History came alive when the Battle of Hastings relocated to Shoebury High School.

The massed model armies of the Normans and Saxons delighted spectators and won gasps of admiration from pupils at the Caulfield Road school.

It was all the handiwork of caretaker Colin Glasscock, who took six months to create the scaled down replica, around 10ft by 8ft.

Colin, 57, of Caulfield Road, said: "It's one of my hobbies. I went to Hastings about a year ago and I saw a model of the battlefield.

"I thought I could do it better so I thought I'd do one myself. It so happened that the history department at the school were doing the Normans at the same time.

"They have brought different classes to see it and one of the teachers has videoed it with a sound track.

"One teacher said they were all talking about it so much it was a job to get them on to anything else."

Mr Glasscock, who made a previous model of Custer's last stand, belongs to an American Civil War society and also a war games club, but devised the Battle of Hastings replica on his own.

He said: "There were about 14,000 at the battle and I painted one in ten, that's around seven a day to do 1,400."

Getting ready for battle - Colin Glasscock with some of the 1,400 model soldiers that helped him re-enact the Battle of Hastings

Picture: ROBIN WOOSEY

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.