Careful where you tread Hagrid - Hogwarts is made of matchsticks!

A clever muggle has built an unbelievably detailed scale model of Harry Potter's school - using 602,000 matchsticks.

Patrick Acton of Gladbrook, Iowa took more than two years to complete the famous magical school from J.K. Rowling's books - which features all the turrets, walkways and towers seen in the popular film versions.

"I love the books and consider myself a Harry Potter fan," he explains.

Now, the 55-year-old's latest work - his 61st - is a stunning scale model of the Minas Tirith fortified city as seen in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

Pat, who works as a careers advisor at a local community college, began the project in February last year but is taking his time to make sure all SEVEN levels are true to the film version. He is using a small model of the fortress to get the details of J.R.R. Tolkien's creation exactly right.

"The Minas Tirith model will contain hundreds of city buildings," explains Pat. "It will also be topped with the Tree of Gondor and the White Tower of Etchelion."

"The dimensions on it will be roughly 10 feet long and about nine feet wide. The great tower is seven feet tall."

Pat has spent more than 30 years creating amazing sculptures from wooden sticks. His preference for the tiny building materials began when he wanted to take up woodworking but couldn't afford the tools.

After finding a box of wooden kitchen matches at his local store he began to experiment and soon knocked up a church using 500 matchsticks.

Now, because he uses hundreds of thousands of matches, Pat orders them direct from the manufacturers without sulphur heads.

He displays much of his work at the Matchstick Marvels museum in Iowa, although Hogwarts has been magically transported to a museum in Spain.

Acton, who has a very understanding wife called April, always draws his models before getting to work with his matches.

"Some are very formal and might look like an architect's drawing," he explains "Others are just sketches that include a lot of measurements for me to keep track. Some drawings are even less than that."

"This is my therapy," he said. "I deal with people all day, and then I come home and lock myself in my shop."

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