The Eccleshall map

My Little Orchard Workshop reached a real milestone with this project. This may be oversharing on my part but one of the many reasons I am on this creative path is to leave behind some artefacts that will endure long after I am gone.

I like to wander graveyards because our ancestors are there. Sometimes for the larger gravestones there will be a snippet of information about the person resting there. So I wonder what will be the last thought had about me by a person after I am gone. This might sound morbid I know but I don't see it like that. Life is fleeting. For me it is curiosity and more lately something I think I may have a hand in. The Eccleshall map may be the last artefact of my work that remains. At some point someone will look upon it and think that I cared about what I did and that I did it well. If that last thought is anything like that I would be pleased.

The artefact itself is a carved map of Eccleshall standing in the nave of Holy Trinity Church. It is solid sapele, 1200mm square, and it shows the town as it would have looked in 1892.

This large scale map was the first that I have made for public view. Placing our heritage in view in a way that is understandable for anyone is a worthy thing to be doing. I think that is especially so if these maps are placed in areas where people are not necessarily looking for history or heritage. Archives are there for the historians and those especially interested. And perhaps my maps would set well in those spaces. But what I am trying to do is place these artefacts so that the everyday person like me will just come across them. I think that is very important. Occasionally they may spark a conversation between people and generations about the recent past. If they do that then the care, the effort and the expense are all worthwhile.

At this point I have a big thank you to make to Josie Gamble who introduced me to the Revd Phillip Johnson, the vicar. Josie is a member of BNI that I occasionally attend. We spoke on the phone, and on the 8th of July I met him and his team in the church. I had a sample map and some images of the town. The Revd really liked the idea from the start. So we settled on the area to be covered, which is the church, Eccleshall Castle and the High Street of the village.

We settled on the Ordnance Survey twenty five inch survey, Staffordshire sheet XXIX.6, from the National Library of Scotland. It is the most detailed map ever made of Eccleshall and the time that shows the heritage of the village. We also decided that the grooves of the carving would look nice in gold.

I curated and edited the surveyors' map by hand on a computer. That is the only way a map of this size can be edited. The editing is very much a by hand process, the only difference is my pencil is electronic and my paper is a touch screen. I take a great deal of care over this. I want the map to be as original as it can be, with the editing only done for clarity of the wording on the map and correcting errors introduced in scanning the maps to their digital form. It is very important to me that you see that these maps were drawn by hand by skilled people that cared about their work. I want you to see their hand in the work that I create. Those men and women were more skilled than I could hope to be and I have a great deal of respect for their work.

The next stage is carving the map into a very large sheet of sapele hardwood. There is a video about it here. I make the panels myself in my little workshop. The professional grade CNC machine I use then carves the map into the panel. This process takes about 12 hours of machining time with me supervising all the time. Once that's done it's all by hand from there on. Painting in by brush, sanding back and then shellac finishing. Waxing and polish comes last.

https://cdn.shopify.com/videos/c/vp/c695081fcd63458fa13efefc5e4229b7/c695081fcd63458fa13efefc5e4229b7.HD-720p-4.5Mbps-96621536.mp4

Making the Eccleshall map in the workshop.

So hand made or machine made? Well I think it's a hybrid. I like to use technology to do things that otherwise could not be done. A person could not realistically carve a map at this level of detail. It's not impossible of course but not practical. But with a CNC and a person with a single minded passion to preserve every line and word of the cartographer's quill I can create something that respects the old craftsmanship and also takes advantage of the latest technology.

I think that embodies the spirit of the Industrial Revolution. Some of the Victorians saw technology as a way to enhance craftsmanship. I think that's what I am doing.

The church is Grade 1 listed and has stood since the thirteenth century, so fixing to the wall was never an option. On the 26th of August the map was delivered and I made a temporary stand just to show the map in place. There was a discussion about purchasing a stand for it similar to a large TV stand but once Revd Phillip and the team saw it in place they changed their minds in favour of me creating a permanent stand from the same sapele wood.

So the next week I got busy and created a stand for the map, and on the 9th of September it was in place. I was motivated to move quickly because the temporary stand was never meant for public view and the thought of people seeing it was quite embarrassing.

The stand is actually a mix of wood and steel. The steel frame is to guarantee the map will not bend or cup with moisture variance but made in such a way that it can expand and contract.

I carved a dedication into the stand and left it uncoloured. You will find it if you look.

“…ask, … Was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it? It may be the hardest work possible, and the harder because so much pleasure was taken in it; but it must have been happy too, or it will not be living.”

John Ruskin, 1849

A small panel beside the map tells you what you are looking at. It ends with the line I would most like to be true of every map I make: please feel free to touch the carving, it was made to be read by hand as well as by eye.

The church's film of the map arriving has had over eight thousand views, more than anything they had posted before.

Since then two people have got in touch because they saw it in the church. I did not expect either but I am grateful.

I think the thing I like the most about this project is that it is indeed doing the thing I hoped it would do. People do talk about the features of the town as they were and how some things have changed and others endured the test of time. I particularly liked the discussions that were reported to me by the church staff about the water pumps. Before mains water supply people had their own water pumps. But not every house had one. What I didn't know was that people used to charge their neighbours for the use of these pumps.