Public Art Commission. Cotford St Luke, Somerset. Commissioned by Somerset West and Taunton Council and project managed by Suzanne Heath.
In 2022 we were appointed by Somerset West and Taunton Council to design and make a new permanent public artwork for Cotford St Luke near Taunton in Somerset. The project has been funded by section 106 monies from a completed housing development in Cotford.
The project is a new pond dipping platform and a series of five oak screens for the forest school area of Cotford St Luke Primary School. The wooden screens upgraded an existing dilapidated shelter, doubling as both habitat creation and as a seating area for the children during Forest School lessons every Monday. The designs are inspired by the architectural plans for the Tone Vale Psychiatric Hospital, which the village grew up around.
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To develop our work, we visited the Somerset Heritage Archive to find out more about the Tone Vale Psychiatric Hospital, which formed the starting point for the village’s development and at one point was a 290 acre site. Today the remaining historic hospital buildings have been converted into apartments.
We ran several workshops with children at the school where pupils were invited to think about what creatures might use the animal habitat screens, what they would like the pond to look like and why.
The research and workshop sessions for this project can be seen below.
Forest School, Cotford St Luke Primary School. Monday 12th December 2022
Every Monday the school children get outside for forest school sessions in a mini woodland on the boundary line of the school. The area is directly next to a woodland and a stream where we noticed oak galls growing on the young oak saplings.
The children made smores on an open fire and played woodland games with their forest school leader Mr Ridout.
“What do you need to make fire?
Heat, fuel and...oxygen”
Research: Somerset Heritage Archive
Tone Vale Psychiatric Hospital
We spent the day at Somerset Heritage Archive looking at beautifully hand painted architectural plans for the Tone Vale hospital.
Finding out about the origins of the village of Cotford St Luke from its beginnings as Cotford Farm which was purchased to build the the Tone Vale psychiatric hospital. The village today is built around the former hospital, which can be seen on the video showing an OS ma from 1892, to Cotford St Luke as it is today.
Images copyright Somerset Heritage Archive
National Library of Scotland
“We love our trees in Cotford”
Cotford St Luke is a leafy village full of beautiful trees with river walks and footpaths.
Many of the historic trees were planted with the building of the Tone Vale hospital with tree protection orders on them prohibiting them from being cut down. These form wildlife strongholds throughout the village and are much cherished by local residents.
Wild Ink and Patterns in Nature Outdoor Workshop
Cotford St Luke primary school. Monday 20th February 2023
We looked for ancient oak trees near the school and found oak galls to make ink. We explored the colours we could make in the local natural environment and found patterns and geometry in nature.
Ink making was a scientific experiment watching gallic acid within the oak galls react with ferrous sulphate (iron) to create a beautiful black permanent ink. We used the ink to experiment and draw patterns we had found in nature and the environment around us, looking at what we have on our doorsteps to draw inspiration from.
Architecture and form Workshop
Cotford St Luke Primary School 27th February 2023
Sharing research from the Somerset Heritage centre. We looked at the original hand drawn and painted architectural plans for the Tone Vale hospital from the late 1800’s.
In this workshop we talked about floorplans, blueprints and architecture. We made three dimensional wooden shapes directly referencing the grids seen in the plans to give to the children. The children made their own blueprints thinking about 2D and 3D shapes in architectural form and in nature and designed spaces for their own forest school area inspired by the geometric form of the old plans.
We talked about ideas of community that the hospital represented and community in nature, patterns in nature and in the built environment and how we can design spaces for wildife and human community to co exist.
Workshop exploring habitat walls for wildlife.
The children became part of the design process to create habitat walls. We used the shapes within our screen design to think about what would be using the habitat walls and think about their own design considerations for the work. This included looking at species to support, life cycles of wildlife to include food, water, shelter. We had a lot of fun talking about wildlife where they live and how we could create fun and functional designs.
Inspired by the geometry of the hand painted architectural plans of the hospital building, we used this geometry as the inspiration for the design of the screens. We have been influenced by the Japanese kumiko woodworking technique, which doesn’t use any nails.
