BELGARUM was surprised to see this mural on the side of the new Jigsaw store on Winchester High Street.

Presumably it has planning permission from the city council as it may spark other traders to consider doing the same.

Celebrating the return of Jigsaw to the High Street, it adorns the side of the building on the corner of Little Minster Street and could be easily missed.

Belgarum likes it but it could perhaps have been bigger. If going to create such a mural why not make it really big? In for a penny, in for a pound, after all.

For anyone who thinks ‘what is the world coming to’, such painted adverts were a common feature around the city in late Victorian times and the first half of the 20th century.

Belgarum has written before about the faded but still legible sign for the motor works on Parchment Street, near Stonemason’s Court, which stems from around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Another is the Nestle ad on the little shop that once operated on the corner of North Walls and Upper Brook Street.