Sharpening marks and old churches

click photo to enlarge

On 30th June this year English Heritage published a report on the state of Britain's 14,500 places of worship that are officially "listed" as being of architectural and historical importance. It suggests that "about 90% are in good or fair condition but 10% are potentially in need of urgent major repairs." Given the dwindling congregations, the ever rising cost of maintaining historic buildings, and the tightening of the public purse strings, a lot of effort and ingenuity will have to go into raising the money that must surely be found to keep these important structures standing and open to the public.

On a recent visit to the church of St Mary and St Hardulph at Breedon on the Hill, Leicestershire, I was prompted to reflect on how we treat our churches today compared with the past. This building is famed for its prominent location on top of a hill of oolitic limestone and for its important Anglo-Saxon sculptures. I also like the contrast between the stone of the church and the plentiful eighteenth and nineteenth century slate gravestones. Like many medieval churches it has been knocked about a bit over the centuries, with parts taken down, new bits added, and restorations undertaken. The building as it stands today is a credit to all who have cared for it over the years.

So what prompted my reflection on the care and attitude of different generations to the fabric of the building? Well, the vertical grooves and holes in the stonework of the south porch look very much like those inflicted by people sharpening their metal tools on the side of the building. These may have been men who cut the graveyard grass, though the shapes make me think that it may have been people sharpening arrows when they were practising their archery skills, a not uncommon thing in English graveyards down the centuries. There seems to have been quite a bit of weathering after the holes and grooves were made, so one could reasonably assume that they were made a long time ago. Anyone today seen doing such a thing would be chastised with some force. But in past centuries, when people's perspective was not as long as ours, the church would have seemed a permanent, immutable object, that always had been and always would be, and scraping metal on its stones a small matter.

In the past I've said that clear blue skies are not what I wish for when out and about with my camera, and I was willing clouds to swing round behind the church before I took my photographs here. But it wasn't to be!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1 (Photo 2)
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13mmmm (22mm/44mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6 Shutter Speed: 1/800 (1/640)
ISO: 100 (100)
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV (-0.3EV)
Image Stabilisation: On

The price of stone

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I grew up in the Yorkshire Dales, an area of upland Carboniferous Limestone. Around the small market town where I lived the geological phenomena known as the Craven Faults produced a fractured landscape that, in places, marked the separation of the light grey rock from darker Millstone Grit. The limestone quarry at Giggleswick was in full production, its crushed stone being taken by overhead buckets to wagons at the nearest railway station. Bigger quarries still could be seen up the Ribble Valley near Horton-in-Ribblesdale. However, I discovered as a boy that wherever I walked, whether it was on limestone or Millstone Grit, there were old, small quarries dotted about the landscape where people had cut and broken stone from the plentiful outcrops and cliffs. This had been used to make the drystone field walls, the barns, farmhouses and domestic buildings of the locality. Because they were small they often looked like natural features, and in most cases they blended in with their surroundings very well. This was in strong contrast with the big, commercial quarries that produced aggregate in large quantities and had associated vehicles and industrial plant to facilitate the process. Their impact on the location was (and still is) in the nature of enormous, disfiguring scars.

On a recent visit to Breedon Hill in Leicestershire I was reminded of the quarrying that was familiar to me in my childhood. Though not on the scale of those in Ribblesdale, this limestone quarry is also making a significant and damaging mark on its location which is an area of ancient settlement and the site of an important medieval church. It's ironic that the main product here is a "gold" coloured aggregate that is marketed as suitable for maintaining and enhancing the appearance of historic buildings!

That said, I did find photographic interest in the stone crusher that I could see from the wall at the edge of the churchyard above the quarry. Stone is being delivered to the machine's hopper by the digger at the right of the image, and is then passed though  its bowels and broken into aggregate of different sizes which are deposited in separate piles ready for collection. Looking down on the scene that resembled an alien landscape I reflected that the price of stone is much higher than the cost per tonne to the customer.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 70mm (140mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

England's patchwork quilt

click photo to enlarge

Visitors to England, and particularly to the lowland areas of these islands, frequently comment on the way much of the landscape is parcelled up into fields bounded by hedges. Natives returning from faraway places often only really notice the contribution that the patchwork of fields makes to our environment when they have been absent for some time and have the opportunity to see English farmland with fresh eyes. And in the minds of many - natives and non-natives alike - there is a feeling that this quintessentially English scene is one of long standing: that it has always been thus.

In fact, the hedges and the fields that they enclose are, for the most part (and especially those of the English Midlands) the product of planning and planting that took place only two hundred years ago. At that time, under a legal process known as "enclosure", the common fields shared by multiple farmers were parcelled out to individual landowners who then enclosed them with hedges. In a few areas of the country, such as the South West, small fields with hedges had long been used, but elsewhere they were imposed in the interests of agricultural efficiency. Many saw the enclosure process as a usurping of ancient rights and a re-distribution of land from the poor to the rich: hedges were disliked because they were part of that process. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that the disappearance over the past fifty years (in the interests of agricultural efficiency!) of more than half our hedgerows, is widely lamented.

Today's photograph shows the patchwork effect of the fields near Breedon-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire. Each field is a slightly different colour depending on whether it grows wheat, barley, pasture, hay, oilseed rape etc. The dividing hedges are either neatly cut to a uniform width and height, or left to grow in a more natural way, depending on the owners' predelictions, and may or may not contain trees for similar reasons. The best view of this effect is from an aeroplane, but a prominence that rises above the general area, such as Breedon Hill from where I stood to take this shot, serves almost as well. The distant power station with its cooling tower plumes and man-made cloud is at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in nearby Nottinghamshire, and the large buildings in front of it (and actually some distance away), is East Midlands Airport.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 34mm (68mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On