What A Difference A Lens Makes...

 ...or does it?

A trip to Bressingham Gardens in Norfolk. Six photos taken with my close-up macro lens. Six with the widest angle lens I have. And a final half-dozen with my favourite telephoto lens.

CLOSE-UP AND PERSONAL

THE WIDE BOY

TAKING A LONG VIEW

Take care.

A Lifetime's Work

History's random and ragged path has left us a heritage that's full of surprises. Sometimes things turn up in places where you might not expect them, and at other times things survive through chance happenings which we can no longer fully explain. We've just been on a garden visit (don't panic - you'll see those pictures next time) and on the way home we'll take a short diversion, passing wheatfields and outdoor piggeries, to a onetime market town that is nowadays just a big village.

St Peter's and St Paul's church at East Harling is clearly a first-rate parish church which stands in a large churchyard which these days is managed for nature. Hang on a minute....lets have a closer look at that tower....

Architecturally it's called a flèche, a small spire made of timber and lead, but you don't see many as ornate as this, with miniature flying buttresses. Anyone living here would feel they were home as soon as they saw such a singular feature appearing above the treetops.

Like most English villages there's been a church here since at least Saxon times, but most of what we see here today dates from the second half of the fifteenth century and was financed by one woman (albeit with some financial assistance from at least two of her three husbands).

That lady was Anne Harling who was born here in 1426. Like many wealthy families they took their surname from the village on which their lands were based. She was the only child and heiress of Sir Robert Harling and his wife, Lady Jane Gonville. When Anne was just nine years old her father died in France.

Unlike so many important men who are depicted in full armour on their tombs, Sir Robert was actually killed in battle. Anne thus inherited some 23 manors throughout East Anglia. She was so wealthy that there was some dispute about who would become her guardian. Strangely enough it was someone you might have heard of - Sir John Fastolf, on whom Shakespeare based (very loosely) the character of Sir John Falstaff. Fastolf carried out the major part of his responsibility by marrying Anne to a wealthy man when she was just twelve.

Once she became an adult she began improving the church, rebuilding the aisles, erecting the fancy spirelet and battlements which we saw on the tower, and beautifying the interior. The wooden screen, which you can see in the above photo, was designed to enclose that corner of the building to serve as a chantry chapel for the tomb of her parents.

As you can see it's quite an elaborate structure which has survived the centuries well. It's worth closer inspection...

It must have been quite something when freshly painted. It also now encloses some later tombs, most notably that of Sir Thomas and Lady Alice Lovell....

This is a sixteenth-century memorial, very much in the pompous style of that era. They certainly didn't want the people of East Harling to ever forget them!

A handsome couple were they not?

Anne Harling, who did so much for this church, lies in the tomb shown above, with her first husband. There's much to see here, but I'll just show you a few more before we get on to the most important feature.

I really liked the lion armrest on these seats. They also have "misericords" or "mercy seats"; we've seen these elsewhere and, you may remember, besides folding down to serve as normal seats they also provide a perch for those who were supposed to stand through long sermons. They are recorded by British Listed Buildings as being from the fifteenth century, but they must surely have been extensively repaired more recently; the carving is altogether much too crisp and the lion far too realistic to date from earlier times.

There's a splendid hammerbeam roof in the nave which receives little attention in any of the literature; probably because it's so gloomy up there that it's very difficult to see. It's only when I brightened up that part of the photo on the computer that the details swam into view!

What we mostly came to see is that large East Window. You'll notice that there's a woman doing some cleaning and a red plastic bucket on the altar. They were getting ready for a "church tea-party" at the weekend. If we want to fully appreciate the window we'll need to look through a telephoto lens....

Annunciation

These windows were also paid for by Anne Harling, which means that they are from the fifteenth century and have survived the attentions of those vandalistic puritans, who destroyed so much elsewhere.

Nativity

We know how these windows were saved, but we don't know exactly when or why. At some time they were removed to the hall, presumably when it became clear that they'd be destroyed if left where they were, but was the intention to beautify the hall or to return them once safe to do so?

Adoration of the Shepherds (detail)

When they were returned they were put back in the wrong place. They were originally intended for the side chapels, where it would be much easier to see the individual panels than high up in the East window, where they are now.

Crucifixion

The windows were moved once again during WWII to prevent possible bomb damage.

Assumption

There are many more scenes from the life of Christ than I've shown you here. You can find them all on the exhaustive Norfolk Churches website, one of several places I regularly consult before visiting any churches in that county.

Robert Wingfield: 

second husband of Anne Harling

Ann's first two husbands are also represented in recognition of the donations which they made to her grand project. It's also known that there was once a panel to Anne herself, pictured kneeling at her prayer desk. But it was presumably badly damaged at some time and is no longer in existence.

fragments

Who knows, maybe parts of Anne's window are incorporated into this panel of rescued fragments. I must admit I rather like the mysterious abstract quality of these jumbled pieces.

Back out into the sunshine once again with a view across the churchyard wall to the Grade II listed Eastfield House, which dates from the 1840s - yours for £1,619,000 according to the latest valuation.

Take care.

A Lynford Scrapbook

It should be easy enough: go out on a sunny day to Lynford Arboretum in Norfolk and photograph the autumn colours.

But, while glancing through some of the many books and websites that inform this blog, I noticed that the church in the scarcely discernible village of Cranwich looked interesting. We could pop in there on the way.

And what a gem it is. A Saxon church with a round tower and a thatched roof set back off the road in an oasis of greenery. It's a church that could easily have fallen into disuse; its small and aging congregation could never have been expected to keep it in good repair. However a grant from the charity English Heritage sparked renewed interest in the building.

Everything I read online said it was open every day, but when we got to the porch we found the door firmly locked. Perhaps the keyholder was lingering over their bacon and eggs this morning....oh well, off to the arboretum.

Sun was streaming through to illuminate the maple leaves, though photographing the wider scene proved unusually tricky.

Someone was cutting the grass, making quite a mess and plenty of noise. We sought out the tranquility of the woodland.

The low winter sunshine was raking through the trees and lighting up the bracken which is just beginning to turn golden.

The gnarled oak trees were also backlit by the November sun. We made our way to the old bridge where we met a birdwatcher who told us there was a flock of Crossbills** feeding in the trees at the back of Lynford Hall. We steered our footsteps in that direction but had no luck locating these handsome birds. Our helpful friend must have told everyone he met about the flock, but no one we met had managed to see them.

** the links take you to the RSPB's new improved website that now includes outstanding photographs

Even if the handsome red birds had flown elsewhere, at least this handsome red tree had the decency to stay put and be photographed!

The local Mallards were swimming on a shimmering mirror of gold. Another friendly birdwatcher said he'd seen a Kingfisher and a Grey Wagtail up at the weir, so we dawdled on in that general direction. It was unlikely that the Kingfisher would hang around but Grey Wagtails often linger. 

What does it matter if you fail to spot the birds (or take your intended photographs) when autumn is putting on such a splendid show anyway? Some of the trees here are species planted in the grand days of the Hall, when its grounds spread far and wide.

The same tree hanging upside-down in the waters of the lake - an ornament for the ornamental lake. Of course, the Kingfisher and Wagtail had moved on! Those of you who remember my excursions here in earlier years may recall that this is the place where the Hawfinches are and we made our way around to the meadow where they are most often seen. Thanks to some help from more birdwatchers we struck lucky and a pair of Hawfinches sat posing for us for several minutes. Too far away for photos, but near enough to see them clearly through the 'scope.

It would be good to say that I searched out this perfect trio of Shaggy Inkcaps deep in the woods, but they were actually growing right beside the car park as we made our way back to have our sandwiches!

In the afternoon the skies clouded over and caused a soft, diffused light to fall over the scene. The colours of the birches in particular sang out beneath the grey skies. The walk here, alongside the flooded sand and gravel pits gets a lot less visitors than the paths near the arboretum, but it is not without its charms.

Silver Birches were among the first trees to colonise the land once the quarrying ceased, though the Forestry Commission are also very active here, as they are in much of the wider area.

The sandy soils are not much use for agriculture, though free-range pigs do well nearby; the fast-draining sands mean that even pigs can't make it too muddy. The Forestry Commission has its largest lowland forest here and, though it was once uncompromisingly planted with endless conifers, it now contains areas for wildlife and recreation.

I don't know how much is forestry and how much is nature here, but it's certainly pretty!

I couldn't resist an impressionistic take on the gentle autumn shades beneath the overcast sky.

And here's a pretty pastoral scene - but it's actually part of "Stanta" or the Stanford Military Training Area, 30,000 acres (12,140 hectares) that the army took over in 1942. The populations of six villages were evacuated and told they would be able to return after the war, however the army has always found some reason why they needed to hang on to the land. 

I think I nearly always photograph this isolated house when I pass - there can't be many dwellings with such ornate windows. This was, of course, supposed to have been a simple post about the colours in the arboretum, but we seem to have digressed somewhat!

It was still mid-afternoon, but we were already losing the light. Time to pack up and travel homeward. As often happens I didn't quite get the shots I was hoping for but we still had a randomly varied day.

Perversely, once we were on our way home, the sun managed to find a gap in the clouds, just above the horizon, and line itself up with unerring precision to shine straight into our eyes.

Take care.