The Wheelwrights Craft

 

The Company is active in the support and development of the wheelwright's craft and a list of practising wheelwrights in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is given below.

As a founding member of the City & Guilds of London Institute, the Company has for more than a century been involved in the training of apprentices. In the fifty years up to the outbreak of the Second World War, the Technical Education Committee of the Livery managed and funded a training programme for wheelwrights at the Carpenters Training School in London.

In 1983 the Company established a Craft Liaison Committee (now called the Craft Committee) to further the activities of the craft on behalf of the Livery. The Committee's main task continues to be the guidance of training throughout the country and in this regard it worked for many years with the Rural Development Commission and subsequently the Countryside Agency at their training school in Salisbury.
 

In 2000 responsibility for the training of wheelwrights was transferred to the Herefordshire College of Technology. Instruction is undertaken by two Liverymen of the Company and details of the course which is recognised to N.V.Q. standards, can be obtained by visiting Herefordshire College of Technology. Please also see the section titled "Other Craft News" above for more information on the course.

The Craft Committee takes an active interest in the progress of apprentices throughout each course. As part of its involvement, the Company organises visits by apprentices to places within London associated with the wheelwrights craft. It is also the practice for the Master to present N.V.Q. certificates and inscribed tankards to successful candidates. The Company was also presented by John Wright on 11 March 1993 with a model wheel made by the wheelwright apprentices at the college:

The Company has a policy of actively promoting the craft of the wheelwright whenever this is possible. Major exhibitions have been held in Windsor Great Park and at the Guildhall in the City of London on the history of the craft together with practical demonstrations of how a wheel is made.

Contact is regularly maintained with working Wheelwrights which includes an annual luncheon hosted by the Master of the Company.

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