A few evenings ago, as I was driving to a speaking engagement, my route took me past Dowsby church. At around 7pm in the middle of June the sun is low but still bright, and the absence of clouds on this particular day meant that it was modelling the landscape very nicely. Consequently, I pulled over, got out of the car, and took a couple of photographs of the medieval building from the roadside looking across the corner of a field of wheat.
Dowsby is in many respects a very typical English village church setting - quiet, leafy, verdant. Whilst many churches are in the centre of their settlements frequently they are at the edge, as in this case. Dowsby itself is no more than a handful of houses strung out around the junctions where a couple of side roads meet a main road. However, nearby is the old Dowsby Hall, and though it is later than the church, its wealth and influence will have exerted a pull on the church for several centuries. The churchyard at Dowsby is relatively small, as befits a building serving a small village and some farms. However, it does support a few trees as most English churchyards manage to do. The path through the churchyard is across the grass: presumably the congregation is so small that the wear of their passing feet has never necessitated the laying of something more permanent. Having said that, as the recent gravestones in this image from Google Street View show, the graveyard continues to accept the deceased.
photograph and text (c) T. Boughen
Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On
