Thursday, 3 July 2014

*RUFFORD ABBEY, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE* - Oil Drilling Engineer

Had a midweek break to Sherwood Forest recently and went to visit Rufford Abbey which is a semi-derelict manor house set in a country park.

Whilst wandering round the large gardens I came across this statue of an engineer holding a massive wrench which seemed slightly out of place and had no information about it at all. I looked on all the websites about Rufford but found nothing and I was just about to give up when I decided to google 'rufford park statue of workman' as a last resort....

.... lo and behold I got directed to a blog which had specific details about the statue and its history - all the info here. The fact the statue was relocated to Rufford explains the lack of any plaque and looking at a picture of it in the original setting (right) at the Dukes Wood Museum, there obviously used to be some further details.

So it turns out that there was a secret WW2 oil field in the Midlands at a place called Eakring and this beefy workman was to commemorate all the gallons of oil which helped the war effort - more details (also from the blog yorkshireladsworld which I think deserves another mention as they did all the hard work for me) can be found here.

Overall:- 6.5/10

No comments:

Post a Comment