Half a lifetime carving letters in stone. In December 1995 I set up a small workshop in a craft centre in Leicestershire having left art college earlier that year. My intention was to sell small sculptures from this workshop to the general public. Very quickly it became apparent that this was going be extremely difficult. [...]
10 years of sculptures at the National Memorial Arboretum. In 2011, I was approached by a lovely elderly gentleman called Harry Parkes. He asked if I would be prepared to make a memorial to the Bevin Boy miners which would be sited at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Harry had been a former Bevin [...]
Bevin Boy Mining Memorial It was during a visit to the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield last week that I came across Henry Moore's excellent drawing of Bevin Boy miners. It put me in mind of the mining memorial that I created for the Bevin Boys, sited at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire back in [...]
Sculptures settling into their surroundings at the National Memorial Arboretum I dropped in to the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire a couple of weeks ago and was delighted to see how the memorial sculptures that I have installed there over the last 4 years or so have settled in. The memorial for the Bevin Boy [...]
In 2011, a gentleman called Harry Parkes arrived at my workshop with a sketch of a memorial that he had in mind to commemorate the Bevin Boys that he wanted to erect at the National Memorial Arboretum. Harry explained that the Bevin Boys were young British men conscripted to work down the coal mines during [...]
The Bevin Boys were finally given the recognition they deserve today when the memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire was unveild today by HRH the Countess Of Wessex. The event was attended by dozens of Bevin Boys from all over the Country while the National Press were out in big numbers to mark [...]
Having waited so long to be formally recognised, the irony of the memorial taking such a long time will not be lost on those who served not in the armed forces but down Britains coal mines during the 2nd World War. Yes, the Bevin Boy memorial that has been over 3 years in the pipeline [...]
