Artist's huge fishwife mural on side of Hartlepool pub attracts wave of positive comments

Artist Lewis Hobson has created this stunning mural of a Victorian fishwife at The Fishermans Arms, in Southgate, and has already attracted lots of attention and positive comments from passers by.

It depicts a typical kind of woman that would regularly have been seen on the Headland in yesteryear selling various wares including fish.

At three storeys high, it is his biggest design yet measuring around 14 metres (46 feet) by eight metres wide (25 feet).

Lewis, of Durham Spray Paints, said: “It’s open to interpretation as to who she is exactly.

"She would have just been someone you would have seen walking up and down that street whether going to buy some fish from the boats or mending the nets or waiting for someone to come back off a ship.

"I’ve already had someone from the area say it looks like how their grandma used to dress.”

Lewis, 27, created the mural entirely out of spray paint and is almost complete after working on it for about two weeks.

He added: “It’s definitely the biggest one I’ve done but it’s also really intricate as well.

“People have been walking past every day when I’ve been painting it and have been so kind and really appreciative.

"It’s been a really great response.”

The woman in the picture is actually a modern day model and taken from a photoshoot by Hartlepool photographer Kane Young.

Fishermans Arms owner Glen Murphy approached Lewis about doing a mural and came up with the concept with landlady Hazel Whitelock.

Hazel said: “It’s exactly how I visualised it. It is a memorial to all the Hartlepool fishwives who worked in the fish quay.

"With us being The Fishermans Arms and on the fish quay I though there was no better spot to put it than on the wall.”

She added: “The amount of people that walk past to have a look at it, it’s brilliant.”

Although from Durham, Lewis has fallen in love with the Headland and painted a number of murals there.

They include the former local landmark the Elephant Rock on the Pot House pub and an Andy Capp comic strip on a fishing storage building near the Pilot Pier.

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