Museum names and obfuscation

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You'd think that one of the primary aims in giving a building a name would be to supply part of a unique address, to identify it to people passing and searching for it, and to indicate its purpose. The latter is not always required but in certain instances it is. There's little point in giving a town hall any other name other than the words town hall preceded by the placename: to do anything else would cause confusion and waste people's time. Similarly with art galleries. Yet in their naming the sound principle just described in relation to town halls is often ignored. What would you expect to see at the Wallace Collection in London? A collection of what? It happens to be fine and decorative arts, but you wouldn't know that from its name.

A public building in Lincoln has a similarly confusing name. It styles itself simply, "The Collection". Perhaps those naming it were influenced by the London example I just mentioned. Yet in Lincoln The Collection is a museum. There seems to be something of an acknowledgement that people won't necessarily guess what the building is about because some of its printed literature describes it as The Collection Museum. But, of course, a museum is a collection, so this awkward construction has built in redundancy: it is somewhat tautological. It seems to me that it is a confusion that should have been seen and then avoided. What is wrong with the name, Lincoln Museum?

We're back, it seems, to yesterday's theme of daft names. And like that post we are discussing a building that is better than the average for the city of Lincoln, despite its unfortunate name. I like the way that stone (is it artificial?) has been used in strongly horizontal lines with randomly disposed holes. I enjoy too the way one enters into a relatively dark foyer then passes into a beautifully lit "Orientation Hall" before entering the main exhibition spaces. The materials of wall, roof and floor have been well chosen and well put together. The exterior is also attractive, its avowedly modern lines fitting in well with the older buildings on its hillside site.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (27mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Time-worn stone steps

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There are few things that indicate the passage of time better than worn steps. To gaze upon stone (or even wooden) steps that have been eroded into concavity by the repeated passage of hundreds, or more likely thousands of feet, is to experience a tangible understanding of years becoming decades and decades becoming centuries.

On my first visit to Wells Cathedral many years ago I made a point of having a look at the chapter house's stone stairway. I knew this from an architectural photograph by the English photographer, Frederick Henry Evans (1853-1943). The undulations in these stairs made by myriad feet add to the beauty of the shot and give it a quality that it would otherwise lack. The "sea of steps" makes you think of the people who have walked up and down them.

I've photographed steps regularly during my life though never with the success achieved by Evans in his shot. On one occasion, however, I took a shot of steel steps, but with added son's added feet and deliberate blur, and result became one of my favourite images. On our recent visit to Bolsover Castle I tried this subject again but this time without blur and  with time-worn steps. The result doesn't please me as much as my earlier shot with feet but I think it's not entirely without interest.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm (48mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec
ISO:6400
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

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

Building restoration

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It would be quite easy to fill several shelves of a library with books about the repair and restoration of historic buildings. Within the architectural profession this kind of work has become something of a specialism with some individuals and firms doing it to the exclusion, pretty much, of anything else. One of the aims of architectural restoration is to conserve the original structure as far as is possible. This is sometimes not possible because the ravages of time can make stone, timber, tiles, in fact whole sections of buildings, unsafe and beyond repair. In such cases sensitive replacement becomes the aim, either following the design of what was originally there, or with modern work that sits harmoniously alongside the original. In the U.K. work on historic buildings is subject to a number of pieces of legislation that have the effect of protecting our built heritage, and allowing us to see old buildings very much as our forefathers saw them.

Last year I was talking to a Yorkshire Dales farmer about a stone-built barn that I have known all my life. It originally dates from the seventeenth century though it received some modification in the nineteenth century. Fifty years and more ago I saw this barn standing alone in its field by the river. Today it has a small cluster of corrugated metal and timber barns next to it. Yet, because the building is "listed" and subject to laws about what can and cannot be done with the structure, it still looks pretty much as it always has done. In fact, when the stonework was recently pointed it had to be done with a traditional lime mortar to maintain its original form and appearance.

Given all that, what are we to make of this section of the west wall of the tower of the church of St Mary at Horncastle in Lincolnshire? This structure, like most of the church, is made mainly of green Spilsby sandstone. As a building material this "greenstone" leaves a lot to be desired because it weathers, rots and flakes relatively rapidly. However, when this section of wall was built in the 1200s it was the best locally available stone, certainly striking to look at, and its longevity (or lack of it) was probably not known. The light green and dark green stone in the photograph are new and older pieces. However, as this photograph shows, the original builders also included pieces of brown sandstone and occasional lumps that verge on the ruddy and tan. Consequently the restoration of the crumbling tower wall has followed the same pattern. The reason it looks so multicoloured is because the weather has yet to subdue the brightness of the newer stone. I liked the patchwork effect and the decidedly odd appearance, one that I have never seen on any other church, and so took this shot of it.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 60mm
F No: 7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

The price of stone

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I grew up in the Yorkshire Dales, an area of upland Carboniferous Limestone. Around the small market town where I lived the geological phenomena known as the Craven Faults produced a fractured landscape that, in places, marked the separation of the light grey rock from darker Millstone Grit. The limestone quarry at Giggleswick was in full production, its crushed stone being taken by overhead buckets to wagons at the nearest railway station. Bigger quarries still could be seen up the Ribble Valley near Horton-in-Ribblesdale. However, I discovered as a boy that wherever I walked, whether it was on limestone or Millstone Grit, there were old, small quarries dotted about the landscape where people had cut and broken stone from the plentiful outcrops and cliffs. This had been used to make the drystone field walls, the barns, farmhouses and domestic buildings of the locality. Because they were small they often looked like natural features, and in most cases they blended in with their surroundings very well. This was in strong contrast with the big, commercial quarries that produced aggregate in large quantities and had associated vehicles and industrial plant to facilitate the process. Their impact on the location was (and still is) in the nature of enormous, disfiguring scars.

On a recent visit to Breedon Hill in Leicestershire I was reminded of the quarrying that was familiar to me in my childhood. Though not on the scale of those in Ribblesdale, this limestone quarry is also making a significant and damaging mark on its location which is an area of ancient settlement and the site of an important medieval church. It's ironic that the main product here is a "gold" coloured aggregate that is marketed as suitable for maintaining and enhancing the appearance of historic buildings!

That said, I did find photographic interest in the stone crusher that I could see from the wall at the edge of the churchyard above the quarry. Stone is being delivered to the machine's hopper by the digger at the right of the image, and is then passed though  its bowels and broken into aggregate of different sizes which are deposited in separate piles ready for collection. Looking down on the scene that resembled an alien landscape I reflected that the price of stone is much higher than the cost per tonne to the customer.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 70mm (140mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On