Press Cutting – Horses in Pine (1966)

HALIFAX EVENING COURIER

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1966

One of the fewer and fewer men who are maintaining the craft of professional wood carving is Mr. Ernest H. Stevens in Blackpool. He has been at it for 40 years since he learned it as a boy from one of the Yorkshire masters of the craft, whose name rings a responsive bell in the mind of many in Halifax and district, Mr. Harry Jackson of Northowram.

It was Mr. Jackson who enthralled the young Stevens when, as a schoolboy, he watched a block of wood take shape. Since then he has worked at his craft in churches on both sides of the Pennines, and for five years he was occupied in the new House of Commons bringing to life in wood the designs of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

There has been a wide variety in his work, though - for among other things, out of solid pine he carved 60 horses for the Derby Racer roundabout on Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

But, it seems modern materials have made their mark and hundreds of replicas in plastic can now be obtained from a carved original. But Mr. Stevens carries on in Blackpool the real art, the one he learned from Harry Jackson.