One of the most eclectic attractions in the county - Wroxham Miniature Worlds - is getting an exciting new addition this summer: knitter extraordinaire Margaret Seaman’s amazing woolly creations. We were given a special sneak preview
Her amazing knitted creations - from Great Yarmouth seafront in the 1970s to Sandringham House to Buckingham Palace - have seen her featured in newspapers and on TV all around the globe.
But this summer 95-year-old Margaret Seaman's woolly wonders, which have raised thousands of pounds for charity and have seen her granted a private audience with Queen Elizabeth II, are moving to a new home. And the good news is that they are staying right here in Norfolk.
They are going on permanent display at one of the county's quirkiest collections - Wroxham Miniature Worlds. And the attraction's director, Robert Green, could not be more thrilled.
'I can't believe it,' he says as Margaret and her daughter, Tricia Wilson, busy themselves installing the hundreds of intricately crafted components (there are more than 100 trees for starters) in time for its official unveiling at the start of the school holidays.
He got in touch with Margaret when he saw an interview with her on television ahead of her most recent appearance at the Norfolk Makers Festival in Norwich when she said that she wanted to find a new home for her work. He invited Margaret, who lives in Caister, to visit the attraction, which has some of the biggest model railways on display anywhere- and she fell in love with it.
'I can see how important it really is and the last thing I wanted was to see someone take it across the country or for someone to buy it and for it to stay in their home and not to be appreciated,' says Robert.
'It's also inspiring - it goes to show that you can make models out of anything, be it card, plastic, even wool. My children have loved watching it taking shape.'
As Margaret explains during a break from the installation work, she learned to knit when she was just seven years old.
'My twin brothers were 14 and my months had taught them to knit - she couldn't afford to buy socks, so they had to knit their own socks for school,' she recalls. 'She used to cast on, they knitted the straight bit, and she turned the heel, they knitted the foot and she cast it off. They taught me to knit.'
Margaret continued to pick up her needles and wool off and on, knitting for her children and then grandchilden. When she lost her husband, Fred, in 2013, her daughter Tricia encouraged her to join a knitting club and, in her words, 'it all snowballed from there.'
She and her fellow knitters created an enchanted wood and a butterfly garden. Then, with her creativity flowing, she decided to embark on her first large-scale solo project - Great Yarmouth sea front in the 1970s. Gorgeously nostalgic, it includes Wellington Pier - hosting a performance by Bruce Forsyth - the Winter Gardens, the Marina and even the beloved Joyland snails. It took her more than a year to make and became the centrepiece of the Norfolk Makers Festival in 2018. Her next project was even more ambitious - the Norfolk royal residence Sandringham House. She returned to the festival to show it as a work in progress in early 2020 - and just a few weeks later the country entered the first Covid lockdown. She used the time to finish Sandringham - and also created the NHS Knittingale Hospital as a tribute to health care workers.
Coming out of lockdown, Margaret, a lifelong fan of the royal family, had a dream come true when she was asked to display knitted Sandringham at the real Sandringham - and couldn't believe it when, as she and Tricia were installing it, Queen Elizabeth came to see it and the pair chatted for around 15 minutes.
Margaret has raised more than £120,000 for charity, and has been awarded a British Empire Medal. She is currently raising funds for Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust to help build a specialist children's hospital - and smaller woolly creations are on sale from the family beach hut on Great Yarmouth sea front.
When creating a replica such as Sandringham, Margaret works from photographs.
'I decide what I'll have a go at making and we'll go to the place and take photographs of it,' she explains. 'At home, I'll look at the photographs and decide what I think I can do, then I get the pictures enlarged - that way you can get all the details in.'
Wroxham Miniature Worlds is remarkable in itself. It was started by Robert's father, Sean, in 2012. As Robert explains, it was a real passion project.
'He's always been interested in model railways. On the continent, especially in Germany, there's lots of these sorts of places, but there was nothing like this in the UK. He wanted to do something here, something different and to be able to expand his hobby. I was in my last year of university when he started doing this, and he asked if I wanted to help so I did all the track and ran the mechanical side of it.'
Thanks to the dedication of a team of staff and volunteers, the attraction opened in 2014.
And at its heart are its amazingly detailed model railways.
There's a European railway layout - the largest HO scale layout on public display in the UK, which takes a trip through the mountains of Switzerland on to Austria and Germany, a Japanese railway layout which is the largest gauge N layout on permanent display in the UK and a Great British layout which weaves its way through more than 500 sq ft of OO gauge model scenery.
As Robert explains: 'Our British one is about 55ft long and the reason for that is that my dad used to take me to model railway shows when I was little, and I wasn't really interested in trains as much back then. So when we came to do this he asked how big it would have to be to make me interested in it - because if I was interested other people would be interested in it. So we stood at the front door [of our house] and we walked down the corridor to the kitchen. He asked if it was long enough and I said no. We walked to the back door of the kitchen, and I said no, so we walked all the way to the end of the garden and he asked if that was long enough and I said yeah I think so. So that's why they're so big.'
When they were building the layouts, they needed scenery is such large quantities - including 3,000 trees - that stock was having to be pulled back from model shops to fulfill their order.
Exploring Wroxham Miniature Worlds further, there's an incredible collection of Lego sets, collected by Sean himself, plus Star Wars toys, model ships, Scalextric, retro video games, penny arcade games which used to be at Merrivale Model Village in Great Yarmouth, vintage toys, dolls houses and model ships. There are lots of interactive elements, including plane and train simulators, and some of the displays change according to the time of year - at Christmas you might spot a Santa Special and a Coca Cola train running on the railways.
Sean handed the reins over to Robert a few years ago, but came out of retirement to build the display cases for Margaret's creations, which is now the first display that visitors see.
For the young - and young at heart - it really is a world of wonder.
To find out more about Wroxham Miniature Worlds go to worxhamminiatureworlds.co.uk. To donate to Margaret Seaman's fundraising for Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust visit justgiving.com/page/margaret-knit-for-addenbrookes
