Folkestone residents' views sought on new park play area
The council said Folkestone – A Brighter Future would provide a boost to the regeneration of the town centre. Work has started on the £20m-scheme and is expected to finish in the summer of 2026.
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The Guardian
19 hours ago
- The Guardian
Folkestone Museum's Anglo-Saxon skeleton is helping us to understand and honour the past
I found Paul Daley's opinion piece on displaying human remains an interesting read (Times change, so do people. So why does the British Museum still think it's OK to display human remains?, 6 August). I am always glad to discuss the reasons why museums retain and display human remains. First, I completely agree that human remains taken by colonial powers should be repatriated rather than displayed in international institutions. I disagree strongly, however, with the idea that there is no value (aside from shock value) to displaying human remains. Through museums it is possible to learn about death and human remains in a respectful way – without the gore you often find in the media. At Folkestone Museum, we display the human remains of an Anglo-Saxon woman from a cemetery on the hill above our town. She was exhumed during an excavation in 1908. The rest of the skeletons excavated from that cemetery were collected together in a single tea chest and reburied, which I don't consider especially respectful. I believe that by telling our skeleton's story in as complete a way as we can, through our research, display and educational work, we can honour her memory best. Through this work, our skeleton has become beloved to generations of visitors to the museum. For over a hundred years, she has inspired people to learn more about the past and at least one person has become an archaeologist after meeting her. Our work aims to help visitors build empathy with the people who lived before us and our skeleton is an important part of that work. Daley writes of 'the purported scientific benefits of holding such specimens' – but doesn't address these substantially. As scientific techniques improve, our skeleton at Folkestone will continue to contribute to our knowledge of the ancient world. Her DNA is currently part of a large scientific study. If we reburied her, we would lose a huge amount of future knowledge and understanding about the past, about her and about her community. Coralie CloverMuseum manager and curator, Folkestone town council
BBC News
05-08-2025
- BBC News
Folkestone council gets £2.35m grant for flood defence work
Works to maintain beach flood defences will continue after a successful £2.35m funding bid, a Kent council between Fisherman's Beach and Folkestone Harbour will continue to be recycled and regraded for the next five years after the district council secured funding from the Environment works, which take place bi-annually, will help to protect over 3,000 properties from flooding, the council Scoffham, cabinet member for climate, environment and biodiversity on Folkestone and Hythe District Council, said the work offered "effective and important protection against coastal flooding for thousands of residents". The technique of recycling the shingle, which has been used since 2004, is the most cost-effective way of maintaining the natural defences on the beach, the council timber groynes on the 7km (4.3 mile) stretch of beach are not adequate to cope with rising sea levels, it works involve moving about 140,000 tonnes of shingle, the council said.
The Guardian
18-07-2025
- The Guardian
Mutant seabirds, sewer secrets and a lick of art ice-cream: Folkestone Triennial review
Folkestone doesn't have a pier. It has an Arm. That's what the harbour's long walkway into the Channel is called. It is a suitably surreal, even grotesque setting for the Folkestone Triennial artworks that infest its salty nooks and crannies – or armpits and elbow crooks. Laure Prouvost has placed a mutant seabird, with three heads and an electric plug on its tail, on the adjacent concrete stump of the defunct ferry terminal. Surprising? Not really if you have just visited The Ministry of Sewers, an installation by Cooking Sections that documents and protests the poisoning of our rivers and seas. There's nothing like an exhibit on the scale of Britain's water pollution to kick off a day at the seaside. It's cloudy when I visit, the cliffs and sea swathed in white mist and the water under the Arm looking like a detergent soup. It all adds to the uncanny mood. And art doesn't come much more uncanny than the sculpture by Dorothy Cross near the far end of the Arm. You have to go down soaking wet, concrete steps to a recess with a precipitous opening to the evil-looking sea. 'Try not to fall in,' says the attendant, who stays up above. Here you find a massive block of blood-coloured marble, as if a giant tuna steak had been stashed here by fish smugglers. The sides are smooth, the top uneven and rough. Out of this earthy hulk Cross has carved several pairs of feet in hyperrealistic detail, nervously walking its beach-like surface. They face out to sea, as if about to make a bold leap into the blue-green water, to find a better life. Cross has made a monument to migrants. The marble she has used is from Syria, the feet pattering over it full of fear and hope. These lifelike appendages and the surface on which they stand echo Magritte's surrealist 1934 painting The Red Model, of disembodied feet on red ground, while her use of massive, raw stone to suggest infinite sorrow - the weight of the world - shows she understands Michelangelo. This is a superb sculpture, brilliantly sited. It would be worth visiting Folkestone just to see it. But there's more – if you fancy a walk. Up above the cliffs, on steep green downs guarded by Martello towers built to fend off invasion during the Napoleonic wars, are a string of thoughtful, often witty artworks. A monolith that looks as if it were made from glue and plastic stands alone on a mowed hill, facing the sea. Approaching, you read the words 'Curse dissolved'. That's heartening. The brochure describes this piece by South African artist Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape as 'meditative' but it made me laugh. What is the curse? Who lifted it? I chew on this as I climb to a white circular tower inside which Katie Paterson also plays with magic. Paterson shows, on curving display tables inside the round room where red-coated soldiers once lived, a collection of mystic charms from different times and places. There are images of ancient Egyptian gods, Buddhist amulets and a tiny figure of the Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu who features in The Exorcist. Each replica is cast in materials that bear witness to planetary crisis, including space debris from satellites and plastic from the Mariana trench. Paterson has a track record of working with scientists to get her hands on such exotic materials. Her installation is a more refined version of the Ministry of Sewers, a sly way to show us that we are turning everything to crap. These amulets are bluntly satirical. They seem to mock the magical thinking of those who would wish away the Earth's crisis. If you head on to the next Martello tower you might be momentarily cheered up by Jennifer Tee's wavy picture of a giant kelp, mapped in the grass in brown bricks which also have sea kelp and other life forms imprinted on their surfaces. It makes you look out to the sea below and imagine the threatened life it holds. There are jollities to be found in this seaside art trail – for the kids, Monster Chetwynd has started building an adventure playground, and down in the harbour you can get Emeka Ogboh's 'artist designed ice-cream'. But then I find huge burial urns littered in the high moorland overlooking the misty Channel. Sara Trillo has modelled these deathly objects on bronze age grave goods. They return you to melancholy: the view from here is as bleak as it is beautiful. Folkestone Triennial opens on 19 July
