THE front of the closed Debenhams store in Taunton has got everyone talking this week - for all the right reasons.

Visitors to the town centre will have noticed a timeline uploaded on the panels put up on the North Street premises after the store closed last May when the high street company collapsed.

The design, posted yesterday (Monday, March 7), follows Taunton’s history from the Anglo Saxon period to the 20th Century on the boards, which had become a tatty eyesore.

Somerset West and Taunton Council’s Emergency High Street Recovery Group in Taunton, which consists of local businesses representatives and ward councillors, commissioned the project with funding from the Emergency Town Centre Recovery Fund to improve the appearance of the town, attract visitors and boost the local economy.

The timeline has been collated and arranged by the South West Heritage Trust using early oil paintings, watercolours, engravings and vintage photographs from its own archives and that of the Somerset Archaeological & Natural History Society.

A total of 50 panels have been assembled into linear sections to reflect seven significant themes in Taunton’s development.

Between them, they depict historic churches and buildings, personalities including Judge Jeffreys and the Duke of Monmouth, markets of old and one of the back street slums that Victorian Taunton was keen to conceal.

The imagery, which was printed by AP Signs and Print of Weston-super-Mare, needed to be digitised and greatly upscaled to meet the 2.44m height of a 12 x 8ft standard billboard.

Consequently, the watercolour paintings produced by Taunton artist Harry Frier (1849-1921) worked particularly well.

There are also watercolours from the 1830s and ’40s by John Buckler and his son, and photographs dating from the 1850s onwards.

Production of the panelled sections commenced mid-February and at a finished length of 62m (203ft), it challenges any other artwork as the longest in the South West.

READ MORE: The day Debenhams closed for good in Taunton.

Cllr Marcus Kravis, Executive Member for Economic Development at SWT, said: “When the Emergency High Street Recovery Group and I heard that the Debenhams flagship store would be closing, we wanted to do something positive for the town to improve its appearance and increase footfall through the unveiling of this incredible exhibit."