Banksy at the Royal Courts: New Mural Covered Within Hours as Removal Looms

A shock reveal, then blackout at the Royal Courts

By the time word spread, the wall was gone. Not literally, but in spirit — sealed off, black-sheeted, and watched by security outside the Royal Courts of Justice. Overnight, a mural appeared on the Queen’s Building, part of the complex on the Strand, showing a judge in full wig and robes bringing down a gavel on a protester. The figure on the ground clutches a placard smeared in red. Within hours, the image that set phones buzzing had vanished from public view.

Banksy confirmed the work on Instagram with a spare caption: “Royal Courts Of Justice. London.” That was the only official note before authorities moved to conceal the painting. By late morning, the mural sat behind black plastic sheeting, boxed in by two metal barriers, and monitored on CCTV. Security guards told onlookers there would be no access, no glimpse, no exceptions.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service says the mural will be removed. The reason is simple on paper: the Royal Courts of Justice is a listed building, and the rules require its original fabric and character to be preserved. In practice, that means no graffiti, even if it’s signed, admired, or insured by buzz alone.

The imagery isn’t subtle. A judge — the ultimate courtroom authority — striking a protester reads like a blunt provocation, and the timing lines up with the capital’s recent unrest. After the government’s move to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, London saw large-scale demonstrations, including a protest where nearly 900 people were arrested. The piece appears to lean directly into that moment, picking at the knot where protest, policing, and justice collide.

Art expert Jasper Tordoff of MyArtBroker points to the location as the message. By choosing the Royal Courts, he argues, the artist turns a national symbol of legal authority into the backdrop of a public argument. The building’s weight — its reputation, its architecture, its history — becomes part of the art.

It’s a stark pivot from the playful animal series that charmed London in August: goats on rooftops, elephants peeking around corners, rhinos on drab walls — a short run the artist framed as a mood lift. This new mural slams the pendulum back toward politics and power, a return to the vein of work that made him famous: brutal jokes with serious stakes.

I went down to see it and saw almost nothing. A crowd formed anyway — people drawn to a work they couldn’t see, taking pictures of a black tarp and a guarded gap. A bystander joked that the cover-up had become the art. The scene felt familiar for this city: the quickest way to make a wall important is to hide it.

The tug-of-war: preservation, law, and protest

Covering it up was never about its artistic value. It’s about the building. The Royal Courts of Justice is protected under heritage law, and changes to listed structures — even uninvited paint — fall into a tight framework. The usual response is swift: secure the site, document the paint layer, then remove it using conservation methods designed to avoid lasting damage to stone or brick.

That process is slower and more technical than hosing down a tag. Specialist teams test cleaning solutions, lift pigment in stages, and aim to keep the stone’s patina intact. If there’s a fragment that can be safely detached — sometimes a rendered panel or a thin facing — it might be saved, but on historic masonry that’s rare. Most of the time, the work vanishes with the solvent.

And that fuels the argument that always follows: is the city protecting heritage, or scrubbing away a public conversation it doesn’t like? Supporters of removal say the rules have to be consistent. If one piece stays because it’s famous, what about the next one, and the one after that? Heritage officers point out that listed-building protection isn’t a taste test; it’s law. Keep the stone as it was meant to be, or risk losing the very thing that makes these landmarks special.

On the other side, fans say street art’s point is to break the frame. Put a courtroom image on a courtroom and it hits harder. Force it into a gallery and the charge fades. They also note the practical effect: covering the mural didn’t erase it — it multiplied it. More people now know about the piece than would have if it had been left alone for a few days.

The market barely matters here, but it lingers in the background. Works painted on public walls are almost never sellable without destroying the surface they live on. Even when a wall can be cut out, you lose the context — the corner, the street, the breeze, the feeling that you just stumbled into something. The location is half the punchline. Remove it and you’re left with a caption.

There’s also a track record. Banksy pieces on sensitive or historic sites tend to be short-lived. Authorities prioritize fabric over fame. Private sites are a different story: owners sometimes box in a mural, add plexiglass, or even move a section and sell it. On state buildings, the script rarely changes. Protect the landmark first.

What we know so far is simple:

• The mural appeared overnight on an exterior wall of the Queen’s Building at the Royal Courts of Justice.
• The artist confirmed authorship on Instagram.
• Authorities covered the work within hours with black plastic and barriers; security and CCTV are in place.
• HM Courts and Tribunals Service says the mural will be removed to preserve the listed building’s character.

What we don’t know: exactly how soon removal will happen, whether any trace will be conserved for records, and how the wider public will see the work beyond photos posted before the blackout.

There’s a sharper political edge, too. The mural arrives as London wrestles with how to police protest around high-profile institutions. Put plainly: when the image of a judge striking a protester is painted on one of the country’s most storied legal buildings, you get a conversation authorities can’t win. If they leave it up, it looks like an indictment of power. If they take it down, it looks like proof of it.

For now, the city has opted for the tarp. People still come, stare, and raise their phones at a black surface, as if the picture might bleed through. Maybe that’s the real installation: a crowd looking at absence, a courtroom that cannot bear its own reflection, and a piece of street art that exists everywhere except the place it was born.