The Much Marcle yew tree

click photo to enlarge
The ancient yew tree shown in today's photograph is estimated to be about 1500 years old. It stands in Much Marcle, Herefordshire, next to the medieval church of St Bartholomew, the oldest part of which dates from about 1230. The tree must have been standing for 700 hundred years when the church was begun, and it is remarkable that it still lives today. Or perhaps not so remarkable when we consider that, in countries north of the Mediterranean, England is second only to Greece in the number of ancient trees (those that are several hundred years old) to be found within its borders.

Much Marcle's tree is justly renowned, not only for its age, but for its girth of 31 feet at a point 4 feet 6 inches above the ground. The tree's trunk, as you can see from the photograph, is hollow, and it is provided with seating that can support several people. In recent years the tree was pruned for the first time in a long time. Six tons of dead and unnecessary timber was removed. When we were there the other day - our third or fourth visit over the years to this interesting village - I noticed a heavy chain wrapped around the tree at a height of twelve or fifteen feet. Its purpose may have been to keep the branches from drooping down to the ground. In a few places it was in the process of being absorbed into the limbs so it must have been there for quite a while.

Ancient yews, particularly those in churchyards have long been noted and revered. In the seventeenth century John Evelyn and John Aubrey wrote about them, and travel writers and antiquarians continued to do so in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the twentieth century Vaughan Cornish's "Churchyard Yews" (1946) and E.W. Swanton's "The Yew Trees of England" (1958) raised their profile considerably. However, it was "The Sacred Yew" (1994) by Anand Chetan and Diana Brueton (leaning heavily on the work of Allen Meredith) that gained the attention of the media. It catalogued 404 trees that were estimated to be more than 1,000 years old. In 2003 the Ancient Yew Group was formed and continued the documentation of the tree. It has noted 837 "ancient, veteran or significant" yews in England and Wales. Further details about this group and much fascinating information of yew trees can be found on their website.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 2500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Artemis, The Huntress

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"All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"
from "Monty Python's Life of Brian" (1979)

The Romans have an undeserved reputation for innovation. It's true that they had very good engineering, and that their skills in acquiring, administering and sustaining an empire were formidable. However, as far as actual inventions go their prowess has been greatly exaggerated. The fact is their real skills lay in creative borrowing: taking the inventions of other cultures and improving them. The Romans were more Bill Gates than Alexander Graham Bell.

A single example can serve to exemplify the failings of the Romans when it comes to inventions - or the absence of them. Throughout their period of ascendancy horse power was crucial to the Romans, yet they continued with the same inefficient harness that was used in the Bronze Age. In the second century B.C. the Chinese had horses pulling against a breast strap when they were used with a cart. This allowed them to breath more easily and pull heavier loads. A century later the Chinese had discovered the increased benefits of the collar harness, a device unknown in Europe until many hundreds of years after the Roman empire had collapsed.
 
On a recent visit to Much Marcle in Herefordshire to attend a wedding I was photographing in the snow-covered garden of Hellens Manor, the ancient house where the ceremony and subsequent festivities were to take place. The frozen pond on the south-facing terrace featured a statue of a female hunter. The moss and lichen encrusted figure looked like a good subject for a photograph or two, and so I took some shots showing details and context. This particular view of the garden was taken the day before the main image. It shows the sculpted figure with a snow scarf and cap which had disappeared twenty four hours later. When I came to give a title to today's photograph I had to stop and think whether the subject was Greek or Roman. If Greek, then the statue depicted Artemis, if Roman then it was Diana. When it came to religion the Romans inherited some Greek gods during their early history, came up with some of their own later on, and sought to identify some of these with Greek forerunners due to their fascination with the earlier civilisation. All of which has sown some confusion in the minds of later generations. The sculpture could be Diana, but she looks Greek to me. All of which leads me to think that another thing the Romans did for us was to add a layer of confusion to their mythology that tripped up this photographer when he was a schoolboy, and sometimes puzzles him still.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sleeping Beauty?

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"Here is an English counterpart to the illusionism which occurs at the same time in Italian painting and German sculpture."
Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983), architectural historian

In his book, England's Thousand Best Churches, the author, Simon Jenkins, says of this tomb in the church of St Bartholomew, Much Marcle, Herefordshire, "The effigy might be the original for Sleeping Beauty." It isn't, and he knows that it isn't, but such is the character, delicacy and beauty of this fourteenth century figure sculpture, that this would certainly be the one to emulate for that purpose. The quotation from Nikolaus Pevsner at the head of this piece puts the sculpture into a European context, and at the same time draws our attention to the remarkable - for its time - realism of the figure and its clothing.

Blanche Mortimer was Lady Grandison, the wife of Sir Peter Grandison, and the daughter of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March. She died childless, three years before her husband. There is probably no attempt at a likeness in the sculpture of her face, but her clothing, rosary, head dress, and the fall of her gown over the edge of the tomb, are all done with the intention of reproducing the illusion of reality. The tomb would have been painted when new, and the illusion would have been even stronger.

There are many who consider this tomb to be one of England's best from the period. It sits in a church that boasts other fine effigies, including one from the same period as this piece, carved from oak. The Kyrle Chapel has a sumptuously carved tomb from the seventeenth century of Sir John Kyrle and his wife that I made the subject of one of my first blog posts in January 2006.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On