Making Castleton a better place to live

St Edwards children who designed the mural that now covers a mass of grafitti with the company who painted the mural called Spearfish and Councillor Billy Sheerin

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Councillor Billy Sheerin has found and commissioned a novel and colorful way to solve the problem of graffiti painted on the new long retaining wall running alongside the canal built by Barratt's on the boundary of their St Martin's View development.

The graffiti was highly visible to anyone traveling on the trains to and from Manchester and spoils the impact of the smart new houses and also does nothing for Castleton’s image. 

The normal way to remove graffiti is with chemicals and high pressure jet washers but these are not allowed because they could contaminate the canal. This stretch of the canal contains a very rare species of floating water plant known as Luronium Natans and it is protected by European conservation laws in an area of special scientific interest so chemical removal of the graffiti is out of the question.

Earlier this year Councillor Sheerin attended a meeting of the Canal and River Trust and during an open forum he put the question of how could he get rid of the offending graffiti without causing pollution to the canal water. The answer was to paint over it with a work of art that local school children would help to design and depicts aspects and historic scenes of Castleton. A relatively simple solution over painting the mess, but in fact a major project considering the length of the wall.

Spearfish, a specialist company that have done many murals including ones for the RSPB, visited St Edward's C of E primary school and conducted workshops with year five students. Dawn Frost, the teacher coordinator for school, stated how much the children enjoyed helping putting their ideas into the design.

The funding for the project has been made by the three Castleton ward councilors from their individual members funds and matched with a contribution from Barratt.