New uses for old parkland

click photo to enlarge
Recently, after spending several days in the Yorkshire Dales, we stopped off on the way home at Brodsworth Hall near Doncaster. We have visited this English Heritage-owned country house before but never in summer and we thought that a stroll round the formal gardens with its fine statues, and a second look inside the Victorian mansion would be a pleasant break from driving, with good opportunities for photography. How wrong we were.

What had escaped our notice was that the period of our visit coincided with a fortnight during which a film was being shot at the property. Consequently large vans, cars, catering trucks, lighting rigs and the rest littered the exterior of the building. Photographs of the house were next to impossible as were shots of the garden with the house as the backdrop. To make matters worse the cold spring had resulted in much of the colour that we might expect to see in the gardens at this time of year being absent. Green with the odd dash of blue and a few sporadic patches of other hues was the best on offer. It was very disappointing. We are members of English Heritage so we paid no extra entry fee. What surprised me, however, was that there was still a charge (albeit reduced) for entry to the gardens for non-members. It seemed a bit much given the disruption.

But all was not lost. As we left by the main drive we passed a field that had been sown with oilseed rape and that now had a fine flush of poppies too. Looking across the crops it was obvious from the splendid trees dotted about the field that it had originally been the parkland pasture that surrounded the country house. The trees looked odd rising out of the sea of rape and poppies, no trunks visible, like a regatta of yachts on a calm swell. It looked like the best photographic opportunity of the afternoon so I pulled into a passing place and took the shot shown above.

And the film? Apparently it was "The Thirteenth Tale", a dramatisation of a Gothic novel by Diane Setterfield, starring Sophie Turner and Vanessa Redgrave, that will be shown on BBC2 TV as part of its Christmas offering in December 2013.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13.1mm (35mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

English parkland

click photos to enlarge
Both of today's photographs were taken in the area immediately around the village of Aswarby in Lincolnshire. They are views of the parkland that was created in the eighteenth and nineteenth century around Aswarby Hall, the home of the Tudor Carres and later the Whichcotes.

"Parkland" in this sense is a very English term, meaning not the play and recreation area laid out by municipalities for the enjoyment of an urban population, but rather the landscaped pastures and woodlands in the immediate vicinity of a large country house. It became the fashion, during the period when the English landscape garden was at its peak of popularity to plant formally near to such a house, to have "natural" looking lawns and gardens with lakes, statues, "eyecatchers" and scenic planting beyond this, and for the farmland past the garden boundary to be "enhanced" with solitary trees in pastures, "rides" through wooods and planted avenues, and screens of trees to confound prying eyes: the very vision of pastoral beauty and tranquility. Often, to give the impression of beautiful nature continuing in an unbroken sweep from the gardens through into the parkland there would be a hidden ha-ha (a wall and ditch) to prevent cattle and sheep encroaching on the tended grounds near the house.

Parkland of this sort is still being created today, but more often that which we see dates from this earlier period. It has a quite distinctive appearance, and is often signalled by large, specimen trees in the middle of pastures, or big, non-native, often evergreen, trees in small groups. Near where I took these photographs a former pasture that exhibits both these characteristic tree plantings has been turned into a cereal field. We passed it on our walk, bare soil with enormous trees dotted here and there - an odd sight. Nearby were the expected woods with pheasant rearing pens and feeders, and an adjoining area of maize left for both cover and feed for the "sportsmen's" targets.

photographs & text (c) T.Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photo 2
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (80mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On