Old Green - Relief Mural - Newport - Gwent, Wales.
N 51° 35.416 W 002° 59.714
30U E 500330 N 5715468
The Old Green Mural Relief - depicts the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company and the key role played by the canal and railway in Newport's history. Located in Newport, Gwent, Wales.
Waymark Code: WMFKFV
Location: South Wales, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 10/29/2012
Views: 1
The Old Green Mural, located in the the dubious location of the Kingsway pedestrian underpass.
The relief approx 80 feet long by 20 feet high, is made from concrete, with the lower portions, coloured in with mosaic ceramic tiles.
The relief depicts the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company and the key role played by the canal and railway in Newport's rapid growth and prosperity in the mid-nineteenth century.
"This mural, a concrete relief and mosaic construction, located in the open air section of a pedestrian underpass. Its an impressive piece that uses the available space, and has weathered surprisingly well. No one in their right mind would express fondness for a pedestrian underpass, but this piece rises above the mundane and fires the imagination.
The mosaic commemorates the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company, which occupied this site as one of the main arteries of trade for the burgeoning port of Newport during the iron era. Now a busy traffic junction, it is hard to imagine just how busy this wharfside location in Newport actually was: as we see in the photograph of the canal and Moderator Wharf before being filled up by the corporation in the 1930s. For here, huddled right next to the town centre, was a labyrinth of canal, railway and wharfs. Thus has been the fate of canals in many a British city - think of Swansea and Cardiff, closer to home - to make way for succeeding road transportation systems. Thus Kenneth Budd's Old Green Mural, surrounded by city centre traffic at all hours of the day, stands as a silent reminder of the now invisible history of the age of the canal and the railway." Text Source: (
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