Bristol City Council has removed a large part of Edward Colston's statue plinth.
The piece of stone broke off from the plinth when Black Lives Matter protesters toppled the 17th century slave trader's statue on Sunday (June 7).
Demonstrators tipped the bronze figure into the floating harbour, but the stone which bears Colston's name and the years of his birth and death – 1636 to 1721 – remained loose on the ground next to the rest of the plinth.
Pictures show it was still there on Monday, fallen on its side. By the time we returned on Tuesday, it had mysteriously vanished.
Bristol City Council told Bristol Live on Tuesday it was "making enquiries" about the piece of stone.
Shortly after we published a story on the disappearance, a spokeswoman for the council told us it had removed the stone on Monday.
We have asked what the council plans to do with the fallen piece.
Next to Colston's birth and death years, the stone bears the image of three flowers, thought by some to be chrysanthemums.
Bristol history expert Eugene Byrne said: “The significance of the chrysanthemums is that they were 'said' to have been his favourite flower, though I don't know where that came from.
“The emblem was particularly picked up by Colston's Girls' School - which was established in 1891 long after he died, and whose naming was less to do with Colston's endowment and more to do with pressure from the city fathers. The idea of educating girls at all would have appalled Colston.
“So the girls wore chrysanthemums when attending the Commemoration Day service at the Cathedral until a few years ago.
"Chrysanthemums were also a regular feature of the floral displays at the annual dinners for the various Colston societies and at church services on Colston Day.”
Avon and Somerset police have opened an investigation into the "criminal damage" which saw the statue felled.
