You bunch of dummies! Woman reveals 15,000-strong assortment of mannequins which have been featured alongside stars Lady Gaga and Mika
A self-confessed ‘bonkers’ mannequin fan has revealed the 15,000-strong collection of dummies she keeps at a former airfield.
Roz Edwards, 52, has accumulated the spooky hoard after turning her fascination for such figurines into a thriving private business loaning them out.
At a disused RAF station in Fulbeck, near Grantham, Lincolnshire, she has been putting together the massive pile for 17 years now.
‘I always say I was abducted by mannequins’, she told the BBC.
The eerie collection has attracted celebrity attention and connections – with Roz’s models appearing alongside Lady Gaga at Glastonbury and in a music video by Mika.
Roz Edwards has an estimated 15,000 mannequins at a former airfield in Lincolnshire
She has been running the macabre attraction a disused RAF station in Fulbeck, near Grantham, for the past 17 years
She told the BBC: ‘I always say I was abducted by mannequins’
It all started in 2007, when she lived in a council house in Newark and decided to follow up her long-standing fascination with mannequins by putting them at the centre of her own new business.
Being a retail consultant, she noticed no matter the shop there was always one common factor, the figures on which clothes were displayed.
Few other people seemed to pay attention to them, however she found the many ways which they would be arranged fascinating.
It was then that she began to think about starting a business with such figures and, after buying her first few, she set up a website offering to hire them out.
Within 24 hours she said she was getting calls but this was when she realised she did not yet have enough to fulfill all the orders.
Although the business began at her home, it could not stay there as demand grew – along with her collection – and space began to be tight.
She said: ‘The house just started filling up and up with mannequins. The children were complaining that they couldn’t see the TV anymore as they were in the way.’
The firm continued to thrive, prompting her to move to a warehouse operation – and in 2012 she bought a site at the former RAF Fulbeck which her business now calls home.
Roz Edwards launched her mannequin firm in 2007 when living in Newark, Nottinghamshire
The former retail consultant had long had a fascination with mannequins
She bought in 2012 the former RAF Fulbeck near Grantham which her business now calls home
The base now features a salvage yard of shop dummies – numbering as many as 15,000
Roz Edwards met her partner Tim through his interest in one of her mannequin events
She said: ‘Sometimes I walk around and wonder, what am I doing?
‘Then I realise someone will come here and they’ll love it. I’ll be the bonkers mannequin lady – I don’t mind at all.’
Roz also makes her own horror movies, and credits her creativity to her award-winning horror film-maker father who was also a carpenter.
She said: ‘When I first started fixing the mannequins, it was like working with wood. Dad loved this place, he came and helped me with things.’
Unfortunately her father, who had dementia, died in 2013, before she started making the movies and she says she wishes he could have seen what she had achieved.
Some 20 of her mannequins were used by Lady Gaga when she performed at Worthy Farm for the Glastonbury Festival in 2009, with Roz recalling: ‘She snogged one.’
She also provided some for pop singer Mika’s 2009 music video, I See You, providing an apparent crowd sitting in front of him.
Roz Edwards says she does not mind being seen as ‘the bonkers mannequin lady’
Her company hires out mannequins – having found an instant demand when setting up
Roz also makes her own horror movies, and credits her creativity to her award-winning horror film-maker father who was also a carpenter
She said: ‘When I first started fixing the mannequins, it was like working with wood. Dad loved this place, he came and helped me with things’
Roz has told the BBC: ‘I always say I was abducted by mannequins’
And her love for the mannequin business has also brought about real-life romance when she met her partner Tim after advertising an event at Mannakin Hall on social media.
She said: ‘Loads of people got in touch, but Tim, he just kept messaging me.
‘The man of my dreams arrived in my yard, I didn’t have to go anywhere.
‘It’s a match made in mannequin heaven.’
