In an insane moment, which lasted for about twenty months, I finally decided to create a real model of Holloway-House of Correction and this page is dedicated towards its progress. A kind of visual blog if you will. So, knowing nothing about model-making, and never having turned my hand towards anything like this before, I set out with a kind of insane abandonment thinking, 'how difficult can it be?'
I smile. I know now! However, my pride will not let the matter rest and so, in between writing, various other projects and bouts of cephalalgia, it is rising from card, paper and glue, using trigonometry and maths I have not used since school and parts of my brain I had not creatively used since, probably, pre-school! Nevertheless, at the rate I am proceeding, partly because I do not know what I am doing, partly because I am working with no official measurements, partly because mostly all I have to work with is photographs and a few maps and partly because of the limited amount of time I can give it, perhaps it might be finished by say...2037!
As you may have read and seen elsewhere, the building, in reality, a collection of over twenty three buildings, is massively complex. And the labyrinthine is not helped by the vast amount of changes made to the site over its history. The first decision then was, what period do I choose? The prison was visually, considerably different at its demise in 1970 than when it was built in 1854 or even, as I gained access to the original drawings by James Bunstone Bunning himself, his own conception.
And why not? Architects and draftsmen change details of their creations all the time. I have come to realise that history is not written in stone. Its the small things. For example; on both the Governor's and the Chaplin's houses, why did he decide to alter the position of one of the second floor windows from an skewed position to its final symmetrical one? Who will ever know now? And that is just one example from a collection of many enduring mysteries. And another is why he swapped the two houses around! Because in his original plans, the Chaplin's used to be the Governor's and vice versa.
As you can read in The History of the Site, B and C Wings were extended by fifty percent and they just kept building! However, as most of my information has come from the mid Twentieth Century, that was the period I decided on and even now, its quite flexible. For instance, in the Fifties, the outside execution shed (tagged on the end of B Wing) had been demolished but I still intend to reproduce it. The exact date when it was pulled down I do not know but this is one of those details upon which I hope I will be forgiven. I will not bore you with technical details on this page and from now on, there will be minimal input from myself for I hope the pictures will be their own record. Pop back sometime!
Here are the pictures.
The Beginning 20.01.08
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Something finally built! 1.3.2008
What you cannot see in this photograph is the small pile of human hair from the bouts of trichotillomania!
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13.3.08 Catastrophe; On completing a knotty section, it looked
terrible and I almost tossed it in the bin. The material I am using,
thick card, is not strong enough. I think only wood will be good
enough for the job. And I am woefully not set up for that. I only
live in a flat! My neighbours would love me, sawing and banging away!
So I'm going to have to have another think I guess.
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23.3.08 Ok then. Here is my first effort with Google's free program, Sketchup. Same building; the Governor's residence. Quite a steep learning curve over the past week but I believe I'm over the worst now! Working out the precise heights from photographs was the biggest headache ever.
And the real model? A friend has given me a Vibro saw, a sander and other technical things and so its on again! This time, I have decided on very thin MDF. We shall see.