DRAW THE RAISED BRIDGE

Description

A young boy dressed for imaginary battle raises a makeshift sword above his head. His armor consists of the improvised equipment of childhood: a colander for a helmet, a simple shield and a wooden sword with a pencil attached to its tip. Beside him, Banksy wrote the command DRAW THE RAISED BRIDGE!

The phrase is a visual and verbal pun. The child appears on Scott Street Bridge, a disused bascule bridge that had remained permanently raised for decades. “Draw” can mean lowering a drawbridge, but the pencil attached to the boy's sword transforms the command into an instruction to make an image. Banksy's own online presentation shifted the wording slightly to “Raise the Drawbridge!”, reinforcing the play between language, drawing and the physical structure.

The Pencil and the Sword

The pencil is the key to the image. Banksy turns the familiar opposition between the pen and the sword into a child's improvised weapon: creativity occupies the position normally reserved for violence. The boy appears ready for battle, but his principal weapon is ultimately a drawing instrument.

This tension runs throughout Banksy's imagery of children. Adult structures of conflict, authority and politics are repeatedly reimagined through play. Here, however, that idea becomes self-referential. Banksy himself has spent his career entering contested public spaces armed principally with images. The boy's pencil-sword becomes an unusually concise metaphor for the artist's own method.

A City Divided by a Raised Bridge

The location adds a second dimension. Scott Street Bridge had been closed to traffic since 1994 because of its deteriorating condition and remained permanently raised, physically separating the two sides of the River Hull at that crossing. Hull City Council confirms that the Grade II-listed structure was eventually dismantled in 2020 after it was judged to present a risk to river traffic.

The mural appeared only months after Hull's year as UK City of Culture 2017, and political interpretations quickly followed. Hull had voted strongly to leave the European Union, leading many commentators to read the permanently raised bridge as an image of Brexit-era separation. The city's history offers another possible echo: during the opening stages of the English Civil War in 1642, Sir John Hotham famously refused King Charles I entry to Hull. These associations are compelling, but Banksy supplied no explanation confirming either interpretation.

The physical fact of the bridge is ultimately sufficient. Banksy placed a child armed with a pencil on a structure that could no longer bring two sides together.

Vandalized, Rescued and Removed

The mural immediately attracted crowds, but within days someone covered it almost completely with white paint. Local window cleaner Jason Fanthorpe rushed to the site with ladders and cleaning materials and managed to remove much of the paint before it dried, saving the image although leaving it visibly faded. Hull City Council subsequently installed transparent protection over the work.

Its more remarkable transformation came later. Because the deteriorating bridge was scheduled for dismantling, specialist contractors removed the Banksy intact from the asphalt surface in October 2019. The extracted section measures approximately seven metres wide by two metres high and weighs more than one tonne. It was subsequently conserved and placed in secure storage.

Hull City Council has considered Trinity Market as a permanent indoor home, while current council information states that plans remain in development to display the original there. The proposed redevelopment of the former bridge site also calls for a replica of the Banksy to be incorporated into the new railings and interpretation scheme.

The result is an unusual reversal. Draw the Raised Bridge was conceived around a bridge that could no longer come down. The bridge has now disappeared, while the drawing survives.