She's back! Mural of football champ Leah Williamson is repainted following mystery whitewash job in Milton Keynes town

Newport Pagnell’s striking mural of footballer Leah Williamson and a lioness has been re-painted after a mystery person whitewashed over it.

Residents raised £1000 for the original artists to return and their work was completed over the weekend.

The town had been furious in May when one wall of the two-part mural was suddenly and bizarrely painted over in white by an unknown person.

It happened nine months after portrait of the footballer was painted last August, when Leah, who grew up in Newport, had just steered her team to fame in the Women’s UEFA championships.

The town was bursting with pride at her success and wanted a permanent tribute to her. The mural was the inspiration of Justin Dealey, a presenter on Three Counties Radio. He commissioned specialist artists MrMeaner, Arkade and Gnasher from street art company MurWalls and they volunteered their time to spend eight hours completing the masterpiece on the walls of a building at the corner of Station Road and Cross Street.

One wall shows Leah in action next to the words ‘She’s one of our own’ while the other, on Cross Street, showed the footballer’s face painted over the image of a lioness to represent the England team.

It was the giant image of Leah and the lioness that was whitewashed out.

The walls are on a building belonging to Farm Garages, who were equally fuming at the whitewash..

"We had no idea someone was going to paint over the mural and we are not at all happy about it,” said a spokesman for the garage.

But he revealed the garage had been approached a couple of weeks ago by a Newport Pagnell resident asking if she could “tidy up” the part of the wall that was not covered by the lioness picture.

"The mural took up part of the wall and the rest had been left painted black for local artists to fill in later. I had a call from a lady who said she was selling her house nearby and thought the black bit of the wall looked a bit patchy, so could put buyers off,” he said.

"She asked me if she could paint it white to tidy it up. I said okay – but I certainly never expected that the actual mural would be painted over in white too… I would never, ever have agreed to that.”

Newport Pagnell resident Bonny Cook promptly launched a fundraising page to restore the much-loved mural.

"Murwalls did the original artwork for free, so it’s only right they’re paid for their materials and their costs are covered,” she said.

“£1000 was raised within days and this weekend the artists returned to re-paint the mural even bigger and better than before. And the town is thrilled with the result.

“It really does belong to the local community, as they paid for it,” said Bonny.

She added: “I am blown away by the amount of support and hundreds of messages that I’ve received, not only during the fundraiser but also after people have seen the new artwork.

“The level of interest has been insane. Such a lovely positive comeback has evolved from what was a negative and thoughtless action of someone covering over a local hero.”