Last updated at 12:34, Friday, 10 October 2008

Not everyone gets the chance to build a Viking longship these days. Admittedly, not many would want to, but Alister Neville jumped at the chance.

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It is ‘moored’ in the playground of a village primary school near Wigton. The youngsters, who ‘helped’ chip away at the figurehead and designed the shields that line both sides, love it.

With typical shyness, Alister unveiled it last week.

It is just the latest in a long and colourful line of work that decorates school yards, park areas, private gardens and even cemeteries across and beyond Cumbria.

He has created animal carvings and a carved tree at Thomlinson Junior School, Wigton; the Lanercost school cross; chunky, bendy, rustic seats at Talkin Tarn; memorial seats for the dearly departed; friendship benches for primary school youngsters; a fell pony carved into a tree in the Carlisle Crematorium woodland burial area and more totem poles than you can, er, shake a stick at, including one at Phoenix Park, Cleator Moor.

You’ve probably seen some of his artwork without realising who was responsible. His works don’t carry a marker, or plaque.

He’s proud of his work, but it’s just not in his nature to shout about it.

Alister is welcoming at his cottage home in Denton, out in the wind-whipped wilds near the Northumberland border.

A quietly-spoken man of just enough words to get his message across, he seems unsure about talking about himself.

His scuffed fingers look rough enough to use as files and are used to run through his long wiry hair as he mulls over his answers.

Before we settle down, we walk across the road to a patch of land by the railway line with a neat lawned area, overgrown vegetable beds and what look like two vandalised benches.

“I’ve just started them for some people in Cheshire,” he explains.

“I made some for Talkin Tarn, people come up visiting, ask who made them and they get my name and track me down.”

At the moment, much of his work is done in the open air and it’s no good when it rains. He has plans to build a workshop and garage over the next year.

Back in the house he shares with partner and landscape gardener Fiona Bullock and their five-year-old daughter Kate, he digs out a well-thumbed portfolio of his work.

The first photo dates back to 1995 and shows children at Castle Carrock Primary School hopping round a maypole made of brightly-coloured birds, bees, insects and flowers.

“I was trying to make a living and build up a portfolio and I asked the school if I could make them something,” he explained.

The school was so impressed with the maypole that it asked him back to create a wooden mural for the outside wall.

That was the start and he has hardly had the spare time since then to look back.

“I was garden landscaping and making sculptures to go in them and it gradually built up so that I got rid of mowing lawns and now I do very little landscaping.”

He is in almost constant demand now, with work for schools, local authorities and for private homes.

“Often you get people asking for something to be made from a tree that has fallen or been blown down in the wind.

“I recently had a commission from someone whose 400-year-old yew tree had blown down.

“Rather than burn it, they used some of it for floorboards and I made a garden trellis from its branches.”

There is some family history of working in wood – his grandfather lived in Whitstable where he made boats.

Born in Whitstable, his family moved up to Durham in the early 1980s and Alister went to Carlisle Art College then studied fine art in Sunderland.

He worked in metal, but when he got a job working at the theatre in Grizedale, he met artists who worked in wood which turned his head. He’s happy to work with almost any wood, though it’s mainly oak at the end of his chisel these days.

“People want things to last,” he says.

I’d expected Alister’s home – or his garden at least – to be a showcase for his work.

But the only item I can find is a well-weathered 2ft-high owl tucked next to a hedge.

“I’ve sold them all,” he grins, almost apologetically.

“That was a present to Fiona.”

He obviously enjoys working with schools and explaining to youngsters what he does and how he does it.

But dealing with them can be prickly: “In junior schools they are happy with a collaborative project, but with secondary school pupils it has got to be their project and they want more input.

The magnificent 20ft-long longship at Ireby was funded under the Bassenthwaite Reflections scheme.

Now that he has completed that and made a big green dragon, the Gruffalo figures and assorted owls, birds bees, hedgehogs, I wonder if there’s anything left that he’d really like to make?

“I’d like to make more figurative things, some Roman soldiers as we’re close to Birdoswald.

“After being asked to do the Viking ship, I’d like to do more ship’s figureheads.”

But after he finishes his benches for the lady in Cheshire, he will be in Rickerby Park, sculpting a dead tree into an otter.

“I try to make my things fit the land and the people who live there and base the designs on the nature or the history.”

And after producing so many totem poles, benches and tree carvings, is it still as enjoyable?

“You do get the satisfaction of making something that people enjoy.

“You have come in and made something individual that maybe means something to the kids because they have taken part.”

First published at 11:48, Friday, 10 October 2008
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk