A pheasant surprise for Alnwick residents as willow sculpture gets a new lease of life

The sculpture, located at the main entrance to the extra care scheme, was initially constructed in 2017 but over time the willow had begun to rot and the team at Weavers’ Court needed help to restore it.

Sheila Abercrombie, who took up willow weaving just after she retired about ten years ago, decided to take the project on after taking pity on the pheasant.

Liz Pratt, extra care scheme coordinator at Karbon Homes, said: “We started thinking who on earth we could ask to take a look at it. It’s concreted to the ground so we knew we couldn’t take it out and we didn’t know what to do with it.”

“It was one of our Weavers’ Court residents, Jean Findlay, who connected us with Sheila and we were delighted to hear she was interested in seeing what she could do to help.”

Sheila said: “I came up in October to have a look and I felt sorry for the old bird. Willow doesn’t last forever and it had gone brittle and worn out.

“It was tough because I was restoring it over the winter so I could only work on it two hours at a time. It’s been a pleasure to bring the sculpture back to its best, and as I was working all the residents kept coming out and saying ‘what a good job you’re making of it’ which was lovely.”

Liz added: “The residents are thrilled. They think it brings a real feature to this scheme, a talking point. It looks amazing, the colours of the willow are brilliant. It even better than the first time round.

“We chose a pheasant originally because we used to have a lot of pheasants walking around the scheme outside, so the residents chose it as it felt like a mascot.”

The residents arranged for Sheila to come and see them for a celebratory tea party and presented her with a token as a gesture of their appreciation for all the work she has done.

She also got to pick a name out of a hat for the pheasant – the winning name was ‘Fernando’.