I took over council house after old tenant spent her life turning it into ‘Sistine Chapel’… now I’ve PLASTERED over it

THE new tenant of a council flat dubbed the 'mini Sistine Chapel' has painted over the religious murals.

Former tenant Diana Keys spent 40 years painstakingly finger painting murals on the walls of her home in Hemel Hempstead, Herts.

The amateur decorator covered every wall and ceiling with a mural after she was inspired by the Sistine Chapel, despite never having been there.

In the lounge she painted Jesus Christ, cherubs, and horses in a meadow. In her bathroom, she painted a golden-haired mermaid next to the toilet.

But following her death in 2018, Diana's flat was handed to a new tenant - Patrick Morrissey.

He paid to have them plastered over, saying they were "too dark" to live with.

It made the 52-year-old feel as though Diana still haunted the house.

He said: “I heard some locals tried to keep it as a museum, but I couldn’t live with it… To me, it was dark.

“It was like she was still there.”

He said he didn't think the paintings would be too bad to live with at first, but they soon became too much.

He even found one "crazy" painting inside a cupboard that glowed in the dark at night.

“I lived in the bedroom for six months. I rubbed it all down and repainted it.

“I did try to do the front room, but the stuff she used to paint was a nightmare to get off.

“In the end I got it all plastered over. It cost, all in all, about £3,500.

“I couldn’t live like that… It was too depressing. I slept in the front room for two weeks at the start.

“It wasn’t scary - it felt more depressing. It felt close in.”

Diana, who was in her early 70s when she died, had said she feared the council would be the ones to paint over her life’s work after her passing.

She said in 2017: “When I go to heaven they will paint over it.

"But I like to think some will live on and I’ve left behind a piece of love.”

Morrissey was told by Dacorum Borough Council that it was up to him whether he kept or removed Diana’s life’s work.

Grandfather-of-one Morrissey said he had known about Diana, who was a friend of a friend, and heard she was "lovely".

It was like she was still there

Patrick Morrissey

“But I didn’t know about the painting... I knew her as the bird lady, because she kept lots of birds."

Some locals were still sad to see the mini Sistine Chapel attraction go.

Father-of-three Alan Foster, who has lived in the area for nearly 25 years, said it was a shame the "gorgeous" paintings had been removed.

The 74-year-old added that, if he had been offered the flat, he would have kept it as it was.

“Diana was a lovely lady,” the retired factory worker said.

“She was devoutly religious, and we’d see her out the back putting food out for the cats and birds all the time.

“All the paintings she had looked very, very nice. I still have pictures of how it was all done.

“It took her years and years. Some of it was absolutely gorgeous.

“It’s a shame it’s all gone now, all erased. A lot of people would’ve liked to have seen it.

“I would’ve moved in there myself and left it as it was if I’d had the chance.”

But Morrissey said he has no regrets in plastering over the murals, saying they were too strange and personal to someone else to have kept.

He said: “Some people said I shouldn’t have done it.

“I said to them: ‘If you want to come and live here, fine. But I am not going to live like that’.

“The council said it was up to me what I did with it. I could have kept it, but I didn’t want to.

“Some people said I could have charged people a pound to come look at it all, but I never wanted to do anything like that.

“They just had to go.”