IT’S a striking tribute to the pub next door.
John Ramsden, 55, spent two years working on his matchstick model of the Dusty Miller in Longwood.
The completed piece now takes pride of place in the lounge of the village pub – but the number of matchsticks used remains a closely guarded secret for the time being.
John, a self-employed builder, began work on the model in 2010, a year after moving next to the pub with his wife Liz, 59.
“It’s a strange, quirky pub with a little horse-trough built into the wall,” he said.
“I was also intrigued by the way the pub was built on a gradient.”
John’s model is a mixture of the contemporary pub and the original version, which opened in the 1840s.
“The pub was initially only the two buildings in the middle of the current site,” he said.
“The end part of the pub used to be a butcher’s before it was bought by the brewery and the part next to my home used to be a house until it was converted 20 years ago.
“The matchstick model is based on the pub’s modern size, but the look is from the 1840s.”
John spent nearly two years working on the model.
“It took me about 20 months,” he said.
“When the weather was bad and I couldn’t work, I would spend four or five days on the model.
“It was quite time-consuming. To do a cobble, I had to stick three matches together, sand them down and then cut off the edges with a razor blade.”
John’s work is now on display at the Gilead Road pub.
“I went in on Saturday night and I got a lot of thumbs up and praise about it,” he said.
But John is tight-lipped about how many matches it took to make his masterpiece.
“The pub has organised a competition to guess the number of matchsticks with the money going to the Yorkshire Regiment,” he said.
Father-of-two John has been making matchstick models for two decades.
“I made a fictitious pub 20 years ago for my daughter,” he said.
“I built a model of a barn conversion in the Dales 10 years ago.
“My brother David made a model of Dewsbury town centre out of cigarette packets in 1955.”
