A week today (Friday) Marlborough’s Mayor, Councillor Guy Loosmore, dressed in ceremonial crimson robes, will take off his chain of office and install his successor with the official symbol of a town whose charter dates back to AD1204.
The supreme moment at the traditional annual mayor making ceremony this year will be that Mayor Loosmore will be wearing the newly-created 18 carat gold chain to replace Marlborough’s historic one stolen from the Town Hall last October.
And for his successor as Marlborough’s 519th Mayor, Councillor Marian Hannaford-Dobson, her enthronement will a unique moment too in the town’s history — as the first Mayor to show off in the coming year what has always been described as the finest mayoral chain in Wiltshire.
But when the mayoral pair took a drive to Birmingham on Wednesday to see what progress was being made by the celebrated jewellers Thomas Fattorini, commissioned in January to replicate the stolen chain, they had a dramatic surprise.
Because all they found – and I was with them – was a jigsaw puzzle of endless bits and pieces yet to be assembled into a coherent chain, its 18 elaborate medallions and 24 links yet to be enamelled and adorned with sapphires, amethysts and garnets before being embellished.
And in the workshops of the Fattorini factory, royal warrant holders founded by Italian-speaking immigrant Antonio Fattorini in 1827, a team of 18 specialist men and women were still working on the precious product.
The jewel in Marlborough’s civic crown was far from reaching mayoral chain perfection.
“I’ll drive up here myself and collect it if you don’t deliver it in time,” deputy Mayor Marian politely warned Michael Moore, the company’s ebullient, Irish-born sales manager, who is masterminding the project.
But there was no need to worry, 39-year-old smiling Michael insisted, putting together himself some of the ornate gold parts of the new mayoral chain to show off against life-size photographs of the finished piece laid out on a bench.
“It does look very much like an elaborate Meccano set at the moment,” he admitted, despite an estimated 1,200 man/woman hours being devoted to the project. “But we wouldn’t dare let you down.”
And he told Marlborough News Online: “I am very passionate about this project. It really is a once in a lifetime event for me to produce a mayoral chain of this calibre. I doubt if we shall ever see a commission like this ever again.
“We are both delighted and proud to be involved in recreating a piece of history. It is undoubtedly the pinnacle of my career here.”
Faced with that enthusiasm, it was difficult for Mayor Marian to reject his assurance.
“I shall be extremely honoured to wear the new chain,” she told Marlborough News Online. “I am very excited by the prospect and I am really looking forward to it. From what I can see already, it is going to be a very beautiful thing.”
And the more so as her husband, Councillor Stewart Dobson, is himself a former Mayor of Marlborough, and the couple jointly offered a personal reward of £5,000 in a bid to catch the thieves who entered the Town Hall through an underground passage before breaking down the door of the Mayor’s Parlour.
The chain in fact was given to the then borough of Marlborough in 1911 by six times Mayor Thomas Free to mark the coronation of George V, and on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II the Free family donated a second “day time” chain which Mayor Loosmore wore for Wednesday’s visit to Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter.
“For me this is quite a personal moment having been the Mayor to wear the chain for the last time before it was stolen,” he said. “It proved to be a difficult day for me when I found about the theft. It is something special to be here today.”
He pointed out how the new design, using silver and also white gold to depict Marlborough’s greyhound mascot, has been given “a modern twist” with today’s town crest of Marlborough replacing the old borough crest that was appropriate in 1911.
“It is so important to recognise the past and yet the chain still reflects too what we had before, recognises Marlborough’s past,” he added. “And it is so lovely to be here, to feel the pieces that will go to make up the new chain I shall be the first to wear.”
He and his deputy Marion talked to some of the dedicated staff working on the chain, in particular Steve Heaney, who has been with Fattorini for 17 years, Stuart Goodwin, an on and off member of the team for 30 years, and 23-year-old apprentice Adam Ford, who arrived only last year.
Given the enormous dedication to creating a magical new mayoral chain for Marlborough, it seems the town is enjoying a triumphant bargain by paying a discounted £96,550, the full insurance pay out, for a spectacular new Mayoral chain.
Indeed, Michael Moore winked and jokingly revealed: “It should have cost them £250,000!”
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