Hinges and old doors

click photo to enlarge
Today's photograph shows a detail of the priest's door on the exterior of the chancel of the church of St Andrew at Heckington, Lincolnshire.

The solid oak and the rusted, ornate metal work appear to date from a Victorian restoration, perhaps that done by Charles Kirk in 1867. Readers of this blog will know that in Lincolnshire (and many other parts of Britain) church doors are often considerably older - examples from the fifteenth century are relatively common and those from three or four centuries earlier are still to be found.

Many people imagine that the large, intricate scroll-work of the hinges of such doors are purely ornamental. But, as with the tracery, buttresses moulding, pinnacles etc of Gothic churches the seemingly decorative is fundamentally structural. In the case of the doors there are stiles and rails that fix the pieces of wood together. However, the scrollwork of the hinges provides additional fixing and hence strength to the structure while at the same time beautifying the door. If I were to hazard a guess I'd say that this metalwork has rarely, if ever, been painted. It looks none the worse for it!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Curvilinear

click photo to enlarge
I was introduced to the word "rectilinear", as many are, in school mathematics. I came across it later when I was studying the history of art. The third definition of the word in my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) best describes what I usually mean by the word: "Of a figure or angle: bounded or formed by straight lines". Often these meet at right-angles. It was also the history of art (actually, architecture) that introduced me to the word, "curvilinear". Looking up this word in the OED I find the first definition, for my purposes,could not be bettered. It says: "Consisting of, or contained by, a curved line or lines; having the form of a curved line. (Opposed to rectilinear, and in Gothic Archit. to perpendicular, as applied to window tracery."

Today's photograph is a detail of the fourteenth century curvilinear (often called "flowing") Gothic tracery of the main south transept window of the church of St Andrew at Heckington, Lincolnshire. You can see all of the window, in its setting, here. This style of tracery, and variations on it, was the fashion in churches and other buildings of substance, for most of the 1300s in England. I've often imagined what it must have been like to be  the designer of such windows. They seem to have been motivated by a desire to achieve forms that embrace utility (admitting light whilst offering structural support to the arch), beauty and novelty. However, looking at the tracery of many churches within a given locality you do wonder to what extent inter-parish rivalry figured in the production of these elaborate designs.

Architectural historians call it the Decorated style and it replaced Early English, a style of narrow, pointed (lancet) windows that later had tracery of geometrically correct circles and cusps. The real characteristic of the Decorated, Curvilinear or Flowing style is the "ogee", the elongated, serpentine, "s" shaped line that is everywhere in this window. Here you can see it in the main ribs that curve upwards from the capitals of the mullions, in the top cusp at the head of each light, and in the top and bottom cusps of the mouchettes. This style was followed, in the fifteenth century, by one known as Perpendicular. This, the OED rightly notes, is essentially rectilinear in overall form, and has sometimes been identified by that name.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 80mm (120mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Beauty and Heckington church

click photo to enlarge
The church of St Andrew at Heckington is essentially a creation of the fourteenth century. It exemplifies a style that English architectural historians call Decorated. Anyone choosing Lincolnshire's best dozen churches would be likely to include Heckington. It is a large, town-size church - 164 feet long and 185 feet tall to the top of its spire - constructed of Ancaster stone located in a big village.

What makes Heckington church a beautiful and outstanding example of medieval church architecture? The exterior of the building is well-proportioned, though it could be argued that the spire is too short for its tower (or the tower too tall for its spire). However, it is the quantity and quality of the external decoration that sets it apart. Fine pinnacles and niched buttresses abound as do statues (38). Finials, crockets and gargoyles are abundant and elaborate. So too is the tracery of the windows with its trefoils, quatrefoils, mouchettes, daggers, ogees: those of the south transept (above) and east chancel window are classic, much quoted examples of the period. After an exterior of such quality the interior comes as something of a disappointment. However, it compensates by having a small collection of features - the font, a tomb recess, Easter sepulchre, piscina and sedilia, that transcend the ordinary and in some cases are of national significance.

Being a big church in a small churchyard, surrounded by quite close housing, Heckington is not easy to photograph in its entirety. The churchyard planting, though very good, adds to the difficulty. Consequently I was reduced to photographing a part rather than the whole, the tower, south porch and south transept, glimpsed between a couple of conifers.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (27mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Beauty and Heckington windmill

click photo to enlarge
It's good that Heckington windmill, the last remaining 8-sail windmill, is undergoing a restoration, and that the buildings around it are being refurbished and remodelled to make the site into a place that can better welcome visitors. It's good too that the rear of the premises will no longer be the eyesore that it has been for many years. And, it's good that the sails that were succumbing to rot have been replaced and are as they should be. All this is a testament to the hard work and selfless effort of the volunteers who have made, and continue to make, it happen.

However, as I view the mill from the A17 when I'm driving past, or when I stop off in Heckington and have a closer view of the building an unfortunate yet inescapable thought always occurs to me - Heckington mill is undoubtedly the least visually pleasing English windmill that I know.

I recently saw, on successive days, Heckington windmill then Boston's Maud Foster windmill. The temporal proximity of my viewings brought home the agreeable elegance of the latter (probably my favourite windmill) and the ungainliness of Heckington. Where Maud Foster has warm, subtly coloured brickwork contrasting with the white of sails, cap, gallery, windows etc and visually interesting subsidiary buildings, Heckington has cold, stark black and white and seems to tower in an awkward way over a disconnected jumble of sheds. I'm sure the redevelopment will improve the latter aspect. However, it is Heckington's main distinguishing feature that I find most displeasing - eight sails. It is simply too many, makes the mill look top heavy and gives the building something of the character of a whirring desk fan - even when it's stationary! By contrast, the five sails of Maud Foster seem to be the ideal number offering visual interest, pleasing angles and less visual weight.  Four sails are very common on English windmills and usually look fine, six sails are less common and that number is beginning to lose the coherence that characterises fewer sails. Five sails are also less frequently seen than four but that number is definitely - to my mind - the optimum: eight is simply far too many!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (30mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The threatened ash tree

click photo to enlarge
The sea that separates the British Isles from continental Europe is generally thought of, by the inhabitants of these islands at least, as a blessing, a defensive moat that kept Napoleon and Hitler at bay, has stopped rabies from becoming widespread here, and prevents European integrationism from too deeply affecting our idiosyncratic ways. However, a longer view must also record how, when the ice ages covered our islands in glaciers, sending the wildlife south to escape its deadly touch, the thaw that followed and the North Sea and English Channel that it created and which separated our islands from Europe, also prevented the return of many plants and animals. Thus, fallow deer were present before the last glaciation, but did not return after it, the present herds all being introduced animals. As many school children used to know, the adder made it back to England, Scotland and Wales, but it wasn't St Patrick who banished it from Ireland, but rather the inundation that became the Irish Sea prevented it reaching that country.

However, in these days of regular international and inter-continental travel, when goods are shipped around the world with barely a thought, and when companies source products from whoever can provide them at the lowest price, the narrow stretch of sea that was once seen as a formidable barrier, is today a mere ditch that can be stepped across at will. Ash dieback disease, the Chalara fraxinea fungus that was first seen in Eastern Europe twenty years ago, which has spread rapidly across the continent, badly affecting the ash trees of Germany, France and elsewhere, and has affected 90% of Danish ash trees, is now spreading in Britain. There is some debate over whether it was brought in solely on imported saplings or whether it also arrived on the wind from across the narrow North Sea. But, it seems widely agreed that it is here, it can't be eradicated, only slowed in its progress, and it will have a major effect on our hedgerows and woodlands, as well as on the wildlife that favours this particular species. Current thinking suggests that the best course of action is to leave trees to die naturally, to identify those individual trees that seem to be resistant, and to begin a breeding programme to produce new plants from them.

This depressing business was on my mind as I processed today's photograph. I didn't notice when I took the shot, but it features a young ash tree. Five and half percent of British woodland trees are ash, but 12 million grow elsewhere, particularly in hedgerows. It is the second most commonly seen individual tree (after the oak). I read that in Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire combined the ash accounts for 40 percent of the trees. A loss of such magnitudes would be devastating nationally and locally.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Heckington and the Decorated style of architecture

click photo to enlarge
"...one of the dozen or so grandest churches of Lincolnshire...a church remembered for Dec exuberance"
Pevsner, Buildings of England: Lincolnshire

The exterior of the church of St Andrew at Heckington, Lincolnshire, is beauty made stone. Some would say its spire is a little short, or, conversely, that its tower is a touch too big. Others would question the way the transepts fit into the body of the church. But none would deny the beauty of its pinnacles, the decoration of its buttresses, the 38 statues that adorn it, the inventive carving on its south porch, or the quality of its window tracery, particularly that of the east window. "Dec exuberance" sums it up nicely. However, the interior, after the splendours of what is outside, is somewhat disappointing. The Victorians scraped it too much. It is not without a few highlights though - the font of the 1300s, elaborate sedilia and piscina, and an Easter Sepulchre of the first order.

But what of the quotation at the start of this piece? Those without an interest in English Gothic architecture might be wondering about "Dec". Context suggests it might be short for decorative, but why then the capital "D"? In fact it is short for Decorated and refers to a style and period of architecture. The English architect, Thomas Rickman (1776-1841) was a self-taught and quite prolific builder of churches, who also took an antiquarian interest in the styles of the architecture of the Romanesque and Gothic churches that he found all across England. He categorised their architecture of the middle ages into four basic styles: Norman (1066-c.1190), Early English (c.1190 - c.1310), Decorated (c.1310-c.1390) and Perpendicular (c.1390-1485). Subsequent authors and ages have tinkered with the names and dates of this classification, and there are those who have pointed out its limitations. But for all its failings Rickman's original categories still stand up to scrutiny very well, and continue to be used by many laymen and academics.

So, today's photograph shows a significant and beautiful building of the Decorated period of English Gothic architecture, a style characterised by wider arches than Early English, the ogee arch, flamboyant and undulating lines and forms, crockets, naturalistic carving, fleurons, mouchettes and dagger-forms, chamfering and more. Heckington church is quite difficult to photograph in its entirety due to nearby buildings and closely planted trees. This shot, I felt, captured something of its essence, and shows its tower and spire, a buttress niche in the centre, and the top of the south porch on the right.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510

Mode: Aperture Priority

Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)

F No: f6.3

Shutter Speed: 1/800

ISO: 100

Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV

Image Stabilisation: On

Painting Heckington windmill

click photo to enlarge
I posted a blog piece about Heckington's famous 8-sail windmill about a year ago, and in that entry discussed a little of English windmills in general and the history of this one in particular. What I didn't touch on, however, is the fact that Heckington is one of the mills that are painted black. These are not uncommon in Eastern England. Skidby Windmill, in East Yorkshire, is another black windmill that I blogged about a few years ago. This dark finish is most often applied to brick-built post-mills, though some timber structures are similarly treated. There are those who don't like to see windmills finished in this way, regarding them as sombre looking, and seeing the paint as hiding the warmth of the underlying brick. Such people prefer to see the bricks as they are on Thaxted mill. However, there's no denying that when it is paired with white sails and fantail, as well as white painted wooden detailing (windows, doors, rails, and an ogee cap) the black paint looks very striking. What I don't know is if any windmills were painted in this way immediately after they were built, or whether the bitumen-based covering was always applied at a later date in response to the penetration of damp.

When I passed Heckington windmill the other day I saw a blue "cherry-picker" and a couple of workmen busy repainting the tower. They'd masked the windows with plastic and were applying the sticky liquid with long handled brushes, the old paint looking dull next to that which they were laying on. The substance they were using certainly had the look of bituminuous paint, but I suppose it could have been one of the newer acrylic products. It was an interesting scene, so I took a few shots of them at their work, and post both the best of my selection and a general view above.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 67mm (134mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Heckington eight-sail windmill

click photo to enlarge
Three types of traditional windmill are to be found in England. The oldest is the post-mill, a relatively light-weight, mainly wooden structure with no fan-tail, that is turned into the wind with a tiller beam. One at Outwood, Surrey, dates from 1665, though many examples no longer standing were built before that date. Next comes the smock mill, so called because its tapered, boarded, octagonal tower resembles a nineteenth century countryman's smock. That at Lacey Green, was built in 1650. The final development was the tower mill, and this is the type most commonly seen today.

Tower mills were developed in the eighteenth century and have a round or octagonal brick or stone tower similar to a lighthouse. The wooden top revolved so that the sails always pointed into the wind. This was achieved by another eighteenth century development - the fantail - that worked much like the broad end of a weather vane, but had the added advantage of small blades that could be used to power a hoist. The movement of the main sails was transmitted to millstones through a series of shafts and cogs. In 1919 there were 350 working windmills: today there are about 24, though many more stand with motionless sails and silent machinery, or have been converted into houses. An even greater number of sail-less towers can be seen.

Today's photographs show the tower mill at Heckington, Lincolnshire. It was built in 1830 as a five-sailed windmill driving three pairs of stones, and milled grain for 60 years until the cap and sails were destroyed by wind in 1890. However, in 1891 an enterprising man bought the eight-sailed top of the defunct Tuxford windmill and matched it up with the remaining stump at Heckington. He set the mill to work again and it continued until 1946, also powering a circular saw-mill! Since that time it has seen restoration by enthusiasts, and in recent years has been open to the public.

You might wonder why my images don't show the full splendour of those eight sails. Well, the fact is that behind the windmill (to windward) is a an absolute eye-sore of stored bales of plastic and cloth, gas cylinders, derelict buildings and parked lorries. Not the most photogenic foreground for this venerable and unique structure!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Top Image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bottom Image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Curls and curves

click photo to enlarge

I was reading the other week about back pain. I'm a tall man, and like many tall people I experience back pain periodically. I used to think it was due to the increased leverage that is associated with height. However, the writer of the article blamed it on the western penchant for sitting on chairs. She maintained that people from cultures where sitting on the floor is the norm suffer less back pain. She also observed that most chairs seemed to have been conceived with little regard for the human anatomy! That reminded me of a quotation I used a while ago by the influential twentieth century German-American architect, Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) : "A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous."

Today I came upon a modern public bench in the centre of Heckington, Lincolnshire. Like many such benches in the UK it offered seating and a sculptural/artistic experience. And, in common with many other modern public benches, it was useless for sitting on! I imagine that it was commissioned by elected representatives or local government officers, and was designed by someone who saw the "public sculpture" part of the brief as more important than the "comfort for the public's backsides" section. So, it was interesting to look at, a good subject for a passing photographer, and a hopeless bench to rest on for all except those of a masochistic tendency. I've often wondered why, after centuries of refining the design and achieving the goal on many occasions, it's still possible to buy a teapot that doesn't pour properly. The same thought applies to benches. I've sat on many very comfortable designs, so why are we still creating examples that are uncomfortable? I suppose the answer is that where any artefact is designed to fulfil two purposes simultaneously, one becomes subservient to the other, and consequently the design often fails. Still, I mustn't complain - it offered me an interesting shot with curves and curls that the day's sun multiplied very nicely! The effect of the shadows reminded me of the ripples from multiple pebbles thrown into a pond.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm macro (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off