Edward Colston statue graffiti will be preserved

Fran Coles is one of the city council's conservation team working on the toppled statue

Graffiti sprayed on to Bristol's toppled Edward Colston statue will be preserved.

A conservation team is working at a secret location to examine and treat the statue, which was pulled down and thrown into Bristol Harbour on 7 June.

It was recovered four days later and is being looked after by Bristol City Council's conservation team.

The statue of the slave trader is expected to be given a new home in a city museum.

'Pretty good condition'

When the statue of Edward Colston was pulled from the water, it was filled with mud and had an old bike tyre hanging from it.

"Considering his journey to the harbour, he's actually in pretty good condition," said Fran Coles, the city council's conservation and documentations manager.

"Our main concern is making sure that we can conserve the paint, the graffiti that's on him now, because that's actually become the most fragile part of the sculpture.

"It has become part of the story of the object, of the statue, so our job is to try and retain that as much as possible, while stabilising the statue for the long term."

A rolled-up magazine from 1895 found inside the statue had been signed by the men who cast it at the Coalbrookdale Foundry

Conservators inspecting the statue found Colston had lost a coattail, the staff he had leaned on for 125 years and had suffered a heart-shaped hole in his backside as protestors rolled the statue from its plinth to the water.

Ms Coles said: "You can see the scrapes and scuffs as he was being rolled to the harbourside, but they are clean and stable.

"When he came out of the harbour he was full of mud and sediment, so we were quite keen to remove that very quickly.

"The only significant structural damage to the statue was at the foot. Overall, he's structurally sound."

The team collected 500 placards from the protest which are also expected to be displayed in future