Members of the women’s section of Thames’ MenzShed were the only ones to take on the task of repairing a well-known mural after it was damaged during last year’s general elections.
The mural, created by the late potter Barry Brickell OBE, has sat inside the Civic Centre on Mary St since 2016.
But centre custodian Sharon McCaskill said a majority of the piece was damaged during the general elections last year, when “kids came along and pulled loose pieces off of it”.
“I was a bit put out by that but what can you do?” she told The Profile. “To be honest, they possibly did us a favour because the MenzShed has told me it was on a rather bendy piece of material and that they’re now in the process of strengthening the back of it.”
The terracotta clay mural was unveiled in the entrance of the Civic Centre back in September, 2016, and according to a Thames-Coromandel District Council press release from the time, it told a “story of the land and the environmental impacts upon it”.
For more than five months, the spot it sat remained bare while Sharon searched for someone to repair the piece.
She said she contacted a number of local artists, including Driving Creek Railway which was founded by Brickell in the 1970s, but all refused to take on the task.
When the women of the Thames MenzShed said they’d tackle the project, she was thrilled.
The restoration has been led by MenzShed secretary Trish Beasley alongside Ros Rasmussen.
“No one was willing to take the job on, but I just took one look at it and said: ‘We can do that – easy’,” Trish said.
The women have refurbished the backing panel and reglued all of the component sections – all 35 of them – back in place. A new backing panel will be attached for better support before the mural is reinstalled in the Civic Centre’s entrance lobby.
“It took six guys to carry it around to the shed,” Trish said. “She was hard work. It’s going to go back in a van because now it’s got all the pieces reattached to it.”
Trish said she and Ros didn’t know exactly how to approach the restoration, but saw “what needed to be done to be able to get it back up”.
“It’s a piece of Thames history – it was the first thing you saw when you went into the Civic Centre, and it was sad that it had been covered up since before Christmas.”
The Thames Community MenzShed opened in 2018 and introduced a women’s section in 2021.
About a third of the group’s entire membership was now made up of females, Trish said.
DETAILS: To get in touch with either the Thames MenzShed or WomenzShed, email: thamesmenzshed@amail.com or find the organisation on Facebook.
