Nene
Valley Model Railway
The Parish Inn
Scratch-building The Parish Inn – A
model Tudor Inn built by Graham Sharman, originally displayed on, and part
of the 00 gauge layout ‘Hammerton Road’,
It was felt a timbered pub was required to complement the other
buildings on the layout. A search of the internet quickly found
adequate elevation photos of The Swan in Lavenham (Suffolk), a Tudor
building with solid East Anglian exposed timberwork, and without the
frills and fancies found in places like Hereford and Shrewsbury.
Although no direct dimensions could be obtained from the pictures,
scaling could be undertaken easily; since a Tudor ceiling beam is about
6ft from floor (I usually bang my head…). A 00 gauge elevation drawing
was made, based on vertical timbers about 2ft apart, denoting a
building of some importance for its time. This was copied, cut out and
placed on its proposed site on the layout. It was immediately apparent
the building as drawn was not appropriate, being too long for our site.
The building was redrawn with one room removed from the middle of the
buildings and with a gabled upper storey placed at the opposite end.
This was again mounted, and approved.
The core of the building is made from several layers of foam board,
with gables, and window and door apertures built up by additional
layers of foam board. The core is made rigid by fitting floors.
Onto the core, wood strips are glued using Uhu. The upstairs floor
beams were placed first with all other construction going from that
position. Windows were constructed separately to fit the apertures
using wood strips. These were glued into the apertures whilst
timbering.
All woodwork was cut from coffee stirrers – courtesy of the Coffee Shop
at Hitchin railway station. The spaces between the strips were clad
with 1mm sheet plastic, added during this stage of construction. The
building was finished by adding cills, lintels, corbel brackets and
doors.
Two heavy chimneys were constructed. The roof shape was produced in
sheet plastic, in two parts and after adjusting for satisfactory fit,
was clad to represent typical small Tudor roof tiling, using Slaters
4mm slating, but at approximately half the manufactured overlap giving
a heavily lapped finish with uneven rows, enabling a sag to be
incorporated similar to the roof-line of the original. Some tiling was
undertaken by Kay Earnshaw to give me a break from this mind-numbing
task.
Drafting and design took about 10 hours, Construction and cladding the
building about 45 hours, the roofs more than 80 hours between May and
July 2006. Some 30 hours painting & finishing was undertaken by
John Earnshaw. Woodwork was sanded and scraped to remove glue residue
then stained with black pen spread using spirits as solvent. Walls
between woodwork were painted in white matte, the roof and chimneys in
multitudinous shades of reds, oranges and browns. Lighting will shortly
be fitted by Roy Holt. There may also be smoke from the chimneys.
The building was sponsored by Baz Parish, proprietor of Parish Brewery,
who kindly produced a bottled special ale for our 2006 Model Railway
Exhibition. Baz produces award-winning traditional ales from his
micro-brewery at Burrough-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire. Established in
1983 producing just 18 gallons a week, the recently refurbished plant,
housed in a 400 year old building, is capable of producing 720gallons a
week. One of his products is listed in the Guinness Book of records as
the Worlds strongest beer. ‘Baz’s Super Brew’ was a full 23% ABV.
My thanks to all my colleagues at Nene Valley Model Railway Railway
Association for their help and encouragement with this model.
Graham Sharman