Farmhouse and church

click photo to enlarge

The most common type of building to find next to an English church is, not surprisingly, the vicarage. A place of residence for the parish priest usually came with the job in the eighteenth, nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries. In fact it often still does. Another building that frequently sits next to the church is a manor house or other property owned by a principal local landowner. The "living" of a church, that is to say the right to appoint the vicar, for many centuries often resided with such a person, and the twin powers of the church and mammon's local representative were often neighbours. These buildings can still be seen around churches and are present at this one at Aslackby. However, in a rural county such as Lincolnshire a third type of building may be seen alongside the vicarage and the manor house - a farmhouse.

I've photographed such a pairing before at Billingborough. At Aslackby the farmhouse is newer than that example, late eighteenth century, extended in the mid-nineteenth. The improvement of farming techniques and the consolidation of holdings into larger units in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made some farmers relatively wealthy and this is often reflected in new, rebuilt or extended farmhouses. Here the building is L-shaped with gable stacks and has a fashionable mansard roof, a type popular in this part of the county, particularly in nearby Folkingham.The main elevation mimics, on a smaller scale, the country houses of the wealthy landowners. It is strictly symmetrical, of orange brick, with stone quoins, keystones, platband and gable copings. The semi-circular headed lattice-work porch may be original or could be a later addition. That disfiguring drainpipe surely must have been placed there more recently. The metal Xs at the top of the gable wall are the ends of tie-rods designed to control wall bowing or some other potentially troublesome movement that became evident at some point after construction.

I took my photograph on the same day as the previous two blog post images, a day whose photographic potential was curtailed by the clouds and rain that can be seen moving in on the left of this picture. Here I liked how the impending gloom splits the shot into two very distinct parts, one dark and troubled looking, the other bright and quite cheery.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Enjoying the hoar frost

click photo to enlarge

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

Watching the pink-foots

click photo to enlarge
When I lived on the Fyde Coast of Lancashire I would frequently be drawn out of my kitchen by the sound of skeins of pink-footed geese (Anser brachyrhynchus) as they passed overhead. Their honking cries and the ragged lines and chevrons became a familiar sight from the time they appeared each autumn until their departure the following spring. The Fylde flock varied in size over the years, but was usually estimated at between 7,000 and 10,000 birds.

Pink-footed geese are creatures of habit, and return to the same feeding grounds each year. Such is their predictability that some individual pastures become known as "geese fields". The birds that frequented the Fylde fed on the extensive saltmarshes at Pilling or in the Ribble estuary, when the tide permitted, and at other times would disperse, in smaller groups of a few hundred, to favoured fields of grass or winter wheat. Unfortunately their regular appearance on their preferred sites made it quite easy for the wildfowlers, so-called "sportsmen", to indulge in their pastime of killing wildlife with shotguns for pleasure.

Since I've lived in Lincolnshire I've seen brent geese (Branta bernicla) and barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) on the saltmarshes of The Wash. However, the geese that fly over my new home are not these species, but the familiar pink-foots. This morning I turned my head skywards at the sound of their familiar cries, and saw a couple of dozen flying quite low, perhaps descending into fields beyond the village. Then, whilst out for a morning walk the group in today's photograph flew past, heading perhaps, towards the South Forty-Foot Drain or the fields beyond to the south of Heckington. I have yet to find any local "geese fields", but I live in hope. I quickly took this shot when I saw that the geese would fly over a nearby Fenland farmhouse, a quietly distinguished building dating from the 1700s, and I waited until they were on the left of the frame so that they could balance the building on the right.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 53mm (106mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On