Colchester - Sainsbury's

We end our national tour of the concrete murals of Henry and Joyce Collins at where it all began - the Sainsbury's store in Priory Walk.

This mural was created in 1969. Unlike the later ones it has been created in unpainted concrete and with no colourful tessellated tiles. The artwork is also a bit less sophisticated than on those to follow.

But like some of the later ones the space in front of it is used to park bikes.

And it started off the process of representing local history in the designs that make up the mural. Let's look at the mural from left to right.

We have a series of coin designs, including the wheat motif one which was repeated on the subways project. The CAMV letters stand for Camulodunon, indicated that the coin was minted in Colchester.

There is another coin with a horse motif, and the letters CUNO, indicating that this is a coin of King Cunobelin who ruled AD 10 - 40.

Camulodunum was the Roman name for Colchester.

The Princess Diana lookalike below is actually Helena, who was Empress of the Roman Empire and later became Saint Helena. The wording around the coin gives her full name of Flavia Iulia Helena Augusta. She is an important figure in Colchester as she was allegedly the daughter of King Cole (he of merry old sole fame from the nursery rhyme, although the linking of all these facts seems somewhat dubious).

More is known about Boudicca (a.k.a.Boudicea and other spellings) who was the Queen of the Iceni who revolted against the Romans and led the destruction of Colchester in AD60.

The mural is signed Henry and Joyce Collins at the bottom left of the panel depicted a ship.

Colchester became a colonia i.e. a planned town which was inhabited by military veterans rather than just being an active military establishment. The depicted building is the Temple of Claudius, on whose foundations the current Norman castle was built. The figure with the winged helmet is Mercury, god of poetry and communication.

So that completes the tour of all the concrete murals of Henry and Joyce Collins (well, all the ones I know about - if I have missed any please let me know). It was my mission to visit them all in 2019, which I achieved - it is just a taken a while to post them all.

I hope you have enjoyed the tour, and will let me know of any historical facts that I have got wrong or missed out.

The next posting will give a summary of all the mural visited.

Photographs taken on 7 October 2019.