A RETIRED teacher has swapped his text books for a tube of glue to carve out a model role for himself.

Former supply teacher, John Whittaker, of Quaker Lane, Darwen, gave up teaching model pupils in 1992 to teach himself the art of model making.

And the 55-year-old has got it off to a fine art with a stunning miniature version of Darwen's Library Theatre.

Between last October and January, John spent 900 hours painstakingly piecing together his scaled down version of the town centre landmark in his home studio.

Measuring 35 by 20 inches, the miniature library comprises wood, plastic and metal and needed 30 tubes of glue. But it was another sticky moment which prompted the ex-craft and design teacher to switch his chisel and mallet for a paintbrush and scalpel.

John said: "I gave up my job on doctor's orders because I was having heart trouble and I thought it would be nice to take up modelling.

"It's very time consuming but rewarding because I get lots of people stopping me in the streets saying how much they like the miniature library."

Now the spectacular work of art takes pride of place in the Library Theatre foyer, under the watchful eyes of adoring librarians and book borrowers.

Senior librarian, Stella Barclay, said: "Everyone stops in their tracks to take a look at it. The attention to detail is remarkable, there's even bookshelves and staircases inside."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.