Public Artworks Protected With New Listings

The tiled mural by Gyula Bajó at the former Co-operative House in Stevenage Town Square was installed between 1956 and 1958. It is the earliest of the four major surviving Co-op murals of the 1950s and 1960s.

‘Scenes of Contemporary Life’, by innovative sculptor William Mitchell, is a two-part sculptural wall mural at Park Place underpass in Stevenage and a fascinating artistic record of local Stevenage life and memorable British events in 1972.

Also by William Mitchell, three mural walls at the Hockley Flyover underpass in Birmingham were designed in a playful way and intended to encourage people to climb upon them.

Tiled mural by Gyula Bajó at former Co-operative House, Town Square, Stevenage

Co-operative House (now Primark) was the ‘Stevenage Super Store’ of the Letchworth, Hitchin and District Co-operative Society, and the first major retail premises to open in Stevenage Town Centre (in June 1958).

The former Co-op features the colourful tiled mural by Hungarian-born artist Gyula Bajó (1907-84), who joined the Architects’ Department of the Co-operative Wholesale Company around 1953.

The Stevenage artwork is the earliest of the four major surviving Co-op murals of the 1950s and 1960s, the others are in Ipswich (1963, by Bajó with Endre Hevezi, not listed), Hull (1963 by Alan Boyson, listed at Grade II), and Scunthorpe (1963 by Derek W Brown, not listed).

A Co-operative Wholesale Society pamphlet on ‘Co-operative Architecture’, published in 1960, explains that the Stevenage mural ‘symbolises the spirit and activities of the Co-operative Movement as a whole and in relation to Stevenage’.

The mural depicts the ‘four cornerstones of a balanced economy – Industry, Commerce, Transport and Agriculture…’ with a spinning-wheel and finished products representing Textiles and Consumer Goods, a steelworker representing Heavy Industry, a teaching figure representing Science and Technology, and scenes showing Agriculture and Family Life.

On its unveiling, the mural was praised by the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and France’s Revue Moderne.

See the List entry for the tiled mural

‘Scenes of Contemporary Life’ by William Mitchell at Park Place underpass, Stevenage

Park Place underpass was built as part of the dual carriageway redevelopment of St George’s Way in Stevenage in 1972 and is adorned with murals by architectural sculptor William Mitchell (1925-2020). Prolific and innovative, Mitchell worked in various materials, but most notably concrete.

His preparatory drawings, held in the collection of Stevenage Museum, help to explain how the sculpture was constructed.

The mural’s decorative panels depict social, political and cultural events of the day alongside scenes of everyday life in Stevenage; contemporary vehicles and the developing town; political demonstrators, including the Women’s Liberation Movement; a group of figures representing the ‘Flower Power’ movement; and a United States Air Force space rocket and cosmonauts in a Soviet landing capsule.

In correspondence with Stevenage Development Corporation around 2015, Mitchell wrote that sculpture played an important role in giving an area character and making the surroundings 'less severe'. Representations of the football team, buses, cars and people dressed in the fashionable clothes and hairstyles of the day were intended to be 'an instantly recognisable pastiche of time and place... the panels were meant as a time warp for the future and a recognisable landmark for the then present'.

See the List entry for 'Scenes of Contemporary Life'

William Mitchell murals in the pedestrian concourse of Hockley Flyover, Hockley Circus, Birmingham

The Birmingham Hockley Flyover was opened in 1968 and featured three banked walls with murals, designed by William Mitchell, to the underpass entrances within the concourse beneath. The mural walls are cast in pigmented concrete. Each mural has a slightly different character, incorporating geometric shapes, abstract patterns, and naturalistic forms, distinctive of Mitchell’s style.

Mitchell expressed that ‘Hockley flyover was one of the greatest things that ever happened in this country because it was the first of its kind and certainly of its scale.’

The Hockley murals have a playful quality to their three-dimensional design, and Mitchell expressed pride that people felt encouraged to climb on them, noting that this allowed them to become a part of society.

The murals are culturally significant in illustrating a movement in the mid-20th century where public art was frequently commissioned by local authorities or private companies to enhance otherwise utilitarian structures, at a time of significant development in road infrastructure.

See the List entry for Hockley murals