Meliorative murals

click photo to enlarge
Most towns have a grubby corner, a place where time and weather do their work without anyone fighting back. Grubby, dilapidated buildings, litter, weeds and saplings growing wherever they choose, broken glass, rust and rubble; somewhere that slowly declines and tries to drag the surrounding area down with it.

On a recent visit to Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire I came across just such a place. A site with rusty, corrugated metal buildings surrounded by rusty, corrugated fencing. I have no idea what it was or is - except an eye-sore. However, someone, perhaps the town council, perhaps the owner, perhaps guerrilla artists, had decided that something needed to be done to brighten up this corner of what is, largely, a pleasant town. The answer seems to have been to commission someone to paint murals on the perimeter fencing. And what a good job they have done. On the dark, end of November day that we walked by the fence was positively neon in its impact. I liked the unnatural colours, the contrast with the rust-brown beyond, the way I had to work a little to decipher the images, eventually picking out the people with their umbrellas (or are they parasols?). I've said elsewhere in this blog that I'm generally not particularly keen on murals as a means of brightening up an area. Here, however, I readily concede that they are doing a great job.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17.2mm (46mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The Shambles, Settle

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Today's photograph shows a building in the centre of the small market town in Yorkshire where I was raised. It is called "The Shambles". Like the more well-known Shambles in York this name is said to derive from "shammels", the Saxon for shelves, ledges or benches. It is in the centre of the market place, a location where, in towns across Britain, you invariably find old and interesting buildings. This structure has steps at the left and right that lead down to a basement level with six shops, above that is the next level seen through the arches, where there are six more shops. Over these, reached by stone steps at the right side of the building are six, small, two-storey dwellings. The two lower floors date from the seventeenth century whilst the upper dwellings are Victorian. Over the years a couple of members of my family have lived in the Shambles.

This building, along with the former town hall of 1832, the Georgian column and drinking fountain, and the buildings that mark the periphery of the market place, all offer much of visual and historic interest to the visitor. However, like many market places across the land, it is converted (for six days of the week) into a car park that is crammed with vehicles. The exception is Tuesday - market day - when it is crammed with stalls and vehicles. Whilst one must be glad that the space continues to host a market, the permanent presence of cars really does lessen the appeal of the area. There is no respite, even at night, from the infernal combustion engine, as my smaller photograph shows. In Britain some enlightened towns that are trying to rescue these civic spaces from the car, but they are few and far between, and in Settle, below the limestone crag of Castleberg, buildings are closely packed and space is at a premium. So, to fully appreciate the town's market place it is necessary to mentally expunge the vehicles - not an easy task!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (30mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

King's Lynn passage

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What to call a narrow way to a house behind other houses? In Yorkshire such a route might be called a "ginnel" though that is a little more like an "alley" than the entrance depicted in today's photograph. Passage seems a suitable adjective.

There are a number of such places in King's Lynn. Many are on the original streets of houses that grew up  along the waterside. They became necessary because when the river was embanked more land was made available behind each house. Extensions to existing houses and warehouses were built on the newly reclaimed land, and extra houses grew out of, or next to these. And all needed access from the main street.

The passage shown above was visible from the street; I simply pointed my camera down it to capture this picture of the collection of objects that the householder had gathered outside the dwelling's door. The bicycle with basket and "sit up and beg" handlebars made the shot and formed a nice silhouette against the sunlit yard beyond the passage.

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 38mm (57mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Buried column capitals

click photo to enlarge

What did the medieval builder do when the local population and congregation increased beyond the size that a small nave and chancel church could accommodate? Simple, he added an aisle. This was usually on the north side of the building because fewer burials were made there than on the sunny south side. How do you go about adding an aisle to a stone building? Well, you support the existing roof then punch holes in the external wall. You make these holes into an arcade of arches supported on columns so that the upper part of the old wall is secure. Then you build a new external wall with windows beyond the arcade, top it with a lean-to roof and finish off the interior. In a few short years you've added an aisle and increased the church's accommodation.

But what if the need arises to reduce the size of the church because the population declines due to, for example, the Black Death, rural depopulation, or the high cost of maintaining the old structure? Well, then you get rid of an aisle. You fill the arcade arches with stonework, thicken what now becomes the exterior wall, remove the lean-to roof and knock down the old external wall of the aisle. You can re-use the windows by placing them in the walling that fills the arcades (see small photograph).

Of course, you have to make these walls thick otherwise the old column capitals may still be visible. And even if they're not, a Victorian antiquarian may well reveal them and turn them into a feature demonstrating the longevity and building history of the church. Oh, and you might find that a future parishioner makes use of the crudely carved thirteenth century capital as a charming place to position a small vase of flowers to beautify that part of the nave. An example of this is the subject of today's photograph taken in St Andrew at Donington-on-Bain, Lincolnshire.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Old barn

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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

Old sheds

click photo to enlarge

At some time in the future a photographer will stop in front of an old agricultural shed and say to his friend, "Weren't these twenty-first century steel framed buildings, with their green, powder-coated, pressed metal walls and roofs wonderful". They'll be extolling the virtues of a structure that many today see as an abomination, a blight on the countryside.

However, it doesn't take an enormous leap of the imagination to see how an eyesore becomes an icon: how the stone-built Yorkshire Dales barn, the height of modernity in the nineteenth century becomes the ancient listed building of today. Or how the brick-built, terracotta-tiled barn of the eighteenth or nineteenth century in East Yorkshire or Lincolnshire, structures associated with the agricultural "improvers" who dispossessed the poor of their land, becomes the rustic and romantic backdrop to desirable country living.

Whether anyone will "Ooh!" and "Aah!" over this pair of ramshackle sheds is another matter. Yet, they too carry a record of the past in their timber and block construction, as well as a reflection of the neglect and the harsh weather they have experienced. I came upon them among fields of vegetables in the flatness of the Lincolnshire Fens. The rising sun was driving off the morning fog, but enough remained for it to obscure the horizon and isolate the sheds from their background. They were housing some large pieces of new timber, a commodity rare enough in this intensively farmed area, and ragged though they were they were, they were still good enough to provide valuable protection.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: Off