BLACKSMITH Will Willson never thought the job would take so long.

The 48-year-old who has operated from a forge at Aiskew for the past seven years has just completed his biggest commission so far, playing a leading part in the first phase of an ambitious park refurbishment in his home town.

Mr Willson watched proudly last month as the first stage of a £3.9m facelift for South Park, Darlington, culminated in the installation of a new set of main gates at the Parkside entrance.

He had originally expected to spend about six weeks making the gates, but, as he was asked to undertake more work on aspects of the park refurbishment, his commitment to the project eventually stretched to nine months, with his assistant, Eric Johnson.

Created in 1853, South Park was the first of its kind in the North-East, being hailed at the time as a "park for all classes", with Gateshead and Middlesbrough following in the next decade.

Mr Willson, self-employed for almost 30 years, brought 120 tonnes of equipment from a previous base in Devon to set up Anvil Engineering, now better known as Aiskew Ironworks, in Sandhill Lane in 1997.

He has fulfilled orders from all over the country and admitted that he preferred contemporary jobs because he could be limited by Victorian style.

He was proud to have been associated with the South Park refurbishment, however, because he learned his trade in Darlington foundries, forges and engineering shops after leaving school.

As well as using traditional methods to replicate the two wrought iron main gates weighing half a tonne each, Mr Willson worked with Lost Art, of Wigan, to restore 12 pairs of other gates around the park and produce 6,000 scrolls for some of the miles of railings.

Mr Willson, who still works with two forge hammers dating from the Fifties, said: "We thought it would be a six-week job to make the main gates but it grew into the biggest job we have ever had, involving nine months of almost continuous work from February to November.

"We didn't have a very good summer this year, but if we had had better weather I think I would have gone mad and would always have been wanting to go out somewhere on my motorbike. It was a monumental job. I thought it was never going to end.

"The main gates were probably the hardest part of the job. Nobody seemed to have a picture of the originals until somebody came up with one black and white photograph. Even then it showed only about a quarter of the gates, without the top part and infill details, but the side gates helped us to piece it all together."

Mr Willson, who has a strong sense of history, and his wife, Kate, painstakingly applied gold leaf as the finishing touches to the main gates.

He said: "I was visiting my aunt in Darlington the other day and I saw the sun glinting on the gold leaf. You wouldn't get an effect like that just by using gold paint."

Soon after he arrived at Aiskew, Mr Willson found himself in great demand as a maker of quoits for the traditional village game but his output has also included gates, railings, garden furniture, replacement gutter brackets for a listed Lake District hotel and a table weighing almost a tonne.

He made a weathervane and copper clock hands for Kiplin Hall, near Scorton; railings for the remodelled main entrance at County Hall, Northallerton, and restored the old North Riding Constabulary sign above the entrance steps to the former Bedale police station on Aiskew Bank.

Mr Willson, whose premises at Thoroughway House could eventually be affected by revived plans for a three-lane motorway between Dishforth and Barton, is looking for a new operational base which will also act as a museum for some of the equipment he has collected over the years.