’. It has been there for some years.
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* For more about this artistic couple, see the Henry and Joyce Collins website.
† Orange is a colour used in Sainsbury’s corporate identity, but it works well visually, giving the mural a welcome warmth.
¶ I am indebted to the website of the Gloucester Civic Trust for information about the iconography of the mural.
