Stone, cast iron and slate

click photo to enlarge
In the main the builders of Britain's medieval parish churches used local stone. Sometimes this was very well suited to the purpose - it withstood the weather well, held sharp moulding and carving for centuries, and the Victorian restorers left most of it in place. The Oolitic limestone of Barnack and Ancaster are two good examples of such stone. Elsewhere, however, the stone left much to be desired but was used nonetheless because to bring better material from afar was simply too expensive. Much of the greenstone used in churches of the Lincolnshire Wolds, though striking in terms of colour, has decayed down the centuries, flaking off the surface, leaving walls pock marked and shabby, requiring heavy restoration. The builders must have known that it wasn't the best building stone, but they used it for convenience, cost, colour and out of a sense of local pride. I'm glad they did. The medieval tower of Horncastle church is positively rainbow-coloured with old and new local stone, as is that of Great Malvern Priory in Worcestershire.

On a recent visit to Derbyshire I came upon this stonework (above) at the church of St Giles, Calke. The building was erected in 1826-8 as a private church on the estate of Calke Abbey. I imagine the beautiful and subtly coloured stone is local, and it immediately caught my eye. What I also noticed was the tracery of the windows and I went to touch them to see if my suspicions were accurate. They were. The reticulated tracery of these two-light windows is made of cast iron. A little research  showed that they were made at a foundry in Derby. I've come across late Georgian and Victorian cast iron church windows before. They are not common, but can be found in cities and parts of the country adjacent to iron-producing areas. Here the colour they have been painted, does I think, go well with the stone and even with the dark slate gravestones rising up through the long churchyard grass.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 39mm (78mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0
Image Stabilisation: On

No budget for photographs

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When I changed my contact and enquiries page in February 2012 (modified in April) I had an email from a regular visitor suggesting that my wording was, perhaps, a touch off-putting to people interested in using my photographs. I explained that it was meant to be because I was getting fed up of people contacting me and asking to use an image commercially, but unwilling to pay for doing so. The last straw, and the prompt for my somewhat brusque re-write, was a communication from a company working in the field of Combined Heat and Power units. They explained that my photograph of the undulating, rather artistic cladding that surrounds one of the CHP units at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals in London, would be perfect for a publication they were putting together. They explained that they were a "non-profit" company and regretted that they had no budget for photography so couldn't pay for the image. However, should I consent to them using my photograph, they explained, I could be sure that they would give me full written credit.

My response was polite, curt and in the negative. When I re-wrote my contact information I wrote my reasons for this approach in a blog post called "Something for nothing". I was reminded of it the other day when browsing a photography website. One of the posts was a copy of a letter from a musician who had been approached by a TV production company seeking music and regretting that they had "no budget for music" to pay for it. His eloquent and heartfelt response to the solicitation (originally posted on music websites) chimed with a lot of professional and enthusiast photographers who are regularly asked for their work without the offer of recompense and consequently it has been widely circulated on photography websites too. It's well worth reading.

All of which has nothing to do with today's photograph of the upturned, broken top of a Victorian cast iron fountain basin. Except, I've discovered that you never know just what kind of photograph is going to be attractive to a company. Who would have thought the hospital CHP unit would be attractive to anyone? Is this broken fountain? It makes me glad that photography is my interest rather than my job.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 88mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Cast iron and fountains

click photo to enlarge

Every now and then I get a flier through my letter-box soliciting unwanted metal items. They are delivered by a scrap metal dealer who collects anything that people want to throw away. These items go to UK recycling centres, or increasingly, for export to China which has an insatiable appetite for metal. When I lived in North-West England I often saw ships at Glasson Dock near Lancaster loading shredded waste metal for export. On a recent visit to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk I saw this again.

The Industrial Revolution brought a great increase in the amount of metal that Britain manufactured and used. It also saw the invention of different kinds of metal for specialist purposes, and iron and steel, in particular, started to usurp more traditional materials. Buildings started to employ structural steel in place of wood, stone and brick. In ship-building wood became confined to smaller craft as first iron, then steel took over. Even in everyday objects metal became the material of choice. Take ornamental and drinking fountains. These were traditionally made of stone, had very functional designs (except where marble was used) and lasted for centuries with regular, but basic, maintenance. However, the spread of cast-iron manufacture eventually changed this market, and every city and town, and many villages installed ornate fountains made of this relatively inexpensive and very malleable material. They continued being produced well into the twentieth century (see my earlier blog post about the Coronation Fountain at March, Cambridgeshire).

I recently came across another cast-iron fountain in The Circle garden at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. It is, very typically, located at the center of an axial path, an eyecatcher and a thing of beauty at a focal point. The bowl has very attractive leaves, serpentine tendrils and paterae embellishing its surface. Regrettably, however, it is currently detached (broken) from its stem. It lays at the base of some bushes, rusting and gathering the odd shrivelled leaf that falls on it during our present dry spell. I hope the bowl is only temporarily parted from its stem, and is awaiting a suitably skilled craftsman who will make the fountain whole again: its quality, age and location demand no less. It would be a small tragedy if the pieces were shipped off to China to be returned in pieces of inexpensive, ephemeral junk.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On