Woolly says – Winter has defiantly arrived, the sun was bright and providing a small amount of warmth but the air was bitterly cold, having wrapped up well we headed out to a place that I had stumbled across whilst checking my pistachio order online, it took us into England for the first time in quite a while.
With the laws now having changed again in Wales….it’s now a dry country which takes me back to my childhood and visits to my great grandparents….we could now travel in and out of Tier one and Tier two places.
Woolly says – I didn’t even notice us passing the border but after a short drive we were in the county of Shropshire and moving slowly along the most incredible driveway filled with griffes!
The British Ironworks Centre & Shropshire Sculpture Park is a forge, silversmiths and sculpture park near Oswestry, England. It is famous for its safari park of sculptures, mostly in metal, and its gorilla made entirely of spoons. Started by the Knowles family who had purchased a large farm with no idea about farming at all they decided to do something a little different and this was in the top ten of being different.
As we pulled into the car park, I couldn’t contain my excitement and before Jo had even got the handbrake on, I was out of the car and staring up and the most wonderful metal mammoth I had ever seen, in fact it beat rather a lot of the mammoths I had seen whether metal or not. He was incredible and having introduced ourselves, Malcolm and I chatted together whilst Jo sorted the mutt out.
Promising to be back in a while we left Malcolm to his own thoughts and set off along the walking trail. Beautiful horses lined the start of the route along with some rather cute metal pigs.
A wonderful T rex skeleton stood looking up to the sky whilst next to him was the world famous Knife Angel.
In 2014 the centre launched a new incentive called the ‘Save a Life, Surrender Your Knife’ campaign. This project ultimately resulted in a 27-foot-tall sculpture, which looked even bigger close up. Encouraging a knife amnesty in conjunction with local police forces across the United Kingdom, to enable them to build/sculpt an angel statue, initially only 37 police forces responded and sent in knives. By the project’s completion in 2018, all 43 police forces had contributed to the total 100,000 knives, blades, swords and other weapons used in violent crime.
In the year following its completion, the work was transported on a nationwide tour in order to highlight an anti-violence message and it is now currently waiting to take its place in London’s Trafalgar Square. It was a thing of beauty with a strong message to convey, a measure that we should all heed.
As I trotted along, I came to a large gorilla enjoying a back scratch on a tree, closely followed by a wonderful peacock.
As we wandered on a steady stream of incredible sculptures meet our eyes, from dragons, wild boar and a rather splendid golden giraffe.
A lion lay dosing in the weak sunlight next to a pair of steers who seemed ready for a fight.
As we turned into a large field there were statues as far as the eye could see, a cute hippo caught Jo’s attention but that was nothing compared to the elephant that came next, his trunk reaching for the moon.
An even better gorilla came next followed by a tortoise, deer’s, horses and many more, every one looking so lifelike to was hard to comprehend that they were all made from a cold hard metal.
The route took us into an orchard area filled with even more delights, Alfie the Dog seemed to take a liking to a baby gorilla whilst Jo ohhed and arrrhed over another hippo. As I wandered more and more animals came into my eyeline before reaching the outside showroom where you could purchase the most incredible items.
An old-style car took my fancy although the all metal motorbike took some beating as did the pavilions. In 2013, the centre was asked to create four iron pavilions to celebrate the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. The order came from Buckingham Palace, and the pavilions would be used as entrances to the celebrations being held in its gardens. Was there anything these talented people couldn’t make out of metal!
The outside area was crammed with items including a large caged gorilla who didn’t look to happy at Jo taking his picture.
We had all loved it and having put Alfie the Dog back into the car with a chew my small companion and I headed inside.
Woolly says – As Christmas music filled my ears my eyes tried to take in all of the items for sale, there was artwork everywhere from the ceiling to the floor and every space in between.
Even better was the small café in the centre of the building serving a mouth watering variety of cakes and goodies and as Jo and I tucked into our chocolate delights we both agreed that we needed to come back another day….soon.
Thanks for your blog, nice to read. Do not stop.