New uses for old parkland

click photo to enlarge
Recently, after spending several days in the Yorkshire Dales, we stopped off on the way home at Brodsworth Hall near Doncaster. We have visited this English Heritage-owned country house before but never in summer and we thought that a stroll round the formal gardens with its fine statues, and a second look inside the Victorian mansion would be a pleasant break from driving, with good opportunities for photography. How wrong we were.

What had escaped our notice was that the period of our visit coincided with a fortnight during which a film was being shot at the property. Consequently large vans, cars, catering trucks, lighting rigs and the rest littered the exterior of the building. Photographs of the house were next to impossible as were shots of the garden with the house as the backdrop. To make matters worse the cold spring had resulted in much of the colour that we might expect to see in the gardens at this time of year being absent. Green with the odd dash of blue and a few sporadic patches of other hues was the best on offer. It was very disappointing. We are members of English Heritage so we paid no extra entry fee. What surprised me, however, was that there was still a charge (albeit reduced) for entry to the gardens for non-members. It seemed a bit much given the disruption.

But all was not lost. As we left by the main drive we passed a field that had been sown with oilseed rape and that now had a fine flush of poppies too. Looking across the crops it was obvious from the splendid trees dotted about the field that it had originally been the parkland pasture that surrounded the country house. The trees looked odd rising out of the sea of rape and poppies, no trunks visible, like a regatta of yachts on a calm swell. It looked like the best photographic opportunity of the afternoon so I pulled into a passing place and took the shot shown above.

And the film? Apparently it was "The Thirteenth Tale", a dramatisation of a Gothic novel by Diane Setterfield, starring Sophie Turner and Vanessa Redgrave, that will be shown on BBC2 TV as part of its Christmas offering in December 2013.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13.1mm (35mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The tambourinist

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According to my edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the word violinist (like the word violist for a viola player) is first recorded c.1670. Cellist however, first appears quite a bit later, in 1888, though the currently much less used violoncellist is recorded earlier, in 1835. I delved into the etymology of these words when I came to caption today's photograph. How does one describe someone who plays a tambourine? A trumpet player is a trumpeter not a trumpetist, though someone who plays a trombone is a trombonist. By association I made a stab at tambourinist, then checked to see if that was the word. The OED does list it with an earliest recorded use in Webster's Dictionary of 1961 and subsequent examples of tambourinist cited from 1970, 1971 and 1983. This struck me as a very late coining of the word given that the earliest recorded use of tambourine dates from 1579.

The tambourinist in the photograph can be seen in the gardens of Brodsworth Hall, South Yorkshire, one of the most complete Victorian stately homes. This figure is one of a number of statues bought in 1866 by Charles Sabine Augustus Thellusson for his newly built hall, many supplied by the Italian sculptor, Chevalier Casentini, who may have been responsible for this example.

It's not difficult to photograph a statue or piece of sculpture in context, and just as easy to select an interesting detail. What is harder is to make a satisfactory photograph comprising more than a representation of the work. My attempt at that here involved using a dark background of conifers together with a tree in autumnal colours, and positioning the sculpture relative to those so that colour and contrast worked together to make a bold image.

For more photographs of this location see these general views, this garden statue and topiary, and this garden building.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A Victorian garden

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There's small wonder that when children go into a public playground one of the first things they head for is the see-saw ( that is if "health and safety" hasn't banned it.) It seems that the human psyche just loves to go first this way, then that. Yesterday lending was good: today it's bad. Bust inevitably follows boom, and the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

This see-sawing (or perhaps it's a swinging motion, and I chose the wrong piece of equipment for my metaphor) affects gardening just as much as international finance, the length of skirts, or the nutritional value, or otherwise, of the humble egg. England's great contribution to gardening - the landscape garden -was triumphant in the eighteenth century. Capability Brown, Humphrey Repton, and their followers recast the gardens and parks of the well-to-do to look like the vision of "wild nature tamed" as seen in the paintings of Claude. Romantic ruins, serpentine paths, "eye-catcher" follies, asymmetric clumps of trees and shrubs all contributed to the look. However, by the 1830s people had become tired of this, and the pendulum (to introduce a third metaphor!) swung back to the very formality that the landscapists had sought to banish. The gardens of Italy during the Renaissance, with their rectangular, geometric forms, prominent fountains, statues, axial layouts, tall conifers contrasting with tidy, cut shrubs, were the inspiration for this new direction. That this recreation wouldn't have been recognised by either an ancient Roman or a later Italian was of no consequence: even parterres made a comeback, and newly imported exotica like the monkey puzzle tree were included in this heady mix.

Today's photographs show something of this style of garden at Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, in the month of February. The two views each show a part of the same area, the first illustrating the favoured axial symmetry, here lined up on the centre of the west facade, and the second the degree of "close control" that such gardens exhibit: not so much nature tamed, as nature caught, caged, muzzled and trimmed like a pampered poodle!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Second image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 48mm (96mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Classicism and topiary

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The poet and atheist, Andrew Motion, has called for pupils in English schools to be taught more about the Bible. He is concerned that many students arrive at university ignorant of the text that underpins much of English literature. I have sympathy with his arguments, but I'm not sure how it can be done. In the past, and in my education, pupils learned about the Bible through the Christian worship and religious education that were features of almost all English schools. These are still, nominally, compulsory in schools, but the amount of time devoted to them has declined, and the almost exclusive focus on Christianity has been replaced by shallower study of more religions, for reasons that are certainly defensible.

Similar arguments could be advanced in support of teaching pupils about classical civilization, including Greek and Roman mythology. In fact, in a largely secular society, it is arguable that the legacy of the ancients remains almost as pervasive as that of Christianity, yet general knowledge of it is fast disappearing. But here too I struggle to think how one would achieve a wider understanding of the classical foundations of western society. Yet such knowledge was, for centuries, a cornerstone of education: the trivium and quadrivium grew out of it, and through the Great Books programme a number of American universities have more recently sought to use the seminal classical texts (along with the major works of later centuries) as the basis for their academic curriculum.

From the allusions to classical mythology that pepper poetry and prose, the Orders of Architecture and their associated ornament that grace our cities, and the etymology of a large portion of the words of the English language, the influence of Greece and Rome remains strong, and a knowledge of classical culture enriches one's day to day experience of the world. On a recent walk through the gardens of Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, I came across a number of classical statues set among the gardens and glades. They were largely of a general nature rather than specific, recognisable characters from the past. However, most displayed the contraposto stance derived from the ideal of beauty that descended from the ancient world, through the Renaissance and down to the nineteenth century from when these statues date. One held the mask of Janus, and another looked the model of sobriety in a toga, the badge of Roman citizenship. Such figures became traditional in English gardens from the 1700s onwards, and apart from providing focal points among the planting, served to display, on the part of of the Victorian owners, an image of learning. My photograph shows one such statue apparently passing purposefully through the topiary.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/120
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The Target House

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So, are the Morris dancers of England an endangered species or not? A few weeks ago a newspaper article suggested as much. It sparked a flurry of investigative journalism by other newspapers, radio and TV, and reporters found themselves getting to grips with this arcane pastime. At the end of the media's rummaging in the unfamiliar world of common figures, distinctive figures, bagmen and fools, the general consensus seemed to be that there was nothing to worry about, and the Morris was quietly (and sometimes noisily, to the sound of bells, swords and staves) thriving.

Traditions and pastimes change down the centuries, some dropping out of favour only to re-emerge as something consciously revived or re-discovered. The same is true of games. Who would have thought that the end of the twentieth century would see the re-appearance of croquet, a game that reached a peak of popularity towards the end of the nineteenth century? Yet, this apparently genteel lawn game played with mallets, hoops and ball, seemed to suit the times, and many middle-class dinner parties across the land concluded to its clack and clatter.

A question I pondered the other day was, "Will domestic archery make a comeback?" The Victorians, particularly women, greatly enjoyed this pastime, and when the men went to play billiards or blast pheasants from the sky, the ladies would often retire to a distant lawn and launch arrows at targets. It was a recent visit to Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, a Victorian country house and grounds now in the care of English Heritage, that set me thinking about this. Near the edge of the extensive gardens, in what must have originally been a quarry, was a long, flat grassed area with a small, one room, Victorian/Georgian building called The Target House. This was the place where the Victorian owners and their guests practised bowmanship (and presumably stored the targets.) My photograph shows part of the main elevation of the building with what appears to be an eighteenth century, classical, Venetian window filled with incongruous (probably later) Gothic glazing bars. Below is an ornate bench with a cast-iron frame. The remainder of the building with its slate roof, chimney and too-large, ornate barge board also seems to be later.

So, will archery make a comeback? The other reason I ask is that last year I bought a recurve longbow, arrows and target, re-awakening an interest that I had in my teenage years. Could it be that, for the only time in my life, I'm on the leading edge of a trend, and in a couple of years English gardens will once again resound to the thwack of arrows hitting compressed straw? Perhaps not!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm (42mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On