Swindon & Wiltshire News
City centre shop and flats come to market – with an original Banksy attached
The sale of an unassuming city centre retail unit with flats above it would not normally make headline news, but a Bristol property comes with a twist – an original Banksy attached.
76 Stokes Croft will be sold by auction on Wednesday, November 20 by Hollis Morgan.
The guide price is £750,000. But with original Banksy paintings worth millions, could this one go for a whole lot more?
Mild Mild West is an early work by Banksy. Painted in 1999 – a whole decade before the street artist took over Bristol Museum, attracting 300,000 visitors – the mural depicts a teddy bear throwing a molotov cocktail at three police officers with riot shields.
The artist was inspired to paint the mural after a New Years’ Eve warehouse party on the city’s Winterstoke Road was raided by the police.
The paint was barely dry when the current owner bought the property in 2000 for £55,000. The mixed-use building has a barber shop on the ground floor and two two-bedroom flats above.
The selling agents have ticked all the right boxes, by calculating the likely rent the shop and two flats could make investors – especially if the apartments were aimed at young professionals.
For sale: an original Banksy mural. Shop and two flats included in price.
But Hollis Morgan are well aware of what they’re selling. “Bristol’s home-grown and anonymous graffiti artist Banksy is known all across the world for his satirical, anti-establishment and thought-provoking street art,” says the sales brochure.
“Interested parties to make their own investigations.”
But what would the new owner do with their investment?
Slave Labour, a 2102 mural depicting a child making union flag bunting, was prised from the wall of a Poundland shop in London, later turning up at auction in Miami.
In 2013, Banksy created Spy Booth – a mural picturing secret agents tapping a genuine red telephone box – around the corner from GCHQ in Cheltenham. The mural was removed by persons unknown in 2016, who destroyed the artwork as they attempted to cut the plaster from the wall. Parts depicting the faces of the spies turned up at auction in 2021.
In 2020 – at the height of the pandemic – Banksy painted a mural depicting an old women sneezing out her false teeth on the side of a house in Totterdown, Bristol. The entire wall was later removed by professionals, and was expected to be sold.
This summer, Bansky created a trail of nine animal-themed murals across London. Many were vandalised or stolen not long after they appeared. The final mural – featuring a gorilla helping animals to escape – appeared on the shutters of London Zoo, and was quickly removed by the zoo to a site behind the turnstiles.
Images: Hollis Morgan
