CHURCH WILNE ROTARY CLUB

 Ashby Aero On Monday 2nd October the members of the Rotary Club of Church Wilne welcomed Martin Ashby who gave an insight to his business Ashby Interiors with his talk “Creative use of Aero Parts” The business is split 40/60 white glass lights and aero items. They have around 250 pieces of lights in stock and many are Art Deco which are mainly sold into London but they have recently received orders from Derby which they hope to expand upon in the near future. The business moved into Aerospace three years ago and they take aero salvage and transform them into luxury items such as lighting, mirrors and furniture. Martin spoke about some of the items converted which included items from WW11, the Spitfire, Hurricane Aircraft, Russian Mig fighter plane and Concorde. One recent project was on a Rolls-Royce Dart engine which he polished for 70 hours and it is now in Australia. Other recent successes include the sale of a Rolls-Royce Derwent engine, a Merlin engine which was stripped down into small pieces as a lot of people want a small piece of history, a search light from a wooden fishing boat and a Bren Gun. The business now ships many historical pieces world wide and Martin concluded by saying it is a pleasure to restore, polish and convert so many items. The club’s vote of thanks was given by Steve Street who said “it was a fascinating subject, with many items that we can all remember”