An old sign for a long-closed pub has been covered over - amid fears it could be targeted by people who want it taken down completely.
The sign shows Lt General Sir Thomas Picton - the man who gave his name to Picton Street, the street in which the General Picton pub once stood in the Montpelier area of Bristol
The inn closed many years ago now and the building is now four flats, but the old pub sign showing the general in his military finery has been a landmark up on the wall of the building for decades.
But now, following the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston, the pub sign has been covered over, with locals speculating the building's owner thought the sign could be next.
The General was considered something of a war hero when Montpelier grew in the first half of the 19th century. The street was created in the 1830s and the pub first opened bearing his name in 1837.
General Picton was the highest ranking officer to be killed at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, during a crucial bayonet charge which stopped an advance by Napoleon's forces.
But the General, who was also a sitting MP at the time of his death, had already been a controversial figure in his own time - as well as through the lens of 200 years of history.
The Duke of Wellington called him a 'rough, foul-mouthed devil as ever lived', and it was before his heroics in the Battle of Waterloo that caused controversy among his peers at the time.
For six years at the turn of the 19th century, he was appointed governor of Trinidad, and ruled the island and the slaves transported by the transatlantic slave trade with such barbarity that another governor was appointed and he was demoted to be the deputy.
When he took over Trinidad he declared martial law there, and used that as an excuse to summarily execute and torture enslaved people, to the point where those serving under him complained back to London that he was unspeakably cruel, even for his time.
He was eventually brought back to London and put on trial, but only for one particular case which sparked huge publicity and controversy in England at the time - the torture of an enslaved 14-year-old girl.
She was strung up by her arms and left dangling with one foot on a spike for days, but refused to incriminate others in a petty crime.
Images of that method of torture made the newspapers of the day, and General Picton was found guilty - although he later appealed to a higher court and was cleared.
Now, in Montpelier, Picton Street still bears his name, but his image no longer looks down on the street.
It is unclear who has covered over the pub sign, or why, but one neighbour said: "There was talk on the local social media here in Montpelier, and on a WhatsApp group that the portrait of General Picton shouldn't be up there, and I think it's been covered over to prevent anyone trying to damage or deface it."
