Bill Webb has been a full-time painter and artist for 26 years, but he’s been working on another project for much longer. One of his most favourite projects is soon to come into the public’s view, and he’s looking forward to sharing it with visitors to Forestburg.

For more than three decades, he’s been working on a large-scale model of a tiny, pastoral pre-WWI English village, complete with train station, pub, general store, church, and more.

With breathtaking detail, Webb worked on one building at a time, working often from photos of actual buildings, and matching his finished work with those images.

It doesn’t stop with building details either, each building has a back yard, often complete with gardens, even featuring tiny cabbages. Every home has an outhouse, and stately trees dot the landscape and line the yards.

Over the years, he’s experimented with a number of finishes, including hand-painted bricks, tiny slate roofing tiles, laid one piece at a time, and thatched cottages built from paintbrushes, wigs, and even human hair.

The church, complete with a tiny and ornate stained-glass window, features a graveyard, and stands on Church Hill, a tongue-in-cheek name after his homeland’s famous statesman.

When the display is completely assembled, it includes cobbled streets and a winding river, with a medieval bridge leading to the train station.

READ THE FULL STORY in the Spring Time 2nd Section of the April 26 edition of The Community Press – available on newsstands and via E-Subscription!

Leslie Cholowsky
Editor