Visit to Rutland and Oakham

Following on from what we all felt was a successful presentation of our initial ideas and consequently the first of our weekly meetings with our head of studies, Mike, as well as beginning to look into the building of our modular assets, we all felt strongly that one of our next steps would be to get out and begin to gather as much first hand reference as possible.

There were a few ideas behind our reasoning for choosing this as our next step. Obviously we all believed that if our group were to gather as much first hand reference as possible it would only strengthen our project as a whole, adding value and substance to the final outcome of our project. We also knew that any reference gathered would not only aid in the further development of our visual work, concepting and paintings etc., but would also provide a solid base for creating our textures in the coming weeks. Finally, we all felt that being able to travel to a variety of different places in order to gather reference could potentially further our research in the historical context and strengthen the accuracy and realism we hope to achieve in our project.

In Friday's meeting we all discussed a variety of places we would potentially like to visit, including Shakespeare's birthplace of Statford-upon-Avon, Oakham and Rutland and the Shambles in York.

Daniel Peacock had the idea of visiting Rutland, and specifically Rutland County Museum as it houses the only surviving New Drop gallows in England, as well as a variety of other invaluable reference. So, yesterday a few members of our group, including myself (Joe Dempsey), Daniel Peacock and Luc Fontenoy took a drive over there, camera's at the ready. The museum was small but there was plenty of useful things to photograph. We were also pleased to find that the surrounding area in Oakham was also extremely useful for reference in which we found plenty of old streets, houses, cottages, a few churches and Chapel's and even small 17^th century Market Cross with peculiar 5 hole stocks!

Below is a small selection of photographs from yesterdays visit;

Rutland County Museum visit Team Photo - Daniel Peacock,  Luc Fontenoy and Joe Dempsey

Only New Drop Gallows in England

Texture Reference

Reference for potential props

Reference for potential props

Texture Reference

Texture Reference