The Coddington Heritage Cube
The Coddington Heritage Cube is a picture cube (magic cube or Zoobookoo) that can be manipulated to reveal pictures hidden inside. The large cube, made of eight smaller cubes joined together, can be opened and refolded to bring to the surface the pictures printed on all six faces of the smaller cubes.
The cube has been designed and manufactured as part of our second Heritage Initiative Grant, and we have given one to each pupil at Coddington School (during the year 2007/8). Coddington School also has a teaching set of 30 cubes so that future schoolchildren can play with them and we provided ideas on how to the teachers could use the cube to explore arithmetic and geometry, maps and plans, history and creative writing.
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We have covered the cube with pictures that we feel represent important aspects of Coddington?s heritage. Eight small square pictures in the centre of the cube form a quiz – these represent all the small details of our village buildings and scenery without which our heritage would be much poorer than it is now.
Choosing the pictures was difficult ? the desire to ?have my cake and eat it? led me to suggest a Coddington Picture Quiz Sheet of 35 cryptic pictures. (The sheet was on sale this summer. For those of you who took part the answers will be posted on the site in December.)
The following pictures were chosen:
? An aerial photograph of the A1 and Newark Road area with the sites of the Harvey Avenue Estate and Coddington Hall (both now demolished) taken about 2000 by getmapping.com and provided free of charge for this purpose. This represents our past links with Winthorpe Airbase, Coddington Hall (Beaconfield House), the Thorpe Family – and today?s links with the region and the rest of the country.
? A photo of Coddington House taken from Balderton Lane. Once the home of Mrs Thorpe and of the Tallents family and the only surviving large house in the village, this represents the benevolent patronage of Victorian estate times.
? All Saints Church, Coddington (largely reconstructed 1864-5) from Chapel Lane. This represents both the physical presence of the church in the heart of the village and the spiritual and practical guidance given by Church and Chapel to villagers over the centuries. The graveyard remains the jost vivid point of contact with former inhabitants.
? Stained glass from All Saints Church, Coddington ? part of the Chancel East window of 1865: The Annunciation by Burne-Jones and Morris, Marshall Faulkner and Co. A reminder that Coddington contains work by a nationally significant group of artists.
? The former dovecote of Manor Farm, dating from 1713, now a private house. This represents the two earliest surviving domestic buildings in the village, and the importance of agriculture and the seasons when the village was more contained and self-sufficient.
? Low aerial photograph of Manor and Sunnyside farms and their barns and outbuildings (including the Dovecote). This represents the importance of local industries ? of agriculture, malting, lime quarrying and lime burning.
The two large rectangular black and white pictures which are revealed show Coddington?s past:
? Pupils of Coddington National School, standing in front of the school on Main St (date unknown 1890 ? 1915). The building is now the Scout Hall.
? Main St, looking north towards what will become the Plough crossroads (date unknown 1890 ? 1915). This shows many lost buildings cleared away in the 1960s and 1970s.
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Cubes for Sale
A small number of cubes are left over and may become available to non-members after Xmas. If you are interested in buying a cube please contact the Group through the website at the end of November.
We would like to thank the cube manufacturers Zoobookoo for their assistance in the design and artwork process, and for their professionalism. None of this would have been possible without the generous grant from the Local Heritage Initiative.