Fears that the new kingfisher mural in the centre of Twickenham has been deliberately damaged have been put to rest.

The mural, which sits on a previously blank wall at the junction of King Street and Wharf Lane, has drawn enormous praise from residents and it has become a destination for selfies.

However, large blank squares began to appear on the design within just a few days of completion sparking fears on social media that someone had decided to damage it.

Nub News has learned that this is not the case but rather the large grey squares - where paint has been stripped away - follows a decision to change the design and colour scheme.

The completed mural had an image of Twickenham Bridge coloured in green at the bottom half. However, it has been decided that it will be more appealing to have a simple line drawing of the bridge against a cream background.

The mural was the brainchild of developers Essential Living, who own the King Street parade from number 3 through to 33.

The company's development manager, Camilla Lesser, told Nub News, the mural is part of wider initiative to improve King Street.

Explaining the change in design, she told Nub News: "The wall is not damaged, we have just decided that we preferred the outline of the bridge, rather than the bridge coloured in block green. We feel this better draws the eye to the kingfisher element.

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"This means we must remove the anti-graffiti paint layer (these are the patches from your photo) and re-do the bridge section of the mural.

"It should all be completed again by the end of this week."

A series of other improvements are planned by the company, including installing uniform and colour co-ordinated designed shopfronts across the entire retail parade.

Nub News has learned that this is not the case but rather the large grey squares - where paint has been stripped away - follows a decision to change the design and colour scheme.

The kingfisher design itself was the result of a collaboration with design and branding expert, Bobbie Galvin, and Align Architects. The design was chosen because 'it ties in nicely with the nearby riverside and the King Street name itself'.

The spectacular foliage was created and painted by Graffiti Life, which is a collective of some of the world's best creatives, project managers and professional graffiti artists. The company's artists are experts in murals and the collective was formed in 2020 with a focus on promoting public art.

Graffiti Life said the work was created by a group of artists called Joy Collective, who specialise in public art installations. They prefer to be known as a collective, but the five artists involved in this project revealed their first names as Gioele, Lucy, Andrew, Alistair and Mark.

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