Enough is as good as a feast

click photo to enlarge
The purpose of our recent visit to Belton House, a National Trust property near Grantham in Lincolnshire, was to see the interior. On our first visit in January only the grounds were open to visitors.

As we wandered from room to room, taking in painting after painting, tapestries, elaborate furniture, ornate plasterwork, collections of objets d'art, hand-painted wallpaper, row upon row of books and the rest, I quickly felt sated and the title of today's blog post came to mind. The fact is, there was simply a superfluity of everything, and everything dripped opulence. I found myself wondering how many thousands of people had spent their lives in penury, scraping a living, hungry, dying before their time, so that the cosseted residents of this stately pile could agonise over whether to buy a Meissen figurine or one from Limoges, whether it was to be a Gobelins tapestry or one from a less prestigious source, or if walnut burr might look better than figured mahogany on the new console table.

I took a few interior photographs but was happier when we were outside once more. The gardens didn't induce the same state of mind and I took a couple of photographs of a statue that looked like Ceres, but without the stalks of wheat in her container. She was standing in some gravel surrounded by lavender in the Dutch Garden at the north side of the house. As it happens, today's title could also apply to the two photographs that I'm showing. I prefer the simpler shot over the wider angle view, even though it is a product of the foreshortening of my lens and not an image that occurs to the naked eye. On reflection, my feelings about this house may have been partly  influenced by the fact that in recent weeks we had visited two other National Trust properties that were on a smaller, more human scale. We are shortly going to see, for the second time, Southwell Workhouse. That should be a contrast!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bridge End Garden, Saffron Walden

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Bridge End Garden in Saffron Walden, Essex, was largely created in the 1840s by the Gibsons, a wealthy Quaker family with links to banking and brewing. Unusually, it didn't adjoin their residential property and they would have had to walk a short distance to enjoy its beauty.

The Garden is subdivided into seven smaller, themed areas that include a Dutch garden, maze, rose garden and kitchen garden. It features a number of carved plaques and statues that date from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, some made of Coade stone. A brick pavilion and a larger summer house also remain from the 1840s. Given the distance between the family home and their garden these small buildings would have been not only pleasant places to sit but also essential places of retreat from inclement weather.

The gardens suffered a gentle decline during the twentieth century and towards the end of that period were in need of attention. In 2003 a major programme of restoration was undertaken by the local community with the help of Heritage Lottery Funding and sums from other charitable bodies. Over a five year period a transformation was achieved. The aim was to return the gardens to very much the condition they exhibited at their flourishing best. So, species were planted that were available in the 1840s and the restoration of the built fabric was undertaken with sensitivity to the original materials. The kitchen garden restoration was part of the second phase of work and two Victorian-style greenhouses were installed. One of these has soft fruits such as peaches, nectarines and apricots, the other features citrus fruits such as orange, lemon and lime. Part of one of the greenhouses is used to grow annuals to display in the newly constructed plant theatre.

The gardens are open to the public, free, and offer much of interest to the visitor. They are a fine example of what can be achieved by the goodwill, effort and imagination of a community working together for a common and shared goal.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 47mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO: 125
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

Big hedge

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"Love thy neighbour, yet pull not down thy hedge", Old English Proverb

The saying above has a French version: "Hedges between keep friendships green", and both echo the oft-quoted, "Good fences make good neighbours". That being the case, what are we to make of the hedge shown in today's photograph? Its function doesn't appear to be to encourage a proper neighbourliness, so much as banish everyone and everything from sight. Looking at its height and undulations, "hedge" seems be a misnomer for this edifice constructed out of rows of yew trees grown closely together, and clipped as one structure when their foliage met.

It can be found in the grounds of Ayscoughee Hall, Spalding, Lincolnshire. This building, erected as a house in the early 1400s, and given to the town in the early 1900s, is now a museum with public gardens. However, the hedge must date from its time as a private residence. Research shows the yew trees date from successive plantings, the oldest probably being eighteenth century. It is cut in a way that is fairly common in the grounds of large English country houses (and churchyards), and fulfils the purpose of dividing up the gardens, screening one section from another, acting as a wind-break, and providing a mountainous backdrop against which plants can be displayed. Oh, and it offers gardeners a scary few weeks teetering thirty feet up on ladders as they give it the annual cut!

Impressed by the oddness of this living barrier I decided to show something of its scale by including two people sitting on one of the nearby benches.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 108mm (216mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Pan

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Statuary has a long tradition in English gardening, but it reached its high-point in the eighteenth century. The Renaissance had begun to impinge on this island's artistic sensibilities from the sixteenth century, and took a stronger hold in the seventeenth. But it wasn't until the Georgian period that it ruled supreme. Then Classical architecture, art and mythology were the reference points for everyone who wanted to create a country house with landscaped grounds.

Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire has 98 acres of gardens and grounds that feature sculpture at every turn. The landscaping was designed in the twentieth century on eighteenth century principles (though the house dates from the twelfth century with additions from many later centuries). The skilfully placed statues include a lead group by Cheere, a marble Apollo of 1765, mid-eighteenth century busts of Roman emperors, urns by Scheemakers and Delvaux, and much more. They also include the statue of Pan shown above. This Greek god of shepherds, flocks, mountains, hunting and rustic music is generally known for two things - his sexuality and his pipes. At Anglesey this piece is one of a pair that face each other across a narrow path through a yew hedge. The yew has been deliberately and skilfully grown around the statues making them look like they are emerging from the foliage. They seemed to me to be less well-used than they might be in this tight location, so I took this shot of one of the pair to show him off to better effect against his green background.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13mm (26mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On