Wicksteed Rocking Horses

Over the last 18 months I have been tasked with over hauling two original Wicksteed  Rocking horses in two adjacent villages both Merriott and Hinton St George . The First to work on was the one from Merriott and unfortunatley I have no pictures of that one either in progress or finished . A lot of the horses were fixed or welded to prevent them moving for health and safety reasons years ago as a fear of reprisal if a child had an accident . Luckily now with a few modifications and new regulations they are now deemed acceptable as an element of "measured risk" to which children are now to be confronted with .

The second I managed to take plenty of pictures from when we stripped it down on site to the final fitting . During the process we had to strip it down  to remove it from site as it is a very heavy item weighing around 200 kilos plus .

First thing to do was to completely strip the working parts down and shot blast , paint and install new bearings .The whole body was shot blast to remove the Zebra paint effect that was kindly added by a local villager !!

I had to make some repairs to the frame work and the handle on the head due to heavy rust damage .

After it was powder coated using a hard wearing product in the new Wicksteed colours

The Body was remounted with the working mechanism and all of the seats and head .New MDPE seat covers were fitted as the old ones were very tired and cracked .The Brass Wickstead badge including the stamped identification number was polished to show its original origin .

There was originally soft wood timber running boards and mechanism protection boards but we replaced them with Sapelle hard wood as it would far outlast the original material and we also used thicker timber to add strength to the design .

Now this was completed it was ready for fitting and ahead of this we had to fit rubber protection matts around the horse and we used the type that allows grass to grow through apertures to ease the ease the eye and not see a mass of rubber which is so typical of playgrounds . The rubber panels are aproximately one meter square and require twelve mushroom pegs in each and also to be zip tied together to prevent movement . To which we had a surprise visit from the local mole causing us to have to lift a few and re-dress the soil , luckily the groundsman was there and we discussed the continuing problem it may cause .


Because of the design you can not erect the horse as a kit due to the way the working mechanism sits , so when all rebuilt it took four people to left and one person to fit the four bolts necessary to hold it to the mounts .

Once fitted  , we still had to fit the timber work as this needs to be left off to enable fitting and to prevent damage and marking of the timber .

Now with it fitted you can see the timber paneling fitted  , which has three coats of Tung oil  to help protect it , even though Sapelle has very good  qualities similar to Mahogany .

All fixings are stainless steel  to ensure long life . The Stainless plates you can see above the running board are to cover s series of holes in the body which were for some purpose but we could not work out , they do not serve as access to grease nipples as they are below the horse . We decided to cover the holes in the interest of Health and Safety as we would not want some poor little kid to push a finger in to it and possibly loose it should anything happen !! The plates are once again stainless steel to match the fixings .

Showing the Wicksteed badge

This final shots shows the horse completed with a good wipe down and the rubber matting giving a final coating of fine topsoil and seeded to help speed up the process of natural reinstatement .

I hope you have enjoyed reading this and it may bring back some happy thoughts of childhood before HSE . I used to play on the one from Merriott as a child about ........years ago !   And if you are interested in the heritage of the Wicksteed name then please read on . Charles wicksteed was the inspiration of public parks and was the first to build such ..................

The Park's beginnings can be traced back to 1913 when Charles Wicksteed purchased a tract of Northamptonshire meadowland near Kettering with the intention of developing a model village. He wanted to create an open space and safe parkland for local families. Charles Wicksteed also owned an engineering company (Wicksteed Park Leisure) and started to supply park seats and playground equipment to public parks far and wide. This company today still provides this equipment and can be found in many such parks across Europe with some of the products in Wicksteed Park.
The Park's fame spread far and wide and special trains and "Charabancs" brought visitors from an ever-widening area. Wicksteed Park was the first Leisure Park in the UK and has been copied many times since. Upon the death of Charles Wicksteed, the Board of Trustees were determined to continue his good work.