Part 3: St Eanswythe Statue Still Headless — Two Sculptors Down, No Plan C

St Eanswythe, seventh-century abbess and long-suffering local icon, remains without her most photogenic feature. Fifteen months after vandals relieved her of her head in Radnor Park, Folkestone’s most famous neck continues to stare bravely into the middle distance while the promised rescue act turns increasingly farcical. The council pledged in late July that a replacement would be installed “by the end of August.” August has packed up, left town, and taken the sunshine with it. The head did not follow. 

The plot, such as it is, was simple. The original artist couldn’t undertake the repair; a specialist would step in; the head would be restored in time for late-summer Triennial footfall. Councillors traded dry asides in the chamber, residents dared to hope, and even the pigeons prepared to recalibrate their perching strategies. The administration’s front bench reassured the room—and the watching public—that a new head would be fitted by 31 August 2025. The date came, went, and the saint remains, in the strictest sense, dis-appointed.

If you want a neat, bureaucratic précis of what’s happened since, look no further than the inbox. On 9 September, a resident wrote—politely, if pointedly—asking when our patron would be reunited with her “bonce,” noting that his own patience remained attached even if hers did not. The council’s reply, from Leadership Support, reads like a ghost story set in a sculpture studio: officers “equally frustrated”; the artist had “assured” completion by the end of August; officers are “chasing” but the sculptor is not answering the door. Line by line, it’s the municipal equivalent of standing outside a workshop and hearing only the echo of your own optimism.

Which brings us to the mystery of the missing contingency. The first sculptor couldn’t do it; the second has gone missing in action; yet Plan C appears to have been left in the same drawer as the saint’s smile. If this were a procurement thriller, we’d now reveal a crack team of conservators parachuting in with chisels at dawn. Instead, we have the world’s slowest remake of The Head That Time Forgot, produced by a committee whose special effects budget has been entirely spent on apologies. The underlying facts aren’t in dispute: vandalism in mid-June 2024; public promise in July 2025; deadline missed in September. What’s missing—apart from the obvious—is a credible timetable, a named craftsperson who actually picks up the phone, and the humility to say out loud what went wrong.

It would be funnier if it weren’t our civic realm. Public Heritage is not a frill. It is how a town remembers itself between bin days and planning committees. When a cabinet member gives a date in the chamber, that promise becomes a public benchmark. Missing it without a full, transparent explanation invites the kind of corrosive eye-rolling that no coat of heritage-grade patina can conceal. That July assurance—new head by the end of August—was not an airy aspiration but an explicit commitment. The council’s own chosen clock has struck, and the bell did not toll.

There is still an easy ending available, if anyone is minded to write it. Publish the timeline of what’s been done since June 2024. Name the obstacles that derailed August. Appoint a reachable human with a chisel, specify the insurance position, and give a new date that errs on the side of caution rather than comedy. And if Sculptor Two remains a rumour wrapped in voicemail, activate Plan C—today—not as a whispered hope but as a signed contract with a start date, a finish date, and the simple act of telling residents before they need to ask.

Folkestonians are tolerant and, on the evidence, very patient. But there are limits. A town that can run an international art festival can surely manage to procure a head. St Eanswythe has waited long enough to look her people in the eye again. The pigeons, too, would like some certainty. And if the council needs a slogan to pin above the work schedule, here it is, free of charge: Less chase, more face.

The Shepway Vox Team

Journalism for the People NOT the Powerful