YORK’S iconic Bile Beans advert has inspired one of the city’s popular new businesses to create its own mural.

The team behind York Gin has applied for planning permission to paint their cat and castle logo on an end of terrace house at Nunnery Lane, where the street meets Bishopthorpe Road.

Emma Godivala, director at York Gin, said the team came up with the idea when they were drinking at The Swan.

She said: “It’s an advert obviously, but we did genuinely come up with the idea in the pub opposite.

“We had a chat with the owner and they thought it was quite interesting, it feels in keeping with the spirit of the thing.

“We hope it will be a symbol for York and we have been really buoyed by the support the people of York have given the business, they have really embraced it, it’s lovely. It is something made in York, for people from York. It feels like it belongs to the city.”

She added that the mural will be created with traditional paint so it fades in the right way, and can easily be removed. It will painted in heritage colours by a traditional sign painter. The mural will say “York Gin. Made in the Ancient City of York by the York Gin Company”.

Emma added that the sign, which will be 3.5m wide and 4.5m high, is inspired by the Bile Beans advert on Lord Mayor’s Walk.

She said: “It’s become an icon in its own right. It shows that things were made here. York Gin is a York thing too, we make it here. It would be wonderful if our sign became a fixture too.”

The company celebrates its first birthday on March 1 and Emma revealed that the team has created a secret gin to celebrate, based on the historic figures Guy Fawkes and Dick Turpin.

York Gin is distilled to a London Dry Gin recipe in a 300 litre copper still, named Ebor. Its logo celebrates the city’s walls and its association with cats.

The company was the brainchild of five local friends, who spent two years developing the brand and the recipe ahead of bottling the first batch from their Acaster Malbis distillery in March 2018.