a modeller’s story

Jane Britton has been involved at Pendon for nearly a decade. Although she never met Roye, when she first visited the museum she was immediately struck by his vision. “I thought it was wonderful, and was amazed that people could build something like that,” she says. “I find the whole history and Roye’s history fascinating. The personality he was seems to come through. Everyone who comes to Pendon will appreciate that this was a man who had a dream.” After a couple of visits, Jane travelled from her home in Gloucestershire to attend one of Pendon’s monthly Modellers’ Sunday meetings, where she was taught to make miniature trees. After graduating to small test buildings, she was offered the chance to make the Chequers Inn, which still exists at Charney Bassett, in the heart of the vale. “I was given scaled architectural drawings from the archive team, who look at what you need to model for the era,” she says. Having only made small, pre-cut paper models as a child, a book called Cottage Modelling for Pendon, by Chris Pilton, was Jane’s tutor. Further aided by old photographs, she then created a scale mock-up in card to work out how best to make her model. Then she began to build the model proper, working in a base tray. Using a special visor with drop-down magnifier helped her accurately add even the smallest detail of the inn, working at a minute 1:76 scale, with 1mm representing 3in (7.6cm). “There’s no ‘how long will it take?’ It takes what time you have, when you have it, and some of the really detailed work can take forever,” says Jane. “You can’t really use pencil because rubbing it out destroys the surface of the card. Instead, you might make pinpricks as a guide for adding your bricks. Then you have to paint every brick, then scribe in the bricks to make a nice relief, and on you go. “It’s a labour of love. When you start painting you can only work really well for 20 minutes at a time, then you need to rest your eyes.” Jane has taken her model to Pendon each month to check her progress. “Seeing it all take shape is great. Going to the museum lets me check what I’m doing, so I can alter things if I need to. It’s also nice to get someone else’s opinion. When I had everything ready on the card, I took it to Stephen Williams, an experienced modeller from the museum. It was wonderful to get his critique because it allowed me to go forward and have a bit of confidence.”