Kettering mosaic: Artist recreates scale version of father's mural

Sixty years after his father created a mosaic celebrating a town's history his son has spoken of how he tried to save it from being lost.

In 1963, Kenneth Budd made a huge mural for the new Kettering Grammar School building in Northamptonshire.

His son Oliver Budd removed it ahead of the building's demolition in 2007.

The original fell apart and a smaller version is in a gallery, but Mr Budd said his father really only wanted his art to be shown in public.

Kenneth Budd was not a well-known artist when he was commissioned to create the 14m by 4.5m (45ft by 15ft) mosaic, reflecting the history of the Kettering school, which dated back to the reign of Elizabeth I.

It graced the wall until it was removed in 2007 by his son, ahead of the building's demolition.

Recalling his late father's work, Mr Budd, 62, also a mosaic artist, said Kenneth arrived at the school in Kettering with two students, tasked with helping to put the intricate tiles on the wall.

The scaffolding went up, he said, and the artist scaled a 25ft ladder to get started.

"Dad was a bit daft to be honest," Mr Budd said.

"He went on site with two students - Mick and Dinger (he does not know their full names) - and they started drawing the mosaic on the wall and sticking bits on - it was completely bonkers.

"Nowadays we'd do everything in a studio and take it to the site."

It was the summer of 1963 and Kenneth Budd's wife June, their twins Charlotte and Roger, and youngest son Oliver - just a toddler - spent some of the holidays in Kettering, watching the mosaic progress.

"Things were not made easier by the fact dad was terrified of heights," Mr Budd said.

"My mother would make him a cup of tea and have to carry it up the ladder to him."

The massive artwork drew the attention of local children who would "come past and shout 'Picasso' at my father".

It took more than three months to create the mosaic.

After the school closed and the building's new owners said it would be demolished, Oliver Budd was tasked with painstakingly removing his father's work, in an effort to save it for the town - a long campaign spearheaded by Kettering Civic Society.

In 2007 Mr Budd arrived and "managed to secure almost all of it in square-metre sections", he said.

He took it home to Kent where it was stored while the civic society worked in the background to secure funds and a site to reinstate the work.

However, the mosaic sections did not survive storage.

"The school wall had heating behind it that had protected the tiles, but when we stored them the damp, frost and everything attacked them and they just fell apart as they weren't frost-proof," said Mr Budd.

The decision was taken that he would recreate his father's work but on a smaller scale.

"I could have rebuilt the original, but the remake costs would have been phenomenal - more than £100,000," Mr Budd said.

"I am sad my father's work is gone, but you have to be pragmatic - after all, it was going to be destroyed."

It took about two months to make the new version, measuring 3.3m by 0.9m (11ft by 3ft), he said.

"I'm so lucky to have been trained by my dad," said Mr Budd.

"I took his design and projected it on to a wall and drew on that, so it's exactly his original design.

"I think I was slightly truer to that design than he was."

The remade mosaic is now displayed in the Alfred East Gallery in Kettering - although the venue is currently closed to the public.

"I love the idea that it's in a gallery but my father never wanted his own work to be," he said.

"He always wanted his work in a public place - he was an artist for the people."

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