For a number of years in the mid-1990s I worked in Maidstone town centre – in an office which overlooked an enormous sheep covered in flowers.

I’d like to say it was an era where the newsroom I worked in at the time encouraged the use of mind-altering substances to enhance our creativity which had a side-effect of sheep-related hallucinations.

But there were no drugs. And there was a giant sheep stood in the High Street.

It was a bold statement which was routinely mocked as much as it was admired. Well, it was certainly different.

And I must admit I became rather fond of the odd feature which peered back at me as I looked out of the window.

It has, over the years, been far from alone in being a new landmark which has divided the opinion of those who live and work in our towns.

All of which reminds me of the plans in the late-2000s to build a giant horse at Ebbsfleet. It was going to be Kent’s equivalent of the Angel of the North.

Standing some 50 metres (160ft) high, it was to tower over the countryside, visible from some 20 miles away, as a work of art – the white horse, of course, being the county’s emblem (albeit this version was not prancing – just standing there, taking in the air).

It was to be a powerful sign of the county for those international visitors arriving – or at least passing through – Ebbsfleet International train station as well as motorists heading up the A2.

Granted planning permission, the idea was to have it in place in time for the influx of visitors flocking to watch the London 2012 Olympics.

Initially going to cost £2 million – and designed by the acclaimed artist Mark Wallinger – for reasons unclear that cost soared to a difficult-to-swallow £15m.

Quite how it can cost such a sum to build a big white horse is – to me at least – a little unclear. But that’s art for you. Crazy money.

Suffice to say the pockets of those funding the proposed project – primarily the companies behind the rail link – decided that money could probably be better spent elsewhere.

It never happened.

The plans at the time, it goes without saying, were roundly mocked by many. For reasons beyond me, we oppose a striking piece of art as a knee-jerk reaction.

Which seems a shame. Because, as the Angel of the North has proved, such landmarks become defining images of an area. Not to mention, popular tourist attractions.

So, instead, we can only reflect on a giant sheep that once grazed in Maidstone town centre and which, I assume, still lives in the car park of a hotel near the town where it is seeing out its retirement.

But a ruddy great big white horse seen by those on train and road would really have been something wouldn’t it?