The whitewashing of Briton Ferry‘s much-loved Brunel mural has begun — with a decorator pictured today rolling white paint across the town’s gateway wall.
The banner carrying the town’s names in Welsh and English is already part-erased, while Brunel’s famous stovepipe hat and the viaduct beneath it still show through — for now.
The mural’s fate was sealed last month, when it emerged the artwork would have to be painted over within weeks following a dispute over permission.
The piece, celebrating engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the town’s heritage, filled the side of a building at the entrance to the town. It was the idea of local councillor Gareth Rice, who spent around two years planning, saving for and funding the project himself, with the wall painted by street artist Jenks.
Cllr Rice has said he believed he held the correct permission, having spoken to the people he understood to be the building’s owners — but after the mural was finished, a joint owner he says he had not known about came forward objecting.
The owner later broke her silence, saying she had never been asked — learning of the mural in a photograph sent to her while she was working abroad — and that online abuse directed at her had only stiffened her resolve.
Cllr Rice responded by appealing for calm. “They have made their wishes known, and although I’m saddened by the outcome, I respect their right to make decisions about their own property,” he said.
The dispute prompted an extraordinary wave of support for the artwork, with hundreds of messages left online — among them broadcaster Sian Lloyd, who lived in Llansawel as a girl and described herself as “both heartbroken and indignant”.
In a painful twist of timing, Cllr Rice learned the mural must go just a day after the Lord-Lieutenant — the King’s representative in the county — had remarked how lovely it was to drive into Briton Ferry and see it.
The building’s tenants, a local kitchens and bedrooms business, have nothing to do with the dispute and were supportive of the artwork throughout.
Cllr Rice had invited people to photograph the mural before it was covered — and today, the wall began turning white. The person carrying out the work has not been identified.
The councillor has insisted the story doesn’t end at a blank wall, saying he hopes to create similar artwork elsewhere — in the right place, and with full permission.
“This isn’t the end,” he said. “If anything, it’s the beginning of something bigger — something we can create together, in the right place, with the right permissions.”
His brush hasn’t been idle, either — days ago Jenks completed his latest commission, a sweeping mural beside the rugby club in the Gwendraeth Valley village of Pontyates, packed with miners, dragons and Welsh legends.
Tucked among them is EastEnders icon Dot Cotton — there because June Brown, who played her for more than three decades, was evacuated to the village as a girl during the Second World War. One Jenks wall may be turning white this week, but another, a few valleys west, has just burst into colour.
By the time the paint dries, the wall that greeted visitors to the town will be blank again — two years of planning, and a few weeks of admiration, gone under the roller.
