Underfoot 2

The Victorian age is like an enormous shout, the echoes of which still rebound around us. Railway stations, waterworks, civil and commercial offices. Even if our local bank is now a wine bar called The Bank the chances are it's Victorian. And then of course there's the churches. Whether original or restored, their impact can't be exaggerated. Today I was told to poke my nose in at my local, to see (and smell) the glorious flower arrangements from last Saturday's village wedding. The church itself is also Decorated (14th century) but was restored by Goddard & Son of Leicester in 1864. After revelling in the flowers I looked more closely at the chancel floor and saw that the afternoon sun was highlighting patches of encaustic floor tiling, and whatever we may think about the Victorian mania for 'restoration', (Goddard's were more sensitive than some) I find the designs utterly compelling. The perfect visuals to go with the scent of flowers and furniture polish, all to the tick of the clock deep within the tower.

Thatcher's England

The phrase 'Unmitigated England' comes from John Betjeman's poem Great Central Railway Sheffield Victoria to Banbury. He was in turn quoting Henry James, who used the phrase to describe thatched roofs. So there can possibly be no better example of Unmitigated Englishness than this remote cottage on the Sudbourne estate in Suffolk. The hall has vanished, but all around can be seen perfect examples of the 'picturesque' cottage style, none better than this dwelling on the road from Chillesford to Orford. It's called 'Smokey House', and I've wanted to photograph it for thirty years or more, but it's either been raining, about to rain, or I've been in too much of a hurry to get into the Orford and Butley Oysterage. A truly rural idyll, windows peeping out of the great hump of thatch, runner beans and chickens supplying the shelves of a little wayside hut half tucked away in a hedge. Every time I think about it I imagine lying in bed up in the roof, the sounds of the night creeping in through the dormer window from the surrounding woods.

Railway Echo No 2

I came across this level crossing gate on a lane in Fordham, Norfolk. I would imagine the hedgerow has now completely obliterated it, reclaimed after years of service on a branch line from Downham Market to Stoke Ferry. The line closed to passengers in 1930, but a light railway order was granted so that sugar beet could be transported from a factory out on the banks of the River Wissey to the east. The Men from The Ministry tried to get these gates at Crossing No.6 (Causeway) dismantled, arguing that any approaching train would easily be seen through the trees. Which just goes to show that there were thoughtless idiots in public service even that long ago.

Posting Dilemma

I've always had a thing about post boxes, and tend to photograph them all the time on my travels. Apart from being very graphic objects- all that red and black and seriously heavy cast iron- they can be a history lesson in who was king or queen at the time of the erection, as it were. The ciphers cast into the iron can be anything from Victoria's to our own Queen, with a handful cast for Edward VIII before he abdicated. Most boxes in urban areas will be pillar boxes, with wall boxes and boxes strapped to telegraph poles proliferating in the countryside. I am intrigued as to what happened here at Woolpit in West Suffolk. Presumably the wall box capacity became too small, but you wouldn't have thought the demand for posting to have grown that much between George V's reign (the wall box) and George VI's (the pillar box). I love the fact that they are both still in use, the wall box announcing that it's 'for large envelopes please'.

Railway Echo No 1

In the fields at the back of my cottage there is a hefty-looking embankment running across the landscape. Part of the remains of a railway line that once ran from Market Harborough to Melton Mowbray, it is now covered in hawthorn bushes and bisected every now and then by the abutments of bridges. It closed to passenger traffic in 1957 and the last goods train trundled through in November 1963, but it is always a source of great pleasure to discover relics of railway life still hanging on amongst the cow pats and thistles. This photograph shows one of two brick huts with tiled roofs that sit in a field at the side of the road just outside Hallaton, which in 1957 would have been my local station. The one nearest the road is most likely to do with the weighbridge, this little building is smaller and probably stored goods sidings paraphanalia such as oil lamps, wagon hitching poles and a shelf for white enamelled cans of tea. Beyond the trees the station has been replaced by a bungalow, but railway cottages can still be seen on the road to Horninghold. I wonder if the ruminating cows hear ghostly echoes of their forebears lowing in the yard.

Market Forces

Borough Market in Southwark is one of my favourite places in London. Particularly on a Friday lunchtime when not only is there a bewildering display of good things to eat but an equally bewildering display of people, all rummaging about amongst the courgettes and celery for 'something for the weekend'. For a photographer of course it's a fruit and veg paradise, not just with photo opportunities popping-up every few seconds of green and red pyramids of apples, cascades of rhubarb and parsnips and barrels of olives dispensed with big wooden spoons, but of colourful boxes with bright lettering. Backdrops like scene changes in a theatre of greengrocery. All this and The Market Porter pub as a refreshment stop.

Mirror Image

Genuine pub mirrors are getting rarer. They were always vulnerable to someone putting a pint glass or somebody's head through them, and I don't doubt that in the excesses of so-called pub restoration in the 60s and 70s a good many were chucked into skips. We then had to endure reproduction mirrors that were, in effect, just silk-screened glass. None went as far as to reproduce the cut-glass ornamention that added so much in flashing facets of light. So I was very pleased to come across the mirrors still extant in the Dog and Duck in Bateman Street, Soho. After a hard early summer's morning photographing the Household Cavalry in Hyde Park, (a commission, not an obsession), I found myself almost alone in this tiny pub with my hand clasped round a pint of Harveys Sussex Bitter. The mirrors along the wall opposite the bar are amongst the best I've ever seen, and when I asked the chap behind the bar if he minded me photographing them he looked up from his Sun and stared at the mirrors as if he'd only just noticed they were there.