Eccentric Artist: A memory of Matching Green

Eccentric Artist

A Memory of Matching Green.

I remember cycling to Matching Green from Harlow in the early Seventies, as a 16 year old, exploring with friends one summer evening and coming across a cottage garden filled with strange but delightful 'art works' made out of domestic ironmongery. There were lots of metal people and devils, all brightly painted standing amid the overgrown garden among the flowers. It was very magical. Someone told us they were made by the eccentric man who lived in the attached cottage which stood on the corner of the Green with the lane leading to Harlow. Everything was grubbed up and vanished in the late Seventies. Can anyone tell me more about this story, is there someone still living who has the whole tale?

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Added 07 April 2010

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we kids knew him as Horace
amongst other things he got banned from the village shop for spitting on the floor

By simon.laing on Sun Apr 16th 2017, at 10:15 pm

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Having recently learnt to drive, I visited Matching Green in my old green and white Morris Oxford saloon in about 1977 or 1978. Somehow I was drawn to the cottage probably because it was by that time derelict. I remember that the upstairs part was like a barn, full of straw and all the figures were in this loft. There were a lot of pitchforks lying around as well as the strange anthropomorphic figures which were more or less life-sized, some of them still standing and some of them lying around in the straw. The maker was an unsung naive artist of considerable talent. I returned a few years later and the house had been renovated and was inhabited. I wonder what happened to the strange figures? It is interesting to find out the maker's name was Horace and that he had been the village blacksmith. He would have been able to weld the armatures necessary to build on to make these figures with his blacksmith's skills, and it explains his interest in the old ironwork lying around in the loft.

By Sue Terry on Sat Apr 6th 2019, at 8:35 pm

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Simon, please can you provide anymore details?

By Sue Terry on Sat Apr 6th 2019, at 8:38 pm

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