Make a ford

No, Chris Leigh hasn’t got a job at Dagenham – the ford that he’s built only occasionally has water in it…

Chris Leigh’s ford only occasionally has water in it…

Ibelieve that, like a garden, every layout should have a water feature or two, and from the time I first saw them, Pendon’s abandoned canal and ford were two of my favourites. It was a summer 2018 visit to Pendon that reinvigorated my interest in the ford. It has something of Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’ painting about it, a horse and cart having apparently stopped mid-stream. My village has a ford. The brook that flows down the middle of it, with a narrow road and cottages on each side, is controlled by a small weir upstream. During 2018’s particularly dry summer, water was held back and the brook and the ford dried up to the point that a stranger could probably drive or even walk past it without realising it was there. At other times, the brook ‘babbles’ in typical fashion. Kids wade up to their thighs, and unsuspecting motorists hit the water at a speed, which produces a great bow wave and occasionally drowns their cars’ electrics! The brook has even, on occasions, broken its banks and flooded nearby properties. Having completed my thatched cottages (MR251), I wanted to make a little diorama on which to display them. A ford, a Pendon-style cottage garden or two and a thatched cottage sounded idyllic.