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Not a very Easter Sunday kind of picture, but at least there's some daffodils in it. A little piece of 'pleasing decay' found at Stembridge out on the Somerset Levels. A landscape of cold water courses running through a landscape dotted with black willow trees cowed against the wind, and those simply extraordinary Somerset church towers with their pageants of pinnacles. All with the backdrop of the Quantocks and Polden Hills. Happy Easter everybody.
Now this location really does still look like this. Could be anywhere, you might think, so I'll give you a big clue. I first discovered it on August 5th 1978, whilst on an excessively self indulgent shoot around England with a photographer, and it was here that we heard on the radio that Victor Hasselblad had died. In memoriam my friend shot film off into the air like a Provo gunman, and his Hasselblad promptly jammed, causing us to revise our plans. (Well, we still went into the pub.) Then we looked at each other, both of us thinking how incredibly appropriate our location was for this to happen. Does that help?
Oh what a joyful sign! Morph the word 'vicarage' into 'Animal' and we've got a superb cover for Orwell's farmyard classic. And it does what it says on the sign, with a field of hens over the hedge scratching about being admired by a Kellogg's Corn Flakes box rooster. And if all that wasn't enough there's a cut-out pink pig on the ridge of a nearby barn roof and another little sign talking of Homemade Cakes. All that's brilliant about the English countryside in just a twenty yard stretch of road between Southwick and Bulwick in North East Northamptonshire. Quite possibly the best farm sign I've seen; cue Viv Stanshall's Jollity Farm.
Another well-photographed English village. A regular in books called things like Our Homeland in Colour, I haven't seen it pictured in recent years. But it still looks like this, much as it did in 1972 when I used to drive here in my Mini Moke to pick up the Sunday papers from a shop on the left hand side of the photograph.
And so to the northernmost outposts of Nottinghamshire. Quite by accident I found myself on an old section of the Bawtry to Gainsborough road at a place remarkably called Drakeholes, and this pair of delightful, if somewhat forlorn, pair of lodges. Until recently they were apparently so overgrown they looked like they were constructed with architectural growths of ivy and other rampant vegetation. Now it's all been cleared away in anticipation of restoration, revealing the lodges as almost X-rays of buildings with the appearance of red brick both under the peeling stucco and in precariously revealed foundations. They once heralded a now lost driveway to Wiseton Hall, built in the early eighteenth century for the Acklom family but demolished and replaced by a smaller house in 1960. Equally remarkable is the fact that the foreground seen here is in fact the start of a tunnel on the Chesterfield Canal, which just to the north makes a sudden right-hand turn before decanting into the broad reaches of the River Trent at West Stockwith. A tiny brick tunnel entrance is just out of shot, adding another fascinating glimpse of an all but forgotten age.
This is one of England's most photographed villages. But almost never from this angle. That's because, as you can see, the sun's in the wrong place to give the traditional chocolate box kind of view. Which is why I like it. We stayed here once with my parents and our Border Collie called Newky, much loved by my father who would stand at the cottage gate every morning with her chatting to passers-by. (That's my dad talking, not the dog. Although in our family...) "Newky?" I hear you say over your Weetabix. For some unfathomable reason us young uns in the mid 1970s named our pets after the beer we drank in our respective villages. There were dogs called Barnsley (a defunct northern bitter taken over by Courage I think), Guinness, Ruddles and Newcastle Brown, which was a hopelessly impractical name for a dog that quickly got edited down to its bar room shorthand. I think there was an Adnam somewhere.
Watch out if you're ever in a car with me and you haven't been driven across Blackheath before. The chances are I will suddenly hang a right (or left) at the roundabout and head through the gates of Greenwich Park. At the end of the long tree-lined drive is one of the best views in London, down across the park to the Queen's House, Greenwich Hospital, the Isle of Dogs and that glorious sweeping bend of the Thames. To one side is the Royal Observatory with its one o'clock timeball, and everywhere else two thousand backpackers not looking at anything much at all unless it's each other. I was down here on Monday, and after dodging a traffic warden hiding amongst the trees I spotted this little tea pavilion and thought "I really like this". The shape, the use of render and red brick, the judicious lettering and of course that lovely little dovecote perched on top. I don't think much to the injudicious planters, but I could happily spend an hour or two in here, hands round a warming mug of Bovril waiting for the timeball to drop.
Not a very Easter Sunday kind of picture, but at least there's some daffodils in it. A little piece of 'pleasing decay' found at Stembridge out on the Somerset Levels. A landscape of cold water courses running through a landscape dotted with black willow trees cowed against the wind, and those simply extraordinary Somerset church towers with their pageants of pinnacles. All with the backdrop of the Quantocks and Polden Hills. Happy Easter everybody.
Now this location really does still look like this. Could be anywhere, you might think, so I'll give you a big clue. I first discovered it on August 5th 1978, whilst on an excessively self indulgent shoot around England with a photographer, and it was here that we heard on the radio that Victor Hasselblad had died. In memoriam my friend shot film off into the air like a Provo gunman, and his Hasselblad promptly jammed, causing us to revise our plans. (Well, we still went into the pub.) Then we looked at each other, both of us thinking how incredibly appropriate our location was for this to happen. Does that help?
Oh what a joyful sign! Morph the word 'vicarage' into 'Animal' and we've got a superb cover for Orwell's farmyard classic. And it does what it says on the sign, with a field of hens over the hedge scratching about being admired by a Kellogg's Corn Flakes box rooster. And if all that wasn't enough there's a cut-out pink pig on the ridge of a nearby barn roof and another little sign talking of Homemade Cakes. All that's brilliant about the English countryside in just a twenty yard stretch of road between Southwick and Bulwick in North East Northamptonshire. Quite possibly the best farm sign I've seen; cue Viv Stanshall's Jollity Farm.
Another well-photographed English village. A regular in books called things like Our Homeland in Colour, I haven't seen it pictured in recent years. But it still looks like this, much as it did in 1972 when I used to drive here in my Mini Moke to pick up the Sunday papers from a shop on the left hand side of the photograph.
And so to the northernmost outposts of Nottinghamshire. Quite by accident I found myself on an old section of the Bawtry to Gainsborough road at a place remarkably called Drakeholes, and this pair of delightful, if somewhat forlorn, pair of lodges. Until recently they were apparently so overgrown they looked like they were constructed with architectural growths of ivy and other rampant vegetation. Now it's all been cleared away in anticipation of restoration, revealing the lodges as almost X-rays of buildings with the appearance of red brick both under the peeling stucco and in precariously revealed foundations. They once heralded a now lost driveway to Wiseton Hall, built in the early eighteenth century for the Acklom family but demolished and replaced by a smaller house in 1960. Equally remarkable is the fact that the foreground seen here is in fact the start of a tunnel on the Chesterfield Canal, which just to the north makes a sudden right-hand turn before decanting into the broad reaches of the River Trent at West Stockwith. A tiny brick tunnel entrance is just out of shot, adding another fascinating glimpse of an all but forgotten age.
This is one of England's most photographed villages. But almost never from this angle. That's because, as you can see, the sun's in the wrong place to give the traditional chocolate box kind of view. Which is why I like it. We stayed here once with my parents and our Border Collie called Newky, much loved by my father who would stand at the cottage gate every morning with her chatting to passers-by. (That's my dad talking, not the dog. Although in our family...) "Newky?" I hear you say over your Weetabix. For some unfathomable reason us young uns in the mid 1970s named our pets after the beer we drank in our respective villages. There were dogs called Barnsley (a defunct northern bitter taken over by Courage I think), Guinness, Ruddles and Newcastle Brown, which was a hopelessly impractical name for a dog that quickly got edited down to its bar room shorthand. I think there was an Adnam somewhere.
Watch out if you're ever in a car with me and you haven't been driven across Blackheath before. The chances are I will suddenly hang a right (or left) at the roundabout and head through the gates of Greenwich Park. At the end of the long tree-lined drive is one of the best views in London, down across the park to the Queen's House, Greenwich Hospital, the Isle of Dogs and that glorious sweeping bend of the Thames. To one side is the Royal Observatory with its one o'clock timeball, and everywhere else two thousand backpackers not looking at anything much at all unless it's each other. I was down here on Monday, and after dodging a traffic warden hiding amongst the trees I spotted this little tea pavilion and thought "I really like this". The shape, the use of render and red brick, the judicious lettering and of course that lovely little dovecote perched on top. I don't think much to the injudicious planters, but I could happily spend an hour or two in here, hands round a warming mug of Bovril waiting for the timeball to drop.
