by Hayley Robinson

Two town businesses have been left counting the cost after their front windows were damaged.

The frontage of the Bay Leaf, Roman Square, was shattered while the bottom right hand corner of the main window at Smiffy’s barber shop in the High Street was cracked.

Barber Alex Gregory discovered the damage when he opened up the shop at about 10am on Sunday, July 1.

The damage to the cafe was discovered by joint owner Joanne Povey on the Monday morning.

Thanks to toughened glass the window hadn’t gone through.

It’s thought a beer barrel may have caused the damage to Smiffy’s.

It is not clear how the damage was caused to the Bay Leaf.

Mr Gregory said: “We shut up shop Saturday night and came back Sunday and discovered the damage.

“Apparently there were two barrels outside The Bull and we think they got rolled down the High Street, smashing in to the window and hitting a lamppost.

“Luckily we’re insured. The boss [Steven Smith] was on holiday at the time and didn’t get back until Thursday so we had to break the news to him when he came in.

“We’ve had to put a black sticker over it to cover it up until it’s repaired.”

Maria May, joint owner of the Bay Leaf, said: “The window has been taped up but we need a whole new one. We’ve got insurance we can claim through but we’ll still have to pay the excess and our premiums will go up.

“We’re disgusted by it. We’ve also suffered loss of earnings because we couldn’t use the tables and chairs next to the window inside or out until Tuesday so that was 20 customers we couldn’t seat.

“We’ve been here four years and never had anything like this happen before.”

She was unsure how much the repairs would cost.

Anyone with any information is asked to call Kent police on the non-emergency number 101 quoting reference number XY/19876/12 for the Smiffy’s incident and XY/19871/12 for the Bay Leaf.