Enclosed panel

Whilst starting the designs for the wall hanging, I have completed my enclosed panel.
The title is "Cherry Orchard" . It tells the story of the Maharajah's well and Cherry Orchard which is in a village called Stoke Row in Oxfordshire.

It is the story of a friendship between two wealthy men who used their wealth to benefit others. It tells of a time when England and India were linked by the British Empire, in a way which we may find difficult to understand today. The well and orchard were a present to the village from the Maharajah of Benares in 1863, as at that time there was very little water available above ground in the area.

The cherry orchard was to enable the villagers to earn money from the fruit. The gift echoed that by his friend, Edward Anderton Reid, a gentleman from Stoke Row, who gave a well and mango grove to a village in India. Nowadays the well remains in all its Indian splendour, inconguous in the English countryside where it is set, but the cherry orchard, which is common land, is now more like a field.