Harry Blondell at home in Austin Village. Photographed November 2017 by Stephen Burke.

Harry Blondell at home in Austin Village. Photographed November 2017 by Stephen Burke.

Harry Blondell

Harry has lived in the village since 2001. He shared the process of building a scale replica model of an Austin Village bungalow, as it would have appeared in 1917. 


"I retired in ‘98 and we moved here in 2001. There was plenty to do, I done it all through like, that took took two or three years by the time I’d finished the house and garden, got everything how we wanted it. I was at a loss then, I can’t sit around not doing anything. I’m not a television person, so I thought, I’ll have to find something to do. 

I don’t know what actually made me do it, or think of doing it. I was in the shed one day, and I was messing about, I’d got my wood and all that in there. And I thought, I wonder if I could. Anyhow, it went from there and I started making it from scratch. I’d got one of the old books with the measurements and the plans of the original thing and I started, it snowballed then. As things went on, I got different ideas of how to do it. It took about eighteen months, two years to do it.”