Old sheds

click photo to enlarge
On a walk taken after June rain had begun to clear we came upon these old sheds that were once an essential part of a small holding. The last time we saw them there was a "For Sale" notice on the site. Now it had the word "Sold" fixed over it. It seemed the right time to photograph these dilapidated wood and corrugated iron buildings: who knows how much longer they will be there?

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (27mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3 Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Derelict farms and regional food

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The Guardian tells me that in a public poll to mark the start of British Food Fortnight the county of Lincolnshire was "revealed" (see my earlier post about the use of this word) to be "the UK's favourite food spot." The article went on to quote Rachel Green, farmer and chef, as saying that "the heritage food of this county really is the pig." To that I say, well, yes, up to a point.

Whilst pigs have long been a food animal of this eastern county, and are prominent today, other foodstuffs have also played a significant part in its agriculture. The importance of sheep in the medieval agriculture of Lincolnshire remains written across its villages and towns in the form of the county's magnificent medieval churches. And, though it was their wool that provided the source of most of the income that funded these buildings, the economy then, as now, used every part of an animal and mutton was a food that figured large in Lincolnshire. Today cereals and vegetables are undoubtedly the main agricultural produce of the county, especially on the fertile Fenlands, and are what it is best known for.

Let's not forget that cattle too were once more widespread in Lincolnshire than they are today, being raised for beef, milk and by-products such as hide. The many roads called "droves" remind us of this, as do some of the derelict farms. I photographed the abandoned buildings above on one recent sunlit evening, and what caught my eye was the raised platform by the barn doors on the left of the picture. It was surely the place where churns full of milk from the farm's herd were placed for daily collection. Today, in the milk producing areas of the country a tanker carries out this task, but when I was a child in the Yorkshire Dales such platforms were commonplace and in regular use. There are few - if any - milk herds on the Fens today, but on the Wolds and in other parts of Lincolnshire they are still to be found.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

December, fields and Pixlr

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Apparently December 2010 was the coldest for the past one hundred and twenty years. It was certainly the coldest I can remember in terms of average temperatures and the minimum values to which we were subjected. Thinking back through my experience of winters, that of 1963 beat it (thus far) in days of continuous snow on the ground, but the four weeks or so we have had is much more than usual. Many have lamented the weather because it has restricted what they can do, has resulted in higher than usual heating bills, and has been depressing. Certainly I haven't travelled as far afield as I would have done in more typical December weather, and the higher heating bills will follow our higher energy usage as surely as night follows day. But depressing? No! In fact, it has been a real gift to photographers. The days of compete white-outs, hoar frost, frozen water and fog have presented familiar subjects in unfamiliar guise, and photographic subjects haven't had to be searchd for - they've simply popped up at every turn.

Today's photograph is probably the last of the hoar frost images that I will post. It shows a small-holding across a cropped field. Without the heavy dousing of white I doubt whether I would have pointed my camera at it.

This particular image has one attribute that none of my other photographs posesses. All my post processing is done using one or more of the "heavyweight" image processing packages. This one, by way of an experiment, I ran through a free online photo-editor called Pixlr. I like to keep up to date with freeware, open-source and online software offerings, and make good use of several such packages that are as good as, or better than, commercial equivalents. Though this particular image didn't need a great deal of editing, Pixlr (daft name!) did what I wanted very well, and the user-interface was quite intuitive. I won't use it on a regular basis, but I could see a use for it when away from home, or as something to recommend to friends who need to edit images only occasionally and don't want to download and install any of the free packages. It's worth a look.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 92mm
F No: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Enjoying the hoar frost

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Yesterday we had hoar frost on top of hoar frost such that everything looked like it was encrusted in a thick layer of sugar icing. I had hoped to do a few close-ups or macro shots of leaves, plants and branches, but the delicate subtlety of the previous day had been replaced by this heavy, white covering.

So, once again, I set off quite early to photograph the marvel of it all. This is the first shot of the day. It shows a farmhouse and a few outbuildings in the field across from my house. In fact, like a number of such buildings in the Fens (and elsewhere in Britain for that matter) it is a former farmhouse, now used as a simple dwelling. The consolidation of farms into bigger holdings, together with the reduction in the number of people involved in agriculture due to mechanization, are the main reasons why there are fewer working farms than there were.

I've never thought that this subject was particularly worthy of a photograph before, but the frost added a dimension that transformed it. The whiteness combined with the blueness of the early morning light had the effect of subduing the green of the hedge and grass and made the red/orange of the bricks and roof tiles of the buildings stand out more. The hole in the hedge gave the main subject a frame of sorts, while the tall poplar tree on the right broke the essential symmetry of the composition in a satisfying way, and acted as a counterweight to the upstairs window on the left.

I was glad I'd made an early start because when I went out again in the afternoon the wind was blowing the ice crystals off, forcing me to keep my camera covered, and each tree had a patch of white below that grew ever bigger as the day progressed.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 161mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A Georgian farmhouse

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I have long been of the opinion that, as far as relatively modest housing goes, eighteenth century architects managed to do more with less than architects of any other period. That's not to say that architects of the Victorian, modern, seventeenth century or any other period couldn't produce good design within cost limitations - they could - but perhaps not as consistently. Georgian buildings often achieve their appeal through the careful management of proportion. This was a feature that became increasingly lost as the nineteenth century progressed. The Victorians too often applied ornament to achieve their effects, and it needed the Arts and Crafts architects, such as Voysey, to show how things such as the relationship of wall to windows and the massing of a building could be used to make appealing structures.

Today's photograph shows a brick building that is essentially of 1772, with earlier parts, and some Victorian additions. It seems to have started life as a Fenland farmhouse - Moneybridge Farm - but is today a residence known as Brownlow House, named after the Georgian family whose cypher can be seen on the stone plaques over the front and back doors. I could have chosen a better example to illustrate my point, but this one has the symmetry typical of the period, with a doorway given prominence by its central position and a wooden case and triangular pediment. The windows have stone surrounds, and brick lintels with an emphasised keystone. Obvious C19 additions are the Westmorland slate roof and the gable chimney stacks: these would have replaced pantiles and similar brick stacks with less detailing. What makes this building particularly interesting is that it forms part of a larger group with brick and pantile outbuildings that date from the same time as the house. Of special note is the tall dovecote with a wooden, white painted turret with two tiers of flight holes.

Brownlow House sits next to a road that follows the River Glen. I took my photograph from a parallel road on the other side of the river, and used the large conifer to balance the composition. The broken clouds that periodically admitted brief shafts of sunlight looked better converted to black and white than they did in colour, so that is how I present the image.

Another eighteenth century Fenland farmhouse can be seen here.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 6.3mm (30mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ripe for redevelopment?

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Each time my wife and I pass a tumbledown barn or an uninhabited and dilapidated cottage or farm, one of us says, "Ripe for redevelopment?" and the other smiles. We are referring to an estate agent's advertising copy next to a photograph of an absolute wreck of a building that we'd once read incredulously. In those distant days such buildings were regularly being rebuilt and turned into dwellings, often because planning permission was easier to acquire, especially in rural areas, when there was a "building" already on the site.

However, the recent credit crunch is likely to put a brake on such redevelopments, and picturesque piles will crumble for a few more years until the housing market picks up again. My post of the other day talked about rural depopulation, and across many areas of the country famhouses that were abandoned when farmers left the land and holdings were amalgamated, now stand empty: in Lincolnshire they are a reasonably common sight. Changes in farming practices mean that many barns no longer have a use, and these too are left to slowly decay. In places like the Yorkshire Dales, North Lancashire and Cumbria the barns are stone-built and much sought after for conversion into houses, to the point where planning permission is now difficult to secure. In Lincolnshire, they are usually made of brick, and conversions are quite commonly seen.

Today's photograph shows a barn that is part of an abandoned farm near the seventeenth century South Forty Foot Drain. The buildings look like they date from the nineteenth century, and the signs are that they fell out of use in the 1970s. Most of the structures are roofed, and the walls still stand, but the windows are all gone, and gutters and drainpipes hang at crazy angles. The fruit trees, once so carefully tended are growing wild, and former hedges are tangled masses of vegetation. Walking amongst the buildings I thought about the people who lived here; how hard it must have been to give up their home and their life's work, and wondered how they made the transition to fresh jobs, retirement, or whatever the next phase of their lives brought.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 64mm (128mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Old barn

click photo to enlarge

Anyone journeying through England will notice that old farm buildings invariably use local materials. So, in Eastern counties warm reddish brick walls and roofs of orange (or sometimes yellow/buff) clay pantiles are frequently seen. Move to the North and dour stone walls predominate, with stone or split slate roofing the buildings. In South East England and the West Midlands timber-framing is seen with infill of brick or mud closing the walls, though some areas favour tile-hanging or boarding. In these areas roofs would have been thatched with straw or reeds, and many still are, though tiles and corrugated metal have often replaced the natural materials.

These styles derive from what was locally available and from the skills of the local people. So, for example, an absence of suitable building stone often led to the use of timber and infill, or brick, and geographical areas can be plotted on the basis of this kind of building characteristic. However, places that border two adjacent areas with distinctive vernacular traditions often feature more "mongrel" styles. The other day I stopped to photograph a couple of old, dilapidated barns at Bridge End near the edge of the Fens in Lincolnshire. The Fenland landscape is characterised by old farm buildings made of brick and roofed with pantiles. However, Bridge End is close to the nearby uplands where limestone was quarried. This found its way into domestic buildings as well as the churches, and down on to the adjacent flatlands.

The barn in the photograph probably dates from the early nineteenth century, though it may be older. Its pleasingly irregular pantile roof has had sections of glass tiles inserted to let in light. At some point the building has been extended without the new part being locked into the old. It's anyone's guess which came first - the left side or the right. However, I'm wondering whether the builder re-used stone from an older structure, and employed bricks to make the doorway because it's easier and that's what he was used to doing. Perhaps the former Gilbertine priory that was at Bridge End is the source of the stone?

I took this shot for the interesting mixture of textures on this part of the old building. I was pleased to see the rusting cross of the end of a tie beam filling the space on the right and giving some balance to the old door and ivy on the left.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 43mm (86mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On