Blog written by: Fabian Musto | Written on: Saturday 4th March - Sunday 5th March 2023
photograph: Parkin-on-the-Hill from the Musto Bros. House garden, Friday 4th March 2022, 18:08
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Introduction: I have been building structures on Roblox Studio since June 2020, when I began to construct blocks and cylinders to form structures, instead of modifying models from the Roblox Studio toolbox. This is documented in Marcleston - June 2020 (gwr517class.wixsite.com) and these buildings can be found in Marcleston, which is the predecessor to Parkin-on-the-Hill. https://www.roblox.com/games/5215346378/Marcleston-WIP/ In mid February 2022, I lost my ambition to finish Marcleston since it suffered many ups and downs in its history, which made me uncomfortable to work on it, and the several buildings resulted the game to lag. (photograph: Marcleston from St. Peter church bell tower Sunday 2nd January 2022, 14:42)
3rd March: After weeks of thinking to create a new settlement (in respect to Marcleston), I decided to construct a village on a new baseplate at 10:45am. The name Parkin-on-the-Hill takes its name from the late Eric Parkin (1924-2020), an English pianist remembered for his recorded performances of classical and twentieth-century popular music. I listened to Parkin's piano performances on Chandos Records while building these structures in March, and this encouraged my motivation to accomplish my goals, from completing a building to being satisfied with the end result.
While thinking of how to alter the baseplate, I set it as the knoll (small hill) in the village, and the first structure in the game was a road (Church Lane). The foundation of the parish church was built to the west of that road, and the photographs around this text were the first screenshots of this village. (above: 12:30, left: 12:44). I added a dummy for precise measurements of my buildings, a technique I never applied to all of my buildings in Marcleston (June 2020-February 2022)!
The photograph to the right (15:33), taken three hours after the aforementioned screenshots, shows that I built the ceiling of the nave and chancel prior to applying the roof over them. Note the steps leading to the church grounds, with inclusion of accessibility (wheelchair ramps); the car park to the east accommodates more vehicles compared to the narrow car parks built in Marcleston.
The church building took six hours to build, and as seen in this screenshot (19:19), the building appears to be completed; I took several screenshots during 19:19-22 which supports this. This is based on St. Mary church in Great Washbourne, Gloucestershire, England, although my interpretation of it appears to be extensive! The structure supporting the weathervane is the basis for several golden lamps scattered in the village.*1 I returned to take more screenshots of the church in the Roblox Player at 19:49, because all of the screenshots up to this point were taken in Roblox Studio. The photograph below shows the completed interior at 19:51, with the exception of the carpet.
The west wall of the chancel arch will be fronted with the Parkin coat of arms in the future, and I may add a rood screen and loft to celebrate the one year anniversary of this game. The font, pipe organ and lectern can be briefly seen in this screenshot, and the pulpit and carpet were constructed a day later.
Although the basis of Parkin parish church is based on a Cotswold church, it is also an improved rendition of St. Peter church in Marcleston. The trees in the churchyard were added during late March 2022, and these screenshots on 3rd March show that I made progress on the church building, Church Road car park, street lamps and church foundation.
4th March: This day marked the addition of four buildings to Parkin-on-the-Hill, although three of them were transferred from Marcleston (two of which were modified). The building seen to the right, the Musto Bros. House, were the first houses built in Parkin, situated southeast from the church. These terraced houses were based on a farmhouse in Sutton St. Nicholas, Herefordshire (England) which is southeast from St. Nicholas parish church.
The Musto Bros. House was the third structure built in Parkin, but the second structure added to the game was Church House, built in Marcleston on Monday 20th September 2021. The interior of this structure is a typical example of my bad measurements in Marcleston, and I did not alter the structure on the day I transferred it to Parkin-on-the-Hill. This is based on Church House in Ledbury, Herefordshire, and was originally adjacent to St. Michael parish church in Marcleston, which was also based on a Ledbury building; St. Michael parish church.
The fourth building in Parkin-on-the-Hill is the Church Hall, situated east from the church. This was built in Marcleston on Friday 2nd October 2020, and this is an original design by me. There were minor alterations to this building on its arrival to Parkin, and this included the addition of keystones to the windows and ceiling. The fifth building added
to Parkin-on-the-Hill was the Vicarage, the first building in Parkin to have dormers on the roof. Unlike the Church Hall, this building went through a major upgrade, and was built in Marcleston on Friday 18th September 2020. The windows were altered, and chimneys, keystones to the windows and steps added.
The buildings added to Parkin on this day were built during the morning and afternoon. If my memory serves me right, the Musto Bros. House was built from 11am to 2pm. My brother Dylan contributed to this structure, as he added the water fountain in the back garden (screenshot: 22:22).
The church interior was completed after I added the four buildings to Parkin, and I built the pulpit and carpet from nave to chancel. The church has not been altered since, because I grouped all the fixtures and fittings as a Roblox model on this day. The only change is the removal of the pipe organ, because the sound of the organ did not work in game.
19th March: I took a two week break from Parkin at this point, because I was working on the Final Major Project for my second year on the Arts and Design course at Arts College. The village hall and railway station were built on this day (Saturday), and the hall is the first building in Parkin to have windows that people can look out from (instead of decals). The screenshot to the left was taken at 12:54.
Two minutes later, I took this screenshot that shows the unfinished railway station, although the railway line is evident with two Thomas the Tank locomotives on them! The road bridge in the distance, Station Road Bridge, was built from a design in Marcleston in September 2021. The station buildings were built in the afternoon (from 1pm to 3pm), and I returned to take screenshots at 15:58.
The buildings are an original design, but the addition of cedar trees on the embankment are based on the trees at Ballingham railway station, Herefordshire, which was open on the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway from 1908 to 1964. The railway footbridge at the station was added the next day.
In the grounds of the village hall is a playground, and west from the building is a bronze model of Parkin-on-the-Hill. This was awarded by Rhys Heritage Trust at 15:35, a fictional heritage company by me that was also in Marcleston. This model is based on the bronze model of Marcleston, which celebrated 1,010 visits from Sunday 21st June 2021 to Sunday 3rd October 2021. The model at Parkin shows the first seven buildings in Parkin-on-the-Hill.
The village hall was the second building in Parkin to have a completed interior, with tables and chairs built by me in 2020/21, although I modified them with a dummy because I originally built these without precise measurements. The screenshot to the right (Sunday 1st May 2022, 21:46) shows me and my brother Dylan talking to our high school friend Iwan, and behind him is a bouncy castle, which I found on the Roblox toolbox and modified it.
The railway station was the first site in Parkin to have trees, and my brother Dylan thought of adding trees and shrubs in the garden at the Musto Bros. House. The screenshot to the right shows the garden at 21:48, and even to this day, this is my favourite garden in Parkin-on-the-Hill! This inspired me to add trees around the village to improve the scenery.
20th March: The railway footbridge at the station took me a few hours to build, and this is based on the Bewdley station footbridge, Worcestershire, which is on the heritage Severn Valley Railway. This is a favourite structure of mine in Parkin, because it took me a lot of effort to build the angles of the canopy.
I never took a screenshot of the footbridge until Saturday 29th October 2022 (22:32), seen to the top-right from this text. This shows the footbridge from the football pitch car park, which might have been built on 19th or 20th March. I also never took a screenshot of the football pitch until recently, and the screenshot to the right was taken while writing this text today at 13:17! This might be because the football pitch is on a slope, and the football glitches a lot.
3rd April: The settlement turned a month old on this day, and I decided to build two/three buildings to celebrate it. The building northeast from the church, Mayerl House, is based on a building in the Cotswolds near Broadway, Worcestershire. This is named after Billy Mayerl, an English pianist and composer whose transcriptions of popular music was recorded by Eric Parkin for Chandos in 1997.
The screenshots on this day only show Mayerl House and terraced houses; the latter is known as School Cottages, which takes its name from the fictional old school east from the cottages (this was not built until February 2023). These were also based on buildings in the Cotswolds, but my memory does not remember which buildings I based them on. The small car park for the cottages may be improved in the future.
The third building built on this day appeared on photographs from May 2022 onwards, but I did not photograph the façade until today at 13:30. This is known as Ireland House, which takes its name from the English composer John Ireland. He met Eric Parkin in the early 1950s, and Ireland encouraged him to play the Ireland Piano Concerto at the BBC Proms in September 1953, with Malcolm Sargent conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Parkin recorded many Ireland compositions on LP and CD in tribute to John Ireland, who lived from 1879 to 1962.
BASIS OF BUILDINGS:
Parish Church: St. Mary church, Great Washbourne (photograph - Philip Pankhurst, 26th July 2018)
Church House: Church House, Ledbury (photograph by Michael Garlick, 17th June 2017)
Musto Bros. House: Pantall's Farmhouse, Sutton St. Nicholas (photograph by me, 20th July 2018)
Village Hall: Village Hall, Staunton-on-Arrow, Herefordshire (photograph by me, 12th May 2018)
Railway Station: Railway Station, Ballingham (photograph by Ben Brooksbank, 1st May 1961)
Station Footbridge: Station Footbridge, Bewdley (photograph - Philip Pankhurst 20th July 2016)
Mayerl House: North Farmcote, Gloucestershire (photograph - Cotswold Farmstay, Wordpress)
Conclusion: This journey down memory lane has been nostalgic, and it was fun telling my stories on how I built these first buildings in Parkin-on-the-Hill. I always look back on these to take inspiration, such as the parish church, Musto Bros. House and Mayerl House. The area around the parish church has nearly remained the same since I completed the buildings north from the church in April 2022. Stay tuned for my next blog, where I will look at the buildings constructed in Parkin-on-the-Hill on 2nd May 2022.. the addition of fourteen buildings!*2
photograph: Parkin-on-the-Hill from the roof of Ireland House, Friday 9th September 2022, 20:33
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"Parkin-on-the-Hill - early 2022" by Fabian Musto
Written on Saturday 4th March 2023, 22:55 / 10:55pm - 23:45 / 11:45pm.*1
Sunday 5th March 2023, 12:16 / 12:16am - 14:10 / 2:10pm. *2
TR3X PR0DUCTI0NS