A HIGH Legh couple with a talent for crafts has donated a yard-long homemade Viking Ship to the Knutsford Heritage Centre.

John Hamden, a retired chartered accountant, and his wife Virginia built the ship to a scale of approximately four feet to the inch, taking more than two months to finish the replica.

The hull timbers were assembled using the same method of construction used by Viking shipbuilders.

John is an experienced modeller of static and radio-controlled ships and boats.

“The most challenging task was planking once the ribs were in place,” he said. “Like the original, the hull is of clinker construction. This means each plank overlaps the one below it.

“The difficulty is that you start off with long straight planks, which have to be carefully fixed in position to form what are very complicated continuous curves.

“The hull has twelve planks on each side. They are virtually horizontal under the central area of the hull and bend with a gradual twist to being nearly vertical at the bow and stern ends. Because of the curves, each plank had to be fastened and clamped in position only a few inches at a time rather than the entire length. The rest of the assembly process was relative easy.”

Mr Harden said that his Virginia was 'delighted' that the assembly process demanded intense concentration and kept him quiet for hours at a time, and often well into the night. In the end, she took pity and volunteered to sew the sail and help with the rigging, which is 'more complicated than it looks'.

“It was a team effort,” he says.

The scale model replicates the Oseberg Viking longship. This was discovered in Oseberg in southern Norway in 1903. It had lain for over a thousand years under a burial mound of blue clay covered with stones and turf.

Excavated in 1904, it was so well preserved by the clay that 95 percent of the original structure survived. The Oseberg ship is believed to be between 50 and 100 years older than other surviving Viking ships. It is on permanent display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.

Val Bryant, heritage centre director and trustee,said:

“Mr and Mrs Harden have made us a magnificent gift. We are enormously grateful for the time, effort and obvious patience that’s been lavished on the model’s construction. It is superb – and a very valuable addition to the Heritage Centre’s collection of artefacts.

“Longships were the most technically advanced ocean-going vessels of their era. They were fundamental to Canute’s invasion and the Viking’s success as raiders and traders.

“The model allows visitors see an accurate three dimensional representation of the real thing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, our new Viking ship exhibit is worth a thousand words more.”