KING Kong has made a surprise appearance in the wilderness outside Malmesbury after a prolific local artist decided to refresh an old mural on the edge of the town.

Street artist Luke Hollingworth, also known as Syd of the Stencil Shed, decided to whitewash an old piece of work depicting a person balancing a chained safe on his head as a homage to the credit crunch to fit the Real King of Malmesbury mural onto the back of a barn near Back Bridge.

“The mural has been spray painted over the top of my old Credit Crunch artwork,” the father-of-two said.

“I was itching to do a big mural as my project to set up my new workshop has consumed most of my time this year and I wanted to remind everyone that I am still around.

“I did the Credit Crunch artwork before I even used a spray can and artists often look back on their old work and cringe. I definitely cringed looking back on it, although the message was good. As a piece of art I think it was an older style of mine and the subject has moved on.

“Animals are my sort of thing and I had just seen the new film Kong: Skull Island and thought it was fantastic. The composition here was just perfect.”

The mural, which is 30ft tall and 18ft wide and took just two days to paint, can also be seen from the new Dyson offices in a tribute to the engineer himself.

Luke said: “In a way it was a two fingers up to Dyson because he has certainly had a big impact on the town so I thought it would be nice to have my own little impact on the view from his offices with the Real King of Malmesbury.

“People are now going to stop calling it the Credit Crunch field and call it the King Kong field.”

The artist, who has been busy setting up his spacious new workshop, has also created two new jumps with the Willis Brothers for the Badminton Horse Trials which finish today.