Graffiti gallery 2

The second instalment in an occasional series documenting Cheltenham’s ephemeral street daubings.

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Malvern Road. This well preserved set of antique scratchings can be found in the passageway leading off Malvern Road into Lansdown Terrace Lane. They were hidden behind a metal plate for some years, which has helped to preserve them from subsequent layers of rendering. Here on the cornerstone of one of Cheltenham’s most precious architectural landmarks, two centuries’ worth of bored socialites made use of the carvable properties of Cotswold stone before they invented Twitter.

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Clarence Street. A somewhat more modern interpretation of vernacular art, on the window of the former C&G offices in Clarence Street.

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Oxford Passage. A shark looks rather surprised to find itself on the door of a Victorian workshop.

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Gloucester Road. Continuing the fish theme, this little beauty is inexplicably pasted onto a BT junction box outside Travis Perkins’ yard on the busy Gloucester Road (thanks to Anna for spotting it).

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Gloucester Road. And lo and behold, further up the street I was pleased to find a companion piece by the same artist, hereafter known as the “Gloucester Road fish dauber”. This one is gracing the boarded-up doorway of a derelict public toilet.

Graffiti gallery

Shortly before its demolition, I took this photo of the old Union Workhouse laundry building in Carlton Place with the pigeons clustering ominously along its roof. It seemed rather appropriate that this cursing figure should appear on the wall at the same time.

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And its companion piece, further along on the same wall.

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A thoughtful daubing on a wall of the disused Honeybourne Line.