A RETIRED builder has raised over £1,800 for charity doing what he does best, building homes.
Since retiring due to ill health, Newsham resident Ian Walker has constructed more than 80 miniature stone cottage garden planters and selling them to help raise funds for the Rob Burrows Motor Neurone Disease Appeal.
The appeal, which seeks to raise £6.8 million to build a specialist MND (Motor Neurone Disease) care centre in Leeds to give people living with the disease the best quality of life was started by the former professional rugby player, who was diagnosed with MND four years ago.
Mr Walker, 73, a keen rugby fan and season ticket holder for the Leeds Rhinos, said: “I watched his [Rob Burrows] first game and his last game and when he got struck down with it my late brother and I wanted to do something. It is such a cruel disease with no cure.”
Drawing on a life time’s worth of experience restoring and building stone houses throughout the dale, he hit upon the idea of creating the unique planters after a suggestion from his daughter in law, Chloe.
Using materials he “scrounges” from his sons Paul and Scott, who continue to run the family building firm Ian Walker & Sons Building Contractors, he has created about 80 miniature stone cottages over the last four years.
He said: “I started to do it when I retired.
“At first, I was making just plain stone planters and was giving them away to friends and relations, but I think they got fed up of them.
“Then we thought about making little stone houses for birds. Each one had a hole in so the birds could nest in them, but there were problems because you have to have them far away from each other.”
The idea to turn the houses into planters came about when he removed the roof from one and he has not looked back since.
Mr Walker added: “All of the houses – and I have done some churches – are all subtly different because it depends on the stone I can get hold of.
“I usually scrounge bits of stone off my sons, but S and A in Barney and MK Merchants in Darlington have helped, keeping aside broken bits of stone for me to use.
“I’ve done a couple of churches with stained glass windows and it usually takes me a day to put them together, as long as I have the material. I usually do a dry run first though. After the build there is usually some finishing off to do.”
All the mini homes, which cost between £60 and £80 each, are lined and insulated and come with a detachable coconut matting roof so plants will be protected in the winter.
Already many of his mini-homes have been snapped up by neighbours in and around Newsham as well as from admirers from further afield.
Wife Sandra said: “Ian is not the kind of person who can sit around and do nothing, he likes to be busy and at first we were giving them away, but we thought this was a great opportunity to raise some money for the appeal.
“We specifically wanted the money to go towards the building of the hospital because it would mean all specialist therapies for those with motor neurone disease would be under one roof.
“When he first started doing them we did give some away to friends and to raise money for other charities.”
Since deciding to donate funds raised from the sale of the planters to the Rob Burrows MND Appeal they have handed over £1,800 and Mr Walker has no intention of stopping anytime soon, having invested in a specialist cutter to help chip stone down to size.
Anyone who would like to purchase a stone house planter can contact Mr Walker on 07803 907076.
