Farmhouse with Banksy artwork demolished

LONDON

A 500-year-old farmhouse, with a Banksy mural on its side, was demolished in the seaside town of Herne Bay in Kent, England, on March 14, according to a post from the artist’s Instagram account published the following day.

The mural, titled “Morning is Broken,” showed a young boy, with a cat at his side, opening corrugated iron curtains. The site of the Blacksole Farmhouse is owned by the property development firm Kitewood, which plans to construct 67 homes in its place.

Though demolition of the farmhouse, which was built around 1529, was approved late last year, no one realized the importance of the mural.

“We had no idea it was a Banksy. It made me feel sick realizing it was a Banksy—we were gutted,” contractor George Caudwell told KentOnline.

“We started demolishing it yesterday. The landowner watched us do it and didn’t know either.”

The elements of the artwork, including the corrugated metal pieces that were transformed into curtains, are currently being kept on-site.

Banksy did not caption his post, but the third image in the slideshow, showing the farmhouse’s destruction, was overlaid with text reading, “Morning is broken.”

Last month, another Banksy artwork in Margate was destroyed. The artist took up the theme of domestic violence against women in a piece titled Valentine’s Day Mascara, depicting a 1950s housewife with a missing tooth and a black eye as she packs a male body into a real-life freezer chest.