Yellow-tinged January light

click photo to enlarge
The light from the low winter sun has to travel obliquely through more of the earth's atmosphere than does the light from the higher sun of spring, summer and autumn. Consequently it is tinged with colour for the same reason that light from the rising or setting sun is coloured. In the second half of December and the first half of January the light of the middle of the day in Britain has a decided yellow cast. This colouration slowly retreats towards the beginning and end of the day as spring approaches. So, even if the appearance of the landscape doesn't betray the month the quality of the light in a photograph often shows that it was taken during that time of year when the hours of daylight are at their shortest.

We had a walk by the River Slea near South Kyme a few days ago. Here the slow flowing river meanders through flat farmland and small woods, past villages and their churches, and offers the photographer the element of water to add to the ever-present earth and sky. We've done that walk in winter a few times in recent years and I've photographed the medieval tower and church in their riverside locations before. On our recent walk I took a shot from a position where I remembered taking one previously. This time it was not only the yellow-tinged light that attracted my eye but also the dark clouds behind the sunlit river, fields and church. For the same reason I took a photograph of the nearby manor house, a building that has been added to over the centuries and is built of both stone and brick. Surrounded by its trees it makes the third of three very English buildings - a fortified tower/house, a small church fabricated from the aisle of a larger priory demolished during the Dissolution, and the manor house of the local worthy, a land and property owner who wielded power and influence in the locality. Today all the buildings are less than they were in terms of their position in their communities. The church has been in decline for a couple of hundred years, Kyme Tower fell out of use centuries ago, and manor houses and manorial rights are often not in the hands of the original family, where they exist at all.

Many enthusiast photographers reduce their picture taking in winter. Partly it's the inclement, cold, wet and windy weather that keeps them indoors. Others seem to prefer the photographic feel and appearance of the other three seasons. Then there are those who don't like the reduced light. I'm not one of those people. I've said elsewhere in this blog that I can't envisage living anywhere that doesn't have clearly differentiated seasons. Perhaps it's simply what I'm used to and I would get used used to permanent summer. However, the differences that seasons offer me as a person and a photographer are something that I would surely miss and would, perhaps, pleasantly surprise those who use their camera where the sun always shines.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17.4mm (47mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Manor houses, castles and churches

click photo to enlarge
It's not widely appreciated that the number of different building types was relatively few before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Houses of various sizes, churches of various kinds, castles, windmills, watermills, inns, almshouses, guildhalls, schools, universities and colleges, barns: once you've run through that list there's not much else to add to the buildings of the period before 1700. The factories, railway stations, offices, power stations, bus depots, garages, law courts, police stations, and the multiplicity of other specialised buildings we see around us are largely a product of the last three hundred years, and particularly the last one hundred and fifty.

I was reflecting on this the other day when I visited South Kyme. At the edge of the village is a trio of buildings that one sees in close proximity in many settlements across Britain - the castle, the church and the manor house. In those three buildings was vested much of the local power and influence of pre-industrial society. The lord of the manor not only owned land and organised agriculture and civil society, he also dispensed justice through the manorial court. The castle was a power base that kept order in the locality, defended the interests of the rich nobleman who lived there, and represented and supported the power of the monarch. The church (in South Kyme, originally a priory) also had legal powers and large land holdings, and its clergy were not only educated perople but a powerful presence in the community.

I have described what is known about Kyme Tower here. On my recent visit it was The Manor that drew my attention. It is a house that dates from the early 1700s and is built on the double range plan. The front range has a symmetrical ashlar facade with a plain tile roof. A nineteenth century porch conceals the original door. The back range, interestingly, is built of brick rather than stone, has a pantile roof, and what appears to be a twentieth century bay at ground and first floor level. Is this the only manor house to be built on this site? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it replaced an earlier building.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The first day of spring

click photo to enlarge
Spring arrived in Lincolnshire on Saturday 13th March. The temperature rose to a high of about 12 degrees Celsius, the sun shone, the wind was light, and the countryside glowed with rich colours. True, there's precious little visible by way of leaves on trees, or vigorously growing grass, but the aconites, snowdrops, and crocuses are in full bloom, and the odd daffodil has made an appearance.

After several hours of cutting and re-laying turf I decided that I'd spend the second half of the afternoon looking for a photograph or two, so I went to South Kyme. I've posted a couple of images that I've taken at this location before - the Tower, and the remains of the priory that was adapted as the parish church after the Reformation, and is now known as St Mary & All Saints. Today's photograph from this village on the River Slea is a landscape that features the priory-cum-church. It has been written (by someone from the United States) that England's churches seem to fit so well into the landscape. It's an observation that I agree with, and if I had no interest at all in church architecture, they'd still feature in my landscape photographs. Perhaps the modest size of many of the buildings goes with the modest scale of the terrain, particularly in lowland England. But it's also true that the use of local stone and the planting that enhances most church graveyards also plays its part in making the church nestle into its location.

For my photograph I walked over a small bridge to the other side of the River Slea and included the water to add interest to the foreground. I don't take too many photographs with the sun directly behind me, but on this spring day the slightly yellow tinge of its low light, and the way it was floodlighting the scene, bringing out the richness of the colours that had been masked by cold for so many months, I thought I'd make an exception for this shot.

photograph & text (c) T.Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Kyme Priory

click photo to enlarge
I've often wondered how different our view of English Gothic architecture would be if Henry VIII hadn't broken with Rome, passed the Act of Supremacy (1534) setting him at the head of the English church, and passed the two Acts (1536 and 1539) that suppressed the monasteries. Instead of cathedrals and parish churches (in the main) being the buildings that define and trace Gothic architecture, we'd also have large, complete, monasteries, abbeys and priories with their major churches and ancillary buildings added to the mix. And, these buildings would have been added to beyond the Gothic period, up to the present day perhaps, making them some of the most significant religious buildings in Britain.

However, there are things that we would have lost. The romantic, crumbling, Cistercian ruins of places such as Rievaulx Abbey and Fountain's Abbey would not have been there to inspire our painters and poets: William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" wouldn't have seen the light of day. Money that was channelled into other churches and cathedrals would have been used for monasteries, and the absence of the "quarries" that the redundant sites became, that provided building stone for nearby houses and farms would have resulted in quite different vernacular architecture in the areas surrounding these great churches. Furthermore, we wouldn't have seen fragments of these large buildings escaping destruction to provide the parish church for the place in which they were located, as happened with many, including Bolton Abbey and Kyme Priory, Lincolnshire (see today's photograph).

The present church of St Mary & All Saints at South Kyme is made from the west end of the south aisle and part of the south section of the nave of the priory. The rest of the Augustinian structure was swept away at the Dissolution. The building we see today was tidied up in 1888 by C. H. Fowler. The remains of architectural interest include the fine Norman south doorway, an original south porch, C14 windows, C15 glass fragments, some fascinating monuments, a headless Virgin in a niche above the porch entrance, and some very interesting pieces of Anglo-Saxon carving with work similar to the designs on Celtic and Irish illuminated manuscripts, suggesting a date of C7 or C8.

My photograph was taken on a late afternoon in January as the sun was heading for the horizon. The over-sized windows hint at the structure that gave birth to the village's present parish church, but Fowler's transformation pulls the design together very well, and the untrained eye might see it as a modest village church topped with a bell-cote because the funds wouldn't run to a tower. A black and white treatment seemed to suit the location and composition better than colour, and I increased the contrast with the digital equivalent of a red filter.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

South Kyme Tower

click photo to enlarge

As you drive across the flat, Fenland landscape near South Kyme, Lincolnshire, and see the white stone of Kyme Tower in the distance it looks much higher than its seventy seven feet. But then, as you get nearer to the building, it seems to shrink, and looks smaller and somewhat forlorn, standing alone among the grass and trees.

The tower was built between 1338 and 1381 by Sir Gilbert de Umfraville, and was part of a more extensive structure, most of which was apparently removed in the eighteenth century. It was never quite a castle, more a moated, fortified house. There is a suggestion that one or more other towers might have formed part of the building, but the truth is that no one really knows. What remains has four storeys, prominent string courses, battlements, and a projecting, slightly taller, square stair-turret. Pointed windows with single mullions and simple tracery heads are placed regularly around the tower. The ground floor is vaulted but no floors or ceilings survive above this level. However, records show that the second storey had a patterned floor and was called the Chequer Chamber. Lincolnshire is not particularly rich in medieval fortifications, having relatively few standing castles, and amongst them Kyme Tower is a bit of an oddity because fortified houses are more typically found in Northern England, particularly the Border counties, where the threat of the marauding Scots was very real. What was the particular menace that caused such a structure to be built on the Fens I wonder?

An eighteenth century farmhouse looks across at the tower, and a few hundred yards away, out of the village in the fields, is the remaining fragment of a priory of Augustinian canons. This was founded before 1169. As with many monastic buildings it was pulled down during the Dissolution (1536-1541). The west end of the south aisle, part of the nave and the south porch were allowed to remain and serve as the parish church. Major restoration work in 1888 gave the building a neater form and it continues in use today as the church of St Mary and All Saints.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On