Helston Town Council says it does not own the bollards that have appeared in Ronnie Williams' garden

A resident of the town contacted the Packet to say that councillor Ronnie Williams’ garden at Beacon Parc now contained pieces of granite that appeared to be the two bollards removed from outside the Grylls Monument, following a furore about whether they were of a lower quality than the other pieces of stone installed there.

The granite in question showed a clear 50-50 vertical split between grey granite and brown granite, when viewing the monument at the bottom of Coinagehall Street head on.

It led to a different member of the public, Neil Williams, writing to the council to claim it had been “fobbed off” with "ugly, second grade" stone – although this was subsequently strongly refuted.

Due to the level of outcry, Helston Town Council, which was behind the revamp of that entire area, contacted Tim Marsh, who had supplied the granite.

He agreed that, while the stone was not defective in any way and still the same quality as the other bollards, with the colour difference merely a natural quirk of the granite, as a gesture of goodwill he would replace the two in question, at no extra cost to the council.

These were swapped like-for-like, with two fully grey granite bollards now in place in front of the monument and Mr Marsh taking away the brown-grey ones they replaced.

Town clerk Chris Dawson said this week: “The whole deal was that he swapped them. They went back to Tim Marsh; what he’s done with them after that is his business.”

The member of the public had told the Packet: “The removed examples have been installed at a town councillor’s private home and no thought given to use them in the public realm / town centre.”

However, Mr Dawson stressed that the two brown-grey bollards did not belong to the council once they had been swapped and these were taken by Mr Marsh.

Ronnie Williams said he did not want to make a comment on the matter.