The colours of stone

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One of the pleasures of visiting medieval churches is not only admiring what the medieval masons and sculptors did with the stone, but appreciating their choice of stone. "Country" stone, that is to say the local stone, is the choice of many churches for obvious reasons. However, churches in areas lacking building stone as well as larger buildings such as abbeys and cathedrals frequently sourced specialist stone from more distant locations - perhaps Caen in France, the isle of Portland, or the quarries at Barnack, or at Ancaster in Lincolnshire..

Time always shows whether builders chose well. I've seen churches with stone that has been crumbling for centuries and others where the mark of axe, saw and chisel are almost as clear as the day the block was first shaped. But, good building stone was not always available and the masons had to make do with what was supplied. Sometimes the local discolourations of a stone mean that the building takes on a patchwork hue, especially when a restorer has sourced original stone with which to make repairs. This example at Horncastle in Lincolnshire exemplifies that.

At Great Malvern Priory in Worcestershire multiple hues are evident in the stonework of the fine tower. The reds, browns, greys and creams reflect the geology of the area. The number of colours is multiplied by fresh-looking replacements sitting next to worn and weathered pieces and is complemented on the north side by the green of lichen. The colours greatly add to the charm of the building. I noted them the first time I visited the building fifteen or so years ago, and I determined to photograph them on a visit we made the other day.

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 122mm (183mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:250 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

Games, money, myopia and heritage

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Our government of political pygmies makes much of the need for cuts in public expenditure and the fact that, as far as the current financial crisis goes, "we're all in it together". However, virtually every day they do something that undermines these claims; that demonstrates it's the poor, women, the old, public sector workers, the marginalised and the cultural community who will bear the brunt of the spending cuts.

Last week the government shot themselves in their collective feet once again. Fearing that the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games might be a touch underwhelming compared with the efforts of previous Games they immediately sanctioned a further £41m taking the budget for this single short spectacle to over £80m. Then, turning their attention to security, decided to almost double that budget too - from £282m to £553m. If, like me, you see the Olympic Games as an optional, low importance expenditure, you can only gaze open-mouthed at the facile way in which sums of this magnitude are found and disbursed. Then wonder turns to anger when you consider what it might have been spent on.

I can think of countless more worthy recipients of £300+m but I'll mention just one. The body that channels public funding into helping to maintain our architectural heritage - including buildings such as the one shown in today's photograph - is called English Heritage. In October 2010 it had its grant cut by 32%. A reduction of that order is not so much a cut as an amputation. Surely, even the most myopic politician is capable of seeing that the few tens of millions it would take to restore the funding would generate revenue year on year from increased tourism. In fact, our politicians don't seem to understand the main reasons why visitors come to Britain and seem to think that the Olympic Games and their increased spending will be repaid by more tourists. Fat chance say I.

Today's image shows the porch on the west range at Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk. This religious site was was closed in 1537 and fell into disrepair and ruin. However it is still possible to see something of what it was from the extant walls, buildings and foundations. Much of the site dates from the late C11 and C12, with additions from each subsequent century until its demise. The porch is a relatively late building with a fine mixture of local styles represented on its facade.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sempringham Priory

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Anyone looking at today's main photograph who saw the preceding blog post will be thinking, "OK, I see St Andrew's church, but where's the priory?" The answer is, it's under the long, regular shaped patch of uncultivated land in the middle foreground.

Like many medieval priories, abbeys, and monasteries, the building erected by St Gilbert and his followers that was the birthplace of the Gilbertines, the only monastic order to be founded in Britain, was abandonded in 1538 on the orders of Henry VIII. The Dissolution of the Monasteries as this act of vandalism was known resulted in the disappearance of many fine buildings. Others became ruins that later generations and their poets and painters found romantic. Quite a few ended up converted into rich men's houses. Some were reduced in size with an aisle left to be converted into a parish church. Local examples of the latter include South Kyme church and Croyland Abbey at Crowland.

At Sempringham the Clinton family bought the Priory and had the great building taken down. A hall was built on the site, probably using the stone. This had a shorter life than the ecclesiastical building that it replaced, and all that remains today of both buildings are foundations below ground and some surface rubble. A well associated with the Priory can be seen in the corner of the churchyard, and the outline of the canons' and nuns' (the Gilbertines uniquely admitted men and women) fishponds can be seen by a small stream. As we walked across the field we noticed that the ploughman had thrown a few large stones, scored by the plough, onto the track, something that many generations of ploughmen must have done as they kept turning up evidence of the great buildings below the soil's surface.

The main photograph was taken towards the end of our walk as we passed the church and Priory site at a distance. Earlier in the day we'd walked on a path nearer St Andrew's. It was then that I took the smaller photograph from a viewpoint where I took a similar shot a few years ago.

For more of my photographs of Sempringham church and its long-gone Priory see here and here for a fine old door, and here for a similar view to the smaller one above.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 80mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Romanesque capitals, Leominster

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It is customary for English Romanesque and Gothic churches to have a west door, which, though it is used much less than the south door (usually entered through a porch), is nonetheless bigger and more ornate. The west door was used much more in medieval times when processions figured larger in the ceremonial of the church. They are used occasionally today, but for the most part they remain closed except where they are still the main entrance, and then the large doors usually have a smaller one that is inset.

West doors are taller and wider than any other door in a church, and the columns, arches and capitals that surround them are often highly decorated. Today's photograph shows the capitals on the north side of the west door of the Priory of St Peter & St Paul at Leominster, Herefordshire. These were carved around 1140, and stylistically are Late Norman (Romanesque). The main carving is above a piece of rope moulding that encircles the column. They show a bird, a man who looks like he is tending plants, and a snake. Each figure is part of an elaborate interlace. The side of each capital that faces south, and which we can't see, has these motifs repeated and affronted. Above these remarkable carvings is an abacus decorated with bead, a sort of flat dogtooth and triangular leaves. The fertility of imagination and the crude liveliness of Norman carving has always held a fascination for me, and I couldn't let my visit to this fine building pass without securing this image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 25mm (50mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Looking back No. 1

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Nostalgia isn't what it used to be - it's much worse!

Two of the principal culprits for the current obsession with looking over our shoulders at the past are multi-channel television and the internet. In theory the more TV channels you have, the more choice you have, and the better quality viewing you experience. In practice the expanded air time is filled with repeats of recent programmes or re-runs of ancient ones, because it costs so much less. The internet, via the likes of YouTube and fan sites, enable the nostalgic to indulge the most obscure tastes in music, comedy or drama. You like Bagpuss - there he is, Mouseorgan and all. The Goon Show - easy to find. Obscure and not-so-obscure 1960s rock groups abound, and on the back of this new exposure polish their Zimmer frames and hit the road again. Not so long deceased pop groups are revived after ever shorter periods out of the public eye - was it only 10 years ago that the Spice Girls and Take That were assaulting our ears with their vacuous ditties, and why are they doing it again? Oh yes, the money!

There is an upside to the ready availability of the past. It means you can find a better alternative to today's offerings! A while ago, when the evening's TV offered little but reality twaddle, I discovered the Pogues' excellent version of the Ewan MacColl song, "Dirty Old Town" on YouTube - a Salford man's piece from 1956, covered by an Irish band in 1985, and introduced to me in 2007! But this recycling of the past also means that the current producers of popular culture don't have to try as hard. If pop songs and TV shows are no longer the disposable fodder that we once thought them to be, then there's no need to make as much new stuff, and it doesn't have to be as good - because it can easily be leavened with sprinklings of yesteryear's output.

All of which leads me to this photograph that I took at the end of September. I was looking back through the images that I took during my absence from blogging and this photograph of St Andrew's church at Sempringham, Lincolnshire, caught my eye. This building is the only above-ground remains of Sempringham Priory, the monastery where, around 1130, St Gilbert started the sole English-founded monastic order, the Gilbertines. The order was unique in admitting both men and women, and, far from ensuring its popularity, this fact may have accounted for its relatively poor acceptance!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: Off