I’d tagged along with photographer John Milnes, who has been following the local sculptor, Alex Wenham in the two year process it has taken to create from commission to completion. Who will it represent? Why was it ordered? And how was the finished piece achieved? Here in a series of pictures and John’s photographs, we tell the story.
I’d come to Folly Bridge to meet Graham Andrews. For today he is skippering the Salter’s passenger service that meanders along the river Thames from here to Iffley Lock. The third generation of Andrews to work on the boats, (it’s four if you count his daughter who does a bit of part-time work on the bar) he has promised to let me join him while he fills me in with something of his family history. And at the age of 82, I reckon he has a few stories to tell.
I’ve often spotted it on my walk along the towpath from Folly Bridge to Iffley. Across on the east bank of the Isis, nestled into the Kidney Stream, an old cut leading to the Cherwell from the Thames just before you reach Donnington Bridge. A fanciful floating pavilion rising from the water, its curved prow reminiscent of classical longboats, flagpole erect, pilasters framing the door to a whimsical white wooden cabin with hobbit like oval windows. There’s an external staircase leading to a raised rooftop garden overhung with willow, a tall chimney in the middle from which on colder days white plumes of smoke announce that there are occupants below. It all looks very romantic.
I had scrawled the word mulberries across the pages of my calendar for the first week of August. It was to remind me that this was the short window of time that these delicious knobbly clusters more muscular than a blackberry, sweeter than a raspberry, fully ripen and fall from the tree. For I wanted to make jam. Not any old jam mind. This jam was going to be special. A conserve created from the darkened crop of an ancient black mulberry tree.