The build up to Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for William Barsley. I first noticed his work in the Parliament Shop, of all places. Sandwiched between stuffed toys, rubber ducks in the shape of Big Ben, and other such mass-produced gifts were his delicate, intricately crafted wooden angels. William specialises in bespoke woodcarving and creates unique scale replicas of the 14th-century angels that sit high in the hammerbeam roof of Westminster Hall — the oldest part of the Palace of Westminster.
The 26 angels have seen it all, Westminster Hall having played a central role in Britain's history. They’ve watched over the trial of Guy Fawkes, the crowning of Henry IV and the lying in state of Elizabeth II. They’ve welcomed Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. William’s replicas are so beloved that gardening superstar Alan Titchmarsh has two of them in his house. But the carver started off in an office job, at the UN in Rome, no less, and only switched to carving full-time after taking a course at the City & Guilds of London Art School.
Barack Obama addressing the members of Parliament in Westminster Hall in 2011.
A close up of one of William's angel sculptures.
After that he went straight on to Westminster Hall, for an 18-month project to help restore the hammerbeam roof in 2018. ‘It was great and unbelievable,’ he recalls. ‘The angels are huge, and the stuff they’ve seen is just mind blowing, especially as it’s a very unassuming building from the outside. I didn’t really look back.’
As the days went by, his obsession with the angels grew. They had to work at night, so as to not interrupt the daily goings on of Parliament. With head torches and hazmat suits, 40ft up among the trusses, William and the team worked painstakingly in sweltering heat and freezing cold, as the scaffolding swung perilously with each sharp movement they made. ‘We were doing indents and repairs in sections, but often they were just elements of the angel. I really wanted to carve the whole angel, because — how amazing? I'm a carver. How did they do it?’ William would go into work early with a sketchbook to capture the 8ft-long angels as best he could. ‘I got really geeky,’ he confesses. ‘I started modelling it in a little wax model, so that it wouldn't dry out like today. And then there's a certain angel in there, which is the only one that's quite smiley, and I quite liked that. So I designed it off a specific angel.’
As the project was coming to an end, William approached the shop with his idea and they were impressed. ‘The fact that they were willing to go for that was quite cool,’ he says. On the launch day of the angels in the shop, Elizabeth II died. ‘It came at a really interesting time for the country, to understand what the angels were.’
The hammerbeam roof of Westminster Hall.
William at work.
Working on the angels ‘takes me back to working in the hall,’ William says. ‘I could literally close my eyes and make them now, because I've done so many. But each one is different when I carve it, depending on what mood I’m in, how I'm feeling and how my energy is, so that's quite nice.’
William also takes on private commissions, with a toilet seat being the weirdest thing he’s ever carved. ‘That was as a joke wedding present. There was really nice lettering on the lid.' He never carves the likenesses of people’s pets, ‘because trying to get it to look like their exact pet is very tricky’. He also does restoration and conservation projects, heraldry, and runs carving courses at his new south Devon studio, The Orchard Carving Studio. ‘I don’t think it’s well known as a career,’ he says of his profession, ‘but saying that, we are in a bit of an age of a renaissance. If you look at the amount of craft on TV — The Repair Shop and all the sewing shows, there are now a lot of role models for people to look at.’ He hopes his courses at the studio will help raise awareness of the heritage craft and get more people involved in his onetime hobby that went on to become a beloved career.
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