Popular house names

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In 1988 the Halifax Building Society concluded from a study of its computer database of 15 million investors that the most common house name in Britain was "The Bungalow" with 4,485 properties carrying this very boring designation. In second place was the equally uninspiring, "The Cottage", with 4,049 references, and third was the slightly more colourful, "Rose Cottage", with 2,936 properties given that name.

Tradition weighs heavy in the name that houses are given, and once given they tend to linger. I have the complete list of the 150 or so most frequently used names, and I have to say that I must have seen most of them at one time or another and none are surprising. Such names tend to be descriptive in one way or another. "The School House" is fourth in the list and always refers to a house that was formerly the abode of a teacher or headteacher when such jobs came with living accommodation."The Vicarage" (in 12th place) is a name that arose in similar circumstances though that name usually implies that the local cleric still uses it as his (or her) home, with "The Old Vicarage" usually indicating a former vicar's residence, often sold because it was too large and too expensive for the church to maintain. Trees abound in house names - "The Hawthorns", "Oak Dene", "Beech House", "Conifers" and "Holly Cottage" are just a few arboreal names found in the list. The building's location is another favoured hook on which to hang a name - "Windy Ridge", "Brookfield", "The Mount", "Fair View" and "Corner Cottage" are examples.

Today's photograph could well be from a "Rose Cottage" because properties with that name frequently feature a climbing rose near the main entrance, around a window or on a sunny wall. However, it is a second photograph from my visit to Lower Brockhampton Manor House in Herefordshire. You can see the rose on the left of the main building in my photograph of the other day.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 30mm (60mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographic and architectural contrasts

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It would be hard to find a greater architectural and photographic contrast than is exhibited in the last post and that of today. A large, angular, urban, twenty-first century health centre made of concrete and steel is just about as distant as you can get from a late 1300s, timber-framed, rural manor house with a later fifteenth century gatehouse and moat.

The photographic treatment adds to the contrast. Black and white, I think, suits the modern building. However, when I idly looked at a monochrome version of the shot above it simply confirmed my opinion that I had to stick with colour despite the "chocolate box" character that it gives to the subject. I recently commented on how, when you visit a place for the first and perhaps only time, you have to accept the weather and light that prevails. Here it was shortly after 10.00am on a June morning with scarcely any cloud in sight when we came upon Lower Brockhampton manor house in Herefordshire. Consequently the light was bright and sharp and the colours vibrant. This house is a subject I'd like to tackle on a slightly misty autumn morning with some brightness and cloud. Or perhaps a bright, late spring evening when clouds pick up a yellow tint from the low sun. As it was the strong white of the paint over the timber-framed walls had to be controlled by under-exposure, and a bit of post-processing was required to get the whole scene back to the brightness levels that my eye saw.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 9mm (18mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6 Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Yellow-tinged January light

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The light from the low winter sun has to travel obliquely through more of the earth's atmosphere than does the light from the higher sun of spring, summer and autumn. Consequently it is tinged with colour for the same reason that light from the rising or setting sun is coloured. In the second half of December and the first half of January the light of the middle of the day in Britain has a decided yellow cast. This colouration slowly retreats towards the beginning and end of the day as spring approaches. So, even if the appearance of the landscape doesn't betray the month the quality of the light in a photograph often shows that it was taken during that time of year when the hours of daylight are at their shortest.

We had a walk by the River Slea near South Kyme a few days ago. Here the slow flowing river meanders through flat farmland and small woods, past villages and their churches, and offers the photographer the element of water to add to the ever-present earth and sky. We've done that walk in winter a few times in recent years and I've photographed the medieval tower and church in their riverside locations before. On our recent walk I took a shot from a position where I remembered taking one previously. This time it was not only the yellow-tinged light that attracted my eye but also the dark clouds behind the sunlit river, fields and church. For the same reason I took a photograph of the nearby manor house, a building that has been added to over the centuries and is built of both stone and brick. Surrounded by its trees it makes the third of three very English buildings - a fortified tower/house, a small church fabricated from the aisle of a larger priory demolished during the Dissolution, and the manor house of the local worthy, a land and property owner who wielded power and influence in the locality. Today all the buildings are less than they were in terms of their position in their communities. The church has been in decline for a couple of hundred years, Kyme Tower fell out of use centuries ago, and manor houses and manorial rights are often not in the hands of the original family, where they exist at all.

Many enthusiast photographers reduce their picture taking in winter. Partly it's the inclement, cold, wet and windy weather that keeps them indoors. Others seem to prefer the photographic feel and appearance of the other three seasons. Then there are those who don't like the reduced light. I'm not one of those people. I've said elsewhere in this blog that I can't envisage living anywhere that doesn't have clearly differentiated seasons. Perhaps it's simply what I'm used to and I would get used used to permanent summer. However, the differences that seasons offer me as a person and a photographer are something that I would surely miss and would, perhaps, pleasantly surprise those who use their camera where the sun always shines.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17.4mm (47mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Manor houses, castles and churches

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It's not widely appreciated that the number of different building types was relatively few before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Houses of various sizes, churches of various kinds, castles, windmills, watermills, inns, almshouses, guildhalls, schools, universities and colleges, barns: once you've run through that list there's not much else to add to the buildings of the period before 1700. The factories, railway stations, offices, power stations, bus depots, garages, law courts, police stations, and the multiplicity of other specialised buildings we see around us are largely a product of the last three hundred years, and particularly the last one hundred and fifty.

I was reflecting on this the other day when I visited South Kyme. At the edge of the village is a trio of buildings that one sees in close proximity in many settlements across Britain - the castle, the church and the manor house. In those three buildings was vested much of the local power and influence of pre-industrial society. The lord of the manor not only owned land and organised agriculture and civil society, he also dispensed justice through the manorial court. The castle was a power base that kept order in the locality, defended the interests of the rich nobleman who lived there, and represented and supported the power of the monarch. The church (in South Kyme, originally a priory) also had legal powers and large land holdings, and its clergy were not only educated perople but a powerful presence in the community.

I have described what is known about Kyme Tower here. On my recent visit it was The Manor that drew my attention. It is a house that dates from the early 1700s and is built on the double range plan. The front range has a symmetrical ashlar facade with a plain tile roof. A nineteenth century porch conceals the original door. The back range, interestingly, is built of brick rather than stone, has a pantile roof, and what appears to be a twentieth century bay at ground and first floor level. Is this the only manor house to be built on this site? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it replaced an earlier building.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On