Rectory Nurseries and DIYKevin Duffy (b. 1945)

Kevin Duffy runs a garden center in the Lancashire area of the United Kingdom that has become the site of his art environment. A sign reading “Welcome to Rectory Nurseries and DIY as seen on BBC TV” encourages visitors to enter.

After leaving school at age 15, Duffy took a job in the cotton mills, where he worked until employment in that industry declined and he had to look for other activities to earn his living. For a while he and his wife acted as a musical duo in bars, and he occasionally sold plants that he cultivated in his private garden. This developed into a commercial garden center, located on Rectory Road in Wigan.

Around 1980, Duffy began ornamenting the property with concrete and a variety of recycled and donated materials. These bas-relief structures, which stretch along a wall like stage decorations, are reminiscent of Tudor style architecture.

Later he began making three-dimensional free-standing structures as well. Included is a chapel with an altar and such interior decorations as religious icons and small sculptures of angels. Visitors may enter the chapel and, if they wish, light a candle. Duffy turns donations over to local charitable organisations.

Since 2009 Duffy has created several sculptures from reinforced cement, and although most of them are fantasy or fictional characters, there is also a statue of an angel.

Over the many years of construction the site has grown significantly, and now appears as a fantasy world in stone, representing England as one can imagine it was in former times.

~Henk van Es

concrete, recycled materials

Rectory Rd, WN4 0QD gb
Latitude/Longitude: 53.4972054 / -2.6667421

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