FRESH efforts are being made to track down a pair of swan statues that stood proudly in Kidderminster’s Swan Centre for decades until they were lost in the 1990s.
It’s believed the play statues, which were located outside of the old Waitrose store, were sent away for refurbishment in the mid-90s, but when the company doing the work closed down, the swans were never returned.
The iconic figures hold fond memories for several generations of Kidderminster families and now a new group has been set up to finally solve the mystery of their whereabouts.
Lisa Jones, 46, who set up the Find the Kiddy Swans group on Facebook, said: “I’d seen a couple of posts on social media about the swans and it was clear that a lot of people had an interest in trying to find out what happened to them.
"I thought why don’t I make a page to focus people’s attentions on it a bit more and hopefully set us on the road to tracking them down?
"I was born in Kidderminster and I used to play on the swans myself, like a lot of people. It’s clear they held fond memories for a whole generation.
“Some people have said they were sent off for refurbishment and never came back for one reason or another. We’ve had a few suggestions of where they might be but we don’t know for sure.
“This group is all about trying to get to the bottom of it and hopefully solve a mystery. The swans were a real symbol of Kidderminster and people want to know what happened to them.
"Hopefully this will go the same way as the Horsefair clock. We might not be able to get them back in the shopping centre but once we know where they are, we can take it from there.”
Bosses at the Swan Shopping Centre have revealed they had begun enquiries to find out how much it would cost to have replicas made before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Rosalyn Darby, Swan Centre manager, said: “Though sadly lost back in the mid-90s when they were sent away for refurbishment, the swans are a big part of the history of the centre and Kidderminster town centre.
“Unfortunately, the company that they were sent to went into administration and we were unable to retrieve them.”
She added: “We were planning on looking at having the play statues replicated, but then the pandemic hit.
"In the current climate, there just isn’t the funds to replace them. Although we are in talks with the a representative of the original artist, Peter Hand, to see if he has the original moulds or designs.
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“We’d like to source a local artist to recreate these and find out what would be the cost of doing this for the future. It has been suggested that we try to raise some of the funds locally with a Go Fund Me page, but that’s something we can look into once we know the costs involved.
"We are aware that there is a local Facebook group, Find the Kiddy Swans, so we hope that we’d have some support locally for this.”
Anyone with information on the swans’ whereabouts is urged to contact the Find the Kiddy Swans group through the Facebook page.
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