Folkestone’s St Eanswythe Gets Her Head Back—At Last

After sixteen months without a face, St Eanswythe is finally making eye contact with Folkestone again. The council says the Radnor Park statue is restored; the town sighs with relief; and somewhere a procurement spreadsheet retires with a hero’s send-off.

The official line is simple enough: a new head has been cast from the original mould, reattached, and unveiled—no fuss, just craftsmanship. The unofficial story, told on park benches and in supermarket queues, is that it took so long the pigeons formed a tenants’ association and claimed adverse possession.

The Timeline  (And The Council’s Maths)

• Vandalism: mid-June 2024.

• Public pledge: completion by end of August 2025.

• Actual restoration: 14 October 2025.

By the book, that’s roughly six weeks late. By the Folkestone kitchen-table method—counting from the first airy talk of “early August,” then adding each “next week” heard thereafter—it lands closer to ten weeks. Both can be true: the formal deadline missed by a month and a half; the lived experience felt like an entire school term.

Why A Small Statute Mattered So Much

St Eanswythe is not municipal garnish. She’s identity—an abbess whose story spans faith, archaeology and local pride. When her likeness lost its head, the delay wasn’t just aesthetic. It became a test of whether Town Hall could deliver a straightforward heritage fix without wandering into the long grass where timetables go to nap.

To its credit, the council chose fidelity over shortcuts: use the original mould, restore the original intent. That is the right call. It just arrived with the timing of a delayed Sunday service—welcome, but nobody’s pretending it was on schedule.

Meanwhile In The Department of Plausible Explanations

A (fictional) scene from the corridors of power, for purely educational purposes:

Cllr Jim Martin: “Susan, why is the saint still headless?”
Chief Exec, Dr Susan Priest: “Jim, the replacement is proceeding with all deliberate speed.”
Cllr Jim Martin: “How fast is that?”
Chief Exec, Dr Susan Priest: “Slower than haste, quicker than never.”
Corporate Director Andy Blaszkowic: “Technically, Jim, ‘end of August’ does include October if you use an open-ended interpretive framework.”
Cllr Jim Martin: “Does it include a new head?”
Chief Exec, Dr Susan Priest: “In principle. In practice, principles require consultation.”

Satire aside, the public doesn’t begrudge craftsmanship taking time. What frays patience is the optimistic deadline, the missed milestone, and the silence that follows.

Lessons (engraved, we hope, more firmly than the epoxy)

1. Say the quiet part early. If the date slips, tell people when and why. No euphemisms, no “unavoidable delays” without the avoidables listed.

2. Pick one clock. Announce a single credible timetable, not a rolling fog of “next weeks.” Citizens own calendars; they notice when dates move.

3. Close the loop. Today’s restoration note should be followed by a brief post-mortem: what went wrong, what went right, and how the next small civic repair won’t become a minor epic.

Credit Where Due

The new head is faithful, the finish is tidy, and the story ends with the right decision executed well—if belatedly. The town has its saint back; Radnor Park has its sentinel; and the local sense of humour, which carried the community through headless summer, can finally retire its puns.

Let’s mark the moment with simple gratitude—and file the process lessons where they’ll be found before the next “straightforward” job becomes a saga. After all, St Eanswythe has kept her head. It would be nice if everyone else did too.

PS; Our thanks goes to Cllr Belinda Walker  (Lab – Broadmead)- pictured – for chasing this and seeing it through to the end.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent Is NOT a Crime