A Bristol school named after slave trader Edward Colston has removed its own statue of the 18th century merchant.
Colston's Girls' School, on Cheltenham Road in Montpelier, has had a smaller replica of the city centre Colston statue on display for decades.
But, after the statue of Colston in the city centre was toppled on Sunday, June 7, the school took "immediate" action to remove its statue.
In a statement issued to Bristol Live on Monday, June 8, the school also confirmed it is having "ongoing discussions" over its use of Colston's name.
The school's statue is around 3ft high and stood on a 5ft high plinth in a main thoroughfare outside the entrance to the school hall.
The school was a fee-paying private school set up in Victorian times to be a female counterpart to Colston's School, which was set up by Edward Colston himself in 1710.
It became a state-funded academy in 2011, part of the series of schools run by the Society of Merchant Venturers, the guild to which Colston belonged, and which set up and ran the transatlantic slave trade in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Colston's Girls' School said they recognised the school had 'a role to play in the passionate debate' surrounding the slave trader, on whose slave ships around 20,000 people, including 8,000 children died.
"We recognise that Edward Colston is a divisive figure in Bristol and that we have a role to play in the passionate debate about the use of his name across the city," she said.
"This is an ongoing discussion that we are very much part of, with one immediate action being the removal of the statue of Colston from the reception area of Colston’s Girls’ School," she added.
The Society of Merchant Venturers, which runs Colston's Girls' School, issued its own statement earlier today, less than 24 hours after the main statue of Colston was toppled in the centre of Bristol.
The SMV said they must 'never forget the 12 million people who were enslaved as part of the transatlantic slave trade'.
