Signpost - Ellingham and Kirby Cane

Near the junction of Church Road and Yarmouth Road is a village sign for Kirby Cane. It was carved by a local person and recently repaired and repainted by Richard Lees and John Reeve. Richard Lees’ background is in wood boatbuilding and John Reeve’s father used to carve village signs in the local area and John has repaired and painted lots of local signs in recent years. 

Richard realised that Ellingham had no sign and wondered if the local school, Ellingham primary school, would like to get involved in deciding what parts of Ellingham’s history and its modern activities should be in a village sign. After a talk to 82 children they produced some 48 pictures of what should be included in their opinion in a village sign.

It included owls, otters, eels, Ellingham Mill, the church, the school, windmills and turbines, the railway, fishing, swans, owls, cranes and kingfishers, and boys fishing amongst many other historical and modern references including the war memorial.

The project was done as a private venture with the school and offered to the parish as the village sign. 
 
The idea was to include as much of the history and ideas that the children suggested. In addition no other Norfolk signs appear to have children in them. There are babies, but not children. So the sign has a boy and girl in it.

The figure of the boy fishing and of the girl with her mother is a stand-alone figures, whilst the rest of the sign is a relief carved into 3 oak planks four inches thick which are glued together edge to edge.