Groups in Bungay are planning a bid to buy a 1930s Shell advertising poster featuring the town’s buttercross.

Bungay Museum, the Bungay Society and the Bungay Community Library have agreed to contribute to the estimated total cost of around £2,200 needed to bring the poster back to the town.

The poster, designed by artist Harry Steggles, featured in the Beccles and Bungay Journal and our sister paper the Eastern Daily Press earlier this month, and is due to go under the hammer at Christie’s South Kensington on June 4.

The poster was part of Shell’s Everywhere you Go campaign, a slogan appealing to a nation that longed for rural escape from the city and the delights of the British landscape.

It is among 42 Shell advertising posters, mostly from the 1930s, put up for sale by a former Shell marketing director which are expected to sell for a total of around £17,000.

Between the 1920s and 1950s, Shell commissioned artists to produce colourful, eye-catching posters and they included war artist Paul Nash and abstract painter Ben Nicholson, whose work is featured in the auction.

The Bungay poster is expected to fetch £1,200 but buyer’s premium and other costs, including framing, will increase the price and more contributions are needed to enable the bid to go ahead.

If the bid is successful the library or the Castle Visitor Centre are possible sites where it could go on permanent display.

Anyone who would like to contribute to the bid, however big or small, is asked to contact Sylvia Knights on 01986 893479.

Have you got a story or event from the Bungay area? Email bbj.news@archant.co.uk