9th February 2017
Cliffe Castle Park in Keighley is being restored with funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Work started on site back in June 2016 and I’m following progress and sketching whenever I can.
At 16 minutes past 11.00 on Thursday 9th February – an extremely chilly morning and a red-letter day in the calendar of the restoration project – the dome was raised into position on the top of the glasshouses. No fanfares, no brass band, no speeches – but a great sense of accomplishment and perhaps a little relief that the whole thing went off without the slightest hitch. The 9.5 ton dome was lifted by a crane so immense I couldn’t get even half of it onto the page of my sketchbook, and I watched with excitement as it sailed upwards and was guided smoothly and expertly into place.
As everyone assembled in hard hats and high-vis vests I sketched the crowd, including Councillor Sarah Ferriby from Bradford Council (Environment, Sport, and Culture) as she was interviewed by a reporter from the Telegraph and Argus. I drew the contractors as they made preparations and at various times during the lift itself:
I wish I could have sketched the whole process from start to finish as it unfolded but the truth is I couldn’t decide whether I should try to do that, or take photos, or video the actual moment of lifting, and stupidly I should have spent more time paying attention and looking closely at what was going on. Besides, I knew I could rely on my friend Christina Helliwell who was there taking photos to get great shots – and of course she did.
So with her permission, here are some of the highlights that I couldn’t draw, as captured expertly through her lens.
So it’s up – and now clearly visible from many parts of the park, and even from the Skipton Road. A new part of the landscape, a milestone in the progress of the project and a hint of what’s yet to come.
***This post was amended to correct a mistake I made wrongly attributing Councillor Ferriby’s areas of responsibility; it should have read Environment, Sport and Culture, not Sport, Education and Culture ***
SPECIAL OFFER!
To celebrate the raising of the dome I’m making a selection of my sketches available to buy as prints, from Photobox.com. (You can see these collages here on my website.) If you’d like to know more, get in touch through my Contact page and I’ll send you a link to the album and the password you’ll need to access it. The fee you’d pay to order is simply the cost of the prints from Photobox.
More updates on the work of the conservation project, photos, plans, and background information here, and at the Cliffe Castle Park Conservation Group website and on the Parks Service page of Bradford Leisure Services.
Fabulous!! How can I post this on Face book! I want friends in Albania to see it! Lovely to see all this and know you are well! xxk >
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So good to hear from you! I saw just the other day that you started following the blog and I was delighted! Oh dear I have absolutely no idea how you can post it on Facebook – you can of course share the link, but I don’t know how you’d actually get the whole post itself on there….. maybe try the link first? I’d love to think it would be shared with your friends in Albania! XXX
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I know that feeling very well, of not knowing quite what to focus on – I often get that at the weddings I draw at. There’s a difficulty with drawing things that happen very fast and don’t get repeated, so I suppose the only other approach is a-stand-back-and-draw-the-whole-scene attack… then you could catch a number of different happenings all on the same page. But I do think that here you’d have needed a larger sketchbook (maybe one the size of a door).
If you manage the ‘whole scene’ thing then you get this wonderful sense of time passing – if the same people are drawn in different positions.
Anyway, I love your inky-watercolour technique. You’ve beautifully captured the way that the figures are holding their body weight, standing back on their heels looking at plans etc. Such a challenging subject matter – love it!
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