Tower vaulting compared - Louth and Ludlow

click photos to enlarge
During my primary school years, in any spare moments that the teacher allowed, I loved to draw and doodle. And, as I progressed through my education, painting and drawing became subjects that I pursued academically in greater depth. However, picking up my theme of a couple of weeks ago, that everything important in my education happened in the primary years (age 5-11), I want to dwell on doodling. At one stage, when I was 7 or 8 years old, I had a penchant for making symmetrical patterns with a pencil and ruler. I'd start with a square, connect the corners with diagonals, find the centre of each side of the square, connect those, then build a pattern that developed from that basic "Union Flag" shape.

The other day, when I was processing these two images of tower vaulting, it suddenly struck me that my fascination with this aspect of medieval Gothic architecture may well derive from those childhood doodles. Look at the patterns here and you'll see those same diagonals and cross shape underpinning the basic structure in each instance. The central circle is there by necessity, and usually lifts out to allow access to the bells. The Ludlow design has cusping incorporated into the geometry, giving it a less regular feel, but the Louth vaulting is strictly rectilinear when seen from below.

Anyone who has explored this blog will have come across other examples of tower vaulting photographed from below, and all those other designs are individual. With today's images I decided that I'd use my widest lens which is 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.) and make the columned piers that support the tower part of the composition. So, each picture has a centre illuminated by tower windows, and has four arches. Why does Louth have windows filling three of its arches? Well, that tower is at the west end of the church, whereas Ludlow's is a crossing tower, in the centre of the building, off which are the nave, the chancel and a pair of transepts. You can tell which is the chancel because it has the most elaborately decorated roof.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Top (Bottom), where different
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11(22mm), 11(22mm)/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6, (3.5)
Shutter Speed: 1/80, (1/200) seconds
ISO: 400, (200)
Exposure Compensation: -2.7, (-0.7) EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Education and the Guelder Rose

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When I look back over my own education - both the formal and the autodidactic - I'm very clear that the things I value most were learned in primary school: that is to say between the ages of 5 and 11 years. During that period I learned to love to find out things for myself. I also first discovered the limits of formal education, from which I went on to know that it is useful for laying down a foundation of knowledge, and that higher education is especially good for securing employment but is hopeless for growing you as a person (it has a tendency to turn out clones who parrot method and content). I also discovered - though I wasn't able to explain it until many years later - the truth that Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) articulated in "Walden": "What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?"

In the primary school I attended we followed the usual curriculum of the time - mathematics, English, history, geography, religious studies, music, art and physical education. However, in place of science we had "nature study", and as eleven year olds we also had "current events". It was the nature study that gripped me more than any other subject. Often this involved walking up one of the narrow lanes out of our market town into the hills whilst we listened to a commentary from, and engaged in a dialogue with, our teacher about the plants and animals, as well as the man-made features (barns, drystone walls, the town pound, a reservoir, medieval terracing, etc), that we encountered. In those years the importance and pleasure of looking at, thinking about and appreciating everything around me was laid down: it is something that has enriched the rest of my life immeasurably.

It was on one of those walks that, along with herb robert, cow parsley, stonecrop, red campion, wood anemone, and the other flowers of the Yorkshire Dales, I heard the name Guelder Rose. Unlike the rest of the flowers whose names I learnt, this one didn't stick with me. It wasn't one that I could pin on a plant when I saw it, perhaps because it wasn't as common as the others. However, the other day I discovered it was the English name for Viburnum opulus, a tree that grows in my garden, and with that discovery the memories of those primary school "nature rambles" came flooding back. Today's image incorporates a device I've used before - placing an in focus bloom on one side of the frame and a more distant, out of focus flower head on the other.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Expertise and redundant hoppers

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During my time as a manager in education I was constantly exhorted to change my practice to more closely follow that of industry, business and commerce. Attempts were made to foist the methods, disciplines, measurements, customer-focused, target-oriented approach on to education with a greater degree of success than I could ultimately stomach. At the time I was subjected to all this I frequently observed that my experience of the services I received from the private sector - from shops, banks, manufacturers, consultants, builders, etc - wasn't noticeably better than that which I received from central or local government, from the health service or from education, and was often much worse. "Why", I asked, "should I adopt systems that give rise to demonstrable mediocrity?" Well, as you can imagine, being one of a few voices against a tidal wave of government-driven change isn't the most comfortable place to be, so I bade adieu to a career that I had enjoyed, for the most part, at the earliest feasible opportunity.

The rest, as they say, is history. When the pinnacle of the private sector - the banks and financial services industries - was found to have expertise with as much substance as candy floss, and the wheels started to come off the economies of the western world, I allowed myself a wry smile. What had happened, I wondered, to those bankers and financial wizards who offered their services as "mentors" to managers in education, and who sought to "sharpen the skills" of those lesser mortals on whom they graciously bequeathed their time and "expertise"? Probably trying to dig themselves out of a deep hole of their own making.

What has this to do with four animal feed hoppers, one of which has fallen over? Not a great deal really. Except I did wonder how someone could imagine that if you stood these four top-heavy, redundant structures in a row, on concrete, in a flat, windy part of the country, without bolting them down as the manufacturer intended, that they would remain standing.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19mm (38mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
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

Primary and secondary colours

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A tradition of English schooling is that, from the age of 11 children are taught in ability groups, but are also placed in "Houses". Typically, on entry to their particular form of secondary education, they are assigned to one of (usually) four houses in which they remain until the end of compulsory education. The houses are not selective, the aim being to have an approximate balance of boys and girls and abilities. These cohorts come into their own during sports day and other competitive events, form periods, and occasions when there is a requirement to subdivide pupils into mixed groups. It's interesting that a tradition that arose in public (i.e. private) schools where pupils did (and do) live in actual houses, should have been so warmly embraced by state schools.

I was first placed in a "house" in the junior years (age 7-11, Years 3-6 in modern parlance) of my primary education. It was called Penyghent House, and accompanied the three other houses of Ingleborough, Whernside, and Pendle - the "Three Peaks" of Yorkshire, and the nearby Lancashire summit, all of which were visible from where my Yorkshire school was located. For better recognition each house was linked to a colour - red, green, yellow and, in the case of Penyghent, blue. When I moved to secondary school, as luck would have it, I remained a blue, but was assigned to West House. You can guess the other houses and colours! It may be my school experience of these four colours as a group that leads me to use them still in that combination. Or perhaps wider society uses them whe there is a requirement for four colours. Whatever the reason, it wasn't until I'd rotated and tinted this photograph of a couple of pine cones four times that I realised I'd chosen those four colours once again. Though I hadn't placed them in the sequence that I always recall them i.e. red, blue, green and yellow!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Life's riches

click photo to enlarge

The other day I saw a pair of lapwings displaying above a field. I suppose they were nesting there, and as they performed their characteristic aerial acrobatics, all the while making their distinctive call, they looked like they were celebrating simply being alive. When I lived in Lancashire lapwings nested in the field behind my house, and across the nearby pastures and uplands. Such are the particular nesting requirements of lapwings, that where I live now, in Lincolnshire, I have to travel to the coastal salt-marsh and uncultivated land to see them. Or so I thought until, when cycling near home, I spotted this solitary pair over a ploughed area. I hope they are successful in their endeavours.

I've been interested in birds since I was ten or eleven years of age. It was my teachers at primary school who sparked my deep love of natural history. Each Friday we would walk into the countryside and be shown the trees, flowers, birds and any other wildlife that was at hand. We learned the names and something of the biology of these living things. That teaching stayed with me, and like the best teaching, spurred me to find out more for myself. It is no exaggeration to say that it enriched my life enormously. When I first became involved in education I was surprised at how little children knew of the wildlife around them, and I was thankful for the knowledge that my teachers had given to me all those years before. On one occasion I asked a group of ten year old children to write down for me all the flowers they knew by name. The only three wild flowers most could name were (perhaps unsurprisingly) the dandelion, daisy and buttercup. They knew more cultivated flowers, naming the daffodil first, followed by the poppy, the rose, and the tulip. Various other well known flowers made an appearance. I thought then, and I think now, that people who can't name, and don't know anything about the plants and animals around them miss so much. The simple act of going for a walk is much less interesting than it could be!

Today's photograph shows one of those more widely known flowers - the tulip. This one, that I photographed on a rainy afternoon, was past its best, its colours darkening prior to the petals falling off.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On