Zeppelin Over Yarwell, continued.

The Zep, as we now call it, has got all its material on, has its tail wings on, and has had its undercoat painting done. Its a bit blue looking, but it is grey and the top coat will be a darker grey. It looks like a great big slug, perhaps we have made a new species. The only area not painted is the underside,which cannot be done until we lift it up a bit. Lifting it is going to be very difficult.

A Zeppelin Over Yarwell Continued

We have been working on the Zeppelin for many weeks now. It can get very cold since there is no heating in the Tithe Barn Museum, so we pile pullovers on and hope for the best.
This photo is of the Zeppelin when it has had the binding on to which the material will be attached.

Zeppelin with its binding.

The large white disks are made from polystyrene and are joined together with doweling rods. We have chosen polystyrene  because it is light and we want to hang the Zep from a tie beam in the roof of the museum.
Well that is the plan at the moment!














The next job will be to put the material on. We will be  using calico which can be obtained in Peterborough market at a reasonable price. As the Zeppelin is 14 feet long, it takes a lot of everything.

The Zeppelin with its  calico covering.

Here Mike is holding it while I take the photograph. It has been quite difficult to get the material taut, and where it is not we will be using shrinking dope.

At least it did not fall apart when we lifted it up!

Today my grandsons and I lifted the Zep, as we now call it, onto a long table. All the calico is now glued on and the next job will be to attached the wings at the back and finish of the nose. it will then be painted grey. Currently it looks like a giant slug!

Zeppelin over Yarwell. Mannequins

Today we began to assemble our mannequins.
Body parts were strewn all over the floor and it looked as if there had been a massacre, but without any blood.


The bodies assembled quite easily but the man's feet would not touch the ground and he is far too wobbly to be stood in the Tithe Barn Museum; he would certainly fall onto somebody.

The lady was more seriously afflicted; she has two right arms!

Ringing the supplier for the man was not very useful as he girl who answered the phone did not know why the man was not standing correctly. As yet we await an email from the the company that supplied the lady.
We have some clothing and the rest is mostly ordered. We hope to have photos of the fully dressed mannequins in he New Year.

Zeppelin over Yarwell. The Zeppelin.

We have started to make the Zeppelin for our new exhibition for 2014, ‘ A Zeppelin over Yarwell’.

The frame is to be constructed from polystyrene sheets and bamboo. We shall stretch thin cotton over the frame and glue it in place, it will then be painted.  The completed zeppelin will be 1.2 m at the widest point and about 3.5 m long. Our biggest problem is likely to be hanging it high up in the Tithe Barn.

We cut out the polystyrene in the kitchen because it was far too cold to work  in the Tithe Barn.

We made a hell of a mess and even after hoovering we are still finding pieces of foam on the floor.

A Zeppelin Over Yarwell

A Zeppelin Over Yarwell

With our grants all in place, £3400 from the National Heritage Fund and with £500 from the
Northamptonshire County Council Empowering Councillors & Community Scheme, we are full steam head.
We have spent a lot of time researching the war dead and injured from our local communities, and we have also been looking at the families of these soldiers. Luckily  Lance Lock who lived in Nassington as a young boy and then in the neighboring village of Yarwell, wrote a history of the villages, called When I Was A Boy. He was born in 1910 and educated in the Nassington Primary school.
 It is full of information about the first world war families, which is proving to be very useful. Lance knew every one, and as an adult he had a lovely farm in Yarwell. All his barns on Manor Farm ,Yarwell have now been converted into houses and the farm has completely lost its identity.

We will be having two mannequins in our exhibition, one dressed as a WWI soldier and the other as  a land army girl.

 Oundle Public School has lent us a WWI uniform, which is a great help because they are very expensive to buy.  All we now have to obtain is a shirt, socks and shoes.                                              

 

A Zeppelin Over Yarwell

We are very pleased to be able to announce that our project will be funded by a grant of £3,400 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, which will enable us to continue with this project.
The exhibition will be called A Zeppelin Over Yarwell, an allusion to the sudden WWI wartime appearance of a  Zeppelin over the village (to the considerable consternation of the villagers) which dropped a bomb in the nearby village of Wansford.

We plan to build a Zeppelin, not a full size one, to hang in the rafters above the exhibition. Currently we are trying to work out how to build one!
 We will not be using cow guts as reported in the Times Newspaper!

 

Our village school will also be involved with this project, knitting mittens,

 as the children did for 'the troops at the front.'

A Zeppelin Over Yarwell

It has been a long time since we have blogged because we have been busy collecting information from all the villages. We have also applied for a grant from Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to enable us to put on the exhibition in the Tithe Barn Museum. We will not know if we have been successful until the end of September.

We have also managed to find some photographs and information about some of  our war dead and injured. For instance George Briggs who came from Nassington was only 19 when he was killed at Flanders.

He came from a family of  nine. His father Fredrick Briggs was a horse keeper and they all lived in a small three roomed house.

This is George's older brother who had been a farm labourer         in Nassington, but is leg was badly injured in action on
the 9th May 1915 aged 18 and he was unable to work for some considerable time after the war.