A humble Hampton Court

click photo to enlarge
Humble isn't a word that is usually found in the same sentence as Hampton Court. The reason being that most people immediately think of the royal palace of that name in Richmond, London. This was originally the property of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, was restored by Thomas Cromwell in the early 1500s, and was seized and enlarged by Henry VIII in 1529. Its early ornate brickwork and later extensions by Sir Christopher Wren are ostentatious to be sure, but not humble. Nor can Hampton Court in Herefordshire be so described. It started life as manor house in 1427 but today is a castellated country house, the result of work done in the mid-C19 to make it grander and more comfortable. Today it is well-known for its gardens that are open to the public.

However, when I look through the timber-framed archway of Hampton Court on Nelson Street in King's Lynn, the word humble seems quite appropriate, and not just because of the comparison with its two namesakes. Though parts of it were once owned by relatively wealthy people it has been extended and re-built over the years, and has usually been the home for multiple families. It is today subdivided into 15 flats. My earlier photograph is accompanied by a piece that tells something of its history.

When I came to take the mouse-eye view photograph above I decided not to do the obvious and focus on either the buildings or the nearest cobbles. Instead I set the aperture to f1.8 and focused a metre or so away leaving near and far out of focus.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Hampton Court, King's Lynn, Norfolk
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Destroying the past

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The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic and political activist
Despite having great sympathy with Simone Weil's statement I don't find it difficult to think of a worse crime than destroying the past. However, to remove evidence of mankind's past is, undoubtedly, a particularly destructive thing to do. Our sense of the present is greatly informed by our knowledge of the past, and to lose one is to impair the other. The past - in printed or image form, in memories and in buildings and artefacts -  is all that we have to remember those who came before us. To rub them out is to extinguish people, and that is always wrong, whether they are living or dead.

If we confine ourselves to buildings we find that Isis are not the first group to wilfully and deliberately destroy ancient structures for their own ends. The Taliban did it in Afghanistan and in 1942 the Luftwaffe did it in their so-called Baedecker Raids on Britain, a response they said, to the switch to area bombing by the RAF. However, it is not always warring factions that are most responsible for the destruction of the past. All too frequently it is simple neglect or misplaced planning and "progress". In the 1960s and 1970s many ancient buildings that today would have been preserved, adapted and turned to new uses, were swept away in the name of progress. It took the destruction of the Euston Arch to galvanise people against the vandalism that was taking place and begin to bring to an end the loss that was taking place.

Tattershall Castle (above) was one of the buildings in the forefront of early building preservation legislation. In 1910, in a ruinous state, it was bought by Lord Curzon and sensitively restored. It had been destined to be dismantled and parts sold abroad. His experience with this building prompted Lord Curzon to press for some laws to protect old buildings resulting in the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act of 1913. As a direct consequence of his actions we can still experience something of this ancient building - as the mother and daughter are doing in today's photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Beauty and Heckington windmill

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It's good that Heckington windmill, the last remaining 8-sail windmill, is undergoing a restoration, and that the buildings around it are being refurbished and remodelled to make the site into a place that can better welcome visitors. It's good too that the rear of the premises will no longer be the eyesore that it has been for many years. And, it's good that the sails that were succumbing to rot have been replaced and are as they should be. All this is a testament to the hard work and selfless effort of the volunteers who have made, and continue to make, it happen.

However, as I view the mill from the A17 when I'm driving past, or when I stop off in Heckington and have a closer view of the building an unfortunate yet inescapable thought always occurs to me - Heckington mill is undoubtedly the least visually pleasing English windmill that I know.

I recently saw, on successive days, Heckington windmill then Boston's Maud Foster windmill. The temporal proximity of my viewings brought home the agreeable elegance of the latter (probably my favourite windmill) and the ungainliness of Heckington. Where Maud Foster has warm, subtly coloured brickwork contrasting with the white of sails, cap, gallery, windows etc and visually interesting subsidiary buildings, Heckington has cold, stark black and white and seems to tower in an awkward way over a disconnected jumble of sheds. I'm sure the redevelopment will improve the latter aspect. However, it is Heckington's main distinguishing feature that I find most displeasing - eight sails. It is simply too many, makes the mill look top heavy and gives the building something of the character of a whirring desk fan - even when it's stationary! By contrast, the five sails of Maud Foster seem to be the ideal number offering visual interest, pleasing angles and less visual weight.  Four sails are very common on English windmills and usually look fine, six sails are less common and that number is beginning to lose the coherence that characterises fewer sails. Five sails are also less frequently seen than four but that number is definitely - to my mind - the optimum: eight is simply far too many!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

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

Northgate Brewery, Newark on Trent

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The building shown in today's main photograph is the old maltings of the former Warwick's & Richardson's Brewery on Northgate, Newark-on-Trent. It has languished, empty and derelict since its closure in 1966 and I find it remarkable that it has survived so well. Perhaps the steps taken to make it safe - bricking up doorways etc - have helped its preservation. The maltings were constructed in 1864 using local bricks from the Cafferata company at Beacon Hill. The necessary ironwork was supplied by the Trent Ironworks of W.N. Nicholson & Sons.

This essentially functional building - it housed kilns - has been given a decorative veneer. The orange brick has bands of cream brick dogtooth and dentil work The window and door openings are emphasised by surrounds of the same cream brick. When it was a working maltings railway trucks brought barley alongside and a cage steam lift hoisted it into the building. The roof outline is characteristic of maltings with cowls at the top of the pyramidal shapes. Shapes fashioned after either flowers or leaves act as tails that catch the wind and rotate the cowl in the desired direction to assist with ventilation.

As we looked at the decaying building we wondered whether its fate would mirror that of the main brewery buildings nearby. This rather grand structure, an essay in studied asymmetry, has been converted into flats with shops and a cafe behind the open Gothic arcade at the bottom of the main facade. The transformation from industrial to domestic use has been handled well - with one exception. At the end of the main facade a cuboid block with rectilinear windows and balconies has been appended (just visible at the right of the smaller photograph). It is clad in timber which has weathered to a a dirty brown/grey. For reasons completely lost on me this finish of hardwood boarding has been very popular in the UK in recent years. It rarely looks appealing and in our relatively wet climate it invariably stains and looks grubby. It has done so here to the detriment of the overall scheme.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/3200
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wrawby windmill

click photo to enlarge
The mill at Wrawby that stands proudly on the escarpment above the Ancholme valley is the sole survivor of the Lincolnshire post mills. There were once many windmills of this design, structures that were mounted on a single vertical pole and turned to face the wind by means of a projecting beam rather than the later fantail. Wrawby is a Midlands development of this basic post mill design with a roundhouse made of brick surrounding the supporting trestle and some of the weight of the upper structure borne by wheels and runners on the top of the brick wall. A windmill has been on this site since at least the sixteenth century though the building we see today was constructed in 1832 from the remains of an earlier open trestle mill. It worked until the second world war powered by wind, then steam and finally oil, and after its abandonment fell into serious disrepair.

By the 1960s the mill was close to total collapse: sails were missing, much of the weatherboarding had fallen off, and an application was made for its demolition. However, a stay of execution appeared in the form of a trust set up to preserve it. What followed has been described as "the most comprehensive rebuilding of a windmill undertaken in this country since the nineteenth century." Original components and newly fabricated timbers were assembled to restore the mill to how it had been. The work was completed by a mixture of enthusiasts, academics, former millers, and carpenters and culminated in its official opening on 18th September 1965.

Prior to the invention of spring regulated sails that allowed shutters to be positioned to catch the wind or let it pass through, many windmills used what were known as "common sails". These were cloth sails, edged canvas made of hemp, flax or cotton, fixed to the wooden structure of each sail. Like the sails on a sailing ship the area of canvas could be reefed in if the wind speed increased to a speed greater than was required for efficient milling. An old photo shows this type of canvas sail fixed to the wooden sails of Wrawby mill.

The weather  on the afternoon of my visit - hazy sun trying to burn its way through cloud that had made the morning quite dark - gave enough shadow to model the structure but left the bluish sky looking rather weak and washed out. Consequently I converted my photographs to black and white and applied a digital orange filter to increase the contrast.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (54mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Old windmill, new sails

click photo to enlarge

I hadn't anticipated dull and dreary skies when we decided we'd visit Moulton windmill to see its new sails. After all, the forecast was for sunshine and showers. But, as we sat and ate our lunch and heavy drops of rain started to fall I began to fear the worst. Even as we journeyed the few short miles to the mill, the tallest in England, I retained a lingering hope that a patch of clear, or at least interesting sky would coincide with our time there. And it did. Unfortunately it was when we were inside the mill having a guided tour! Consequently the shots of the exterior that I'd hoped for didn't materialise, and the photograph above, taken from the external fourth floor reefing gallery (balcony), is the only one that I took of the new sails that is worth reproducing. However, I did get a photograph of Moulton church from the same balcony, and I include a photograph of the mill's stones that I took on a previous visit.

The original sails of Moulton windmill were removed after they were damaged in a gale in 1894, a severe "blow" that inflicted injury on a number of Lincolnshire mills. In subsequent years the millstones were powered by steam, diesel, then electricity, before milling finally ended in 1995. The charitable trust that acquired the mill set themselves the task of restoring it to the point where it could begin wind-powered milling again as a tourist attraction The most important step on that journey was accomplished on 21st November 2011 when new sails were fitted. The next step will be taken on 29th April 2012 when, wind permitting, the sails will be allowed to turn. Then, on 5th May 2012 (also wind permitting) milling will be undertaken. The resulting bags of flour are to be sold to visitors and local businesses.

Over the years I've looked at a number of windmills, read a few books on the subject, and increased my understanding of these buildings/machines. However, on my recent visit to Moulton I clarified a point that I was unclear about concerning millstones. I've seen many circular millstones that are made of a single piece of stone, and many that are made with a number of interlocking pieces of stone that are held together with iron bands around the rim. Why the difference? Apparently most of the single stones are older, Derbyshire gritstone examples. The pieced millstones are made of French stone that originally came into the country as ballast in ships. The latter could be assembled very quickly whilst the former had to be ordered years in advance and cut out of the outcrops on the Derbyshire moors. Clearly the assembled stones were cheaper, could be ordered nearer to the time they were required, and were as good if not better than the locally sourced stones. Moulton has examples of both kinds.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
 F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Hampton Court, King's Lynn

click photo to enlarge

The over zealous restoration of old buildings is rife in the UK. This especially happens when such properties are in private hands. If the building is Listed the wilder fancies of the owners are often restrained by the legislation. However, where this isn't the case you too often see work designed to make the property look "quaint", or conform to the owners' conception of an idealised past that owes more to Hovis adverts, television adaptations of classic novels and the illustrations of Kate Greenaway than to a sympathetic understanding of the building and its history. So, traditional, practical finishes and details are eschewed in favour of picturesque embellishments that appear to owe more to increasing the re-sale value of the property than to any appreciation of the qualities necessary to present the building authentically. However, though such treatment of old buildings is more common than one might wish, instances of good restoration in both private and public hands are not difficult to find. Hampton Court in King's Lynn, Norfolk, is one such example.

This cobbled courtyard surrounded by four ranges of buildings dating from C14, c.1450, c.1480 and c.1600 has elevations constructed of brick, stone and timber-framing. The west range incorporates a former warehouse that would have fronted the river before it was embanked. All the present structures may have been built on the foundations of earlier buildings, all have been the subject of later maintenance and updating down the centuries and all were restored in 1958-60 at a time when they were in very poor repair. In 1962 they were converted into the fifteen flats that we see today. The current name probably refers to John Hampton, a master baker who became a freeman of the town in 1645. The restoration of Hampton Court has been widely acclaimed. Pevsner speaks of it "setting a standard for such work which is reached depressingly rarely." He was right, and to stand today under the half-timbered entrance arch on Nelson Street and look into the courtyard is to look back in time.

I 've photographed this courtyard a few times but I've never been satisfied with the shots that I've secured. On a recent visit I decided to concentrate on a small section, the corner where the northern range (on the right) meets the western range. I'm much happier with this outcome.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 58mm
 F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On