By Jeremy Miles
I receved a message from my friend the Folkestone Mermaid today. I say ‘my friend’ but if truth be told we’ve never actually met. She just feels like a friend and as a stalwart champion of my old home town, seems to support all the right concerns for its future.
Georgina Baker, a Folkestone mum of two, was the model chosen by Cornelia Parker to fulfil a commission for the town’s second Arts Triennial back in 2011.
Cast in lifesize bronze but in Mermaid form she has now sat at the end of The Stade on a granite boulder beside the fishermen’s harbour wall keeping a watchful eye on the ever-changing seascape and out towards the horizon for the past 13 years.
Originally conceived as a reinterpretation of Copenhagen’s ‘Little Mermaid’ and inspired by HG Wells’ story of The Sea Lady and Hans Christian Anderson’s famous fairy tale, Parker decided that rather than a literal copy of the Copenhagen Mermaid she wanted to base the work on a real person.
She invited local residents to apply and Baker was chosen from a shortlist of six. It was a good choice. Not only has the Folkestone Mermaid become a noted feature of the town loved by residents and visitors alike, but Georgina Baker has taken her duties extremely seriously. She now sees herself as a kind of custodian of the history, heritage and traditions of Folkestone and particularly the harbour area. Hence her message earlier today which regards the controversial development plans for massive blocks of residential flats extending along the seafront to the Harbour Arm.
In a Block the Blocks message she urges us to protest further over the size, design and location of the monstrous plan and encourages people to add more signatures to the petition that she started last year.
Many of us have already lodged complaints over the hideously inappropriate size, design and location of the project and Georgina’s message alerted us to a new planning application seeking imminent approval of existing details. I did not take much persuading.
These flats which have already been described as looking like something out of the Flintstones are simply wrong. To build them on the harbour site would visually destroy the character of the area and swamp it with a wholly over-intensive influx of residents. It would drive business away from the town centre and clog the seafront with traffic. It would look horrible and be a disaster.
As someone who was born and brought up in Folkestone and into a well-known family with local links dating back more than 200 years, this is important to me. Even though I haven’t lived there for nearly four decades, I worked in the town, got married there and had ancestors in the fishing community who helped man the local lifeboat and others who were customs officers and even possible smugglers. I have continued to visit Folkestone regularly. I care deeply for it and think that most of the developments that have seen it evolve into one of the most popular seaside locations on the south coast have been wonderful but these flats are a step too far and risk undoing all the good that has been achieved so far.