click photo to enlarge
Take down the television aerials and burglar alarm boxes, mask the electric door-bells, and you need to do very little else to produce a street where you could film the latest Jane Austen adaptation. Barn Hill in Stamford, Lincolnshire is one of those places that film producers and directors value for the way it has changed so little down the centuries. When I looked at this view my eye saw no building that appeared to be of a later date than the first quarter of the nineteenth century. However, knowing that provincial houses often lagged metropolitan styles by a decade or three, I decided to consult a database of listed buildings to see if my judgement was accurate.The nearest house on the right with a ground floor and first floor bay is C17 and mid-C18. The house with the green door is similar, though the porch and ground floor bay is thought to be mid-C19 (bah!). The house with the pedimented door and arches over the windows to the left used to be two houses but is now one, and dates from the C17 and late-C18. The next house with the two-storey bow and the open-work Chinoiserie porch is quite a bit earlier than I thought: I'd have said 1810, but apparently it is mid-C18. On the left is a fine, obviously C18 town house, with one of the rainwater heads giving its age away - 1740. The two church spires are, of course medieval. In 1087 Stamford had four churches: by the end of the Middle Ages it had fourteen of which five remain complete, and two in fragments.
I've photographed Barn Hill before. That image was taken from near the building with the Chinoiserie porch. Scouting for film locations is a branch of film production that Google Street View must have made so much easier. With that thought in mind, click here to explore the length of Barn Hill for yourself.
photograph and text (c) T. Boughen
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On
