HERITAGE PHOTOGRAPHY Journal of the Archaeology & Heritage Group AUTUMN 2017
Chairman’s Letter ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE GROUP COMMITTEE Chairman Chelín Miller ARPS 49 Stephens Road Tunbridge Wells Kent TN4 9JD heritageweb@rps.org Secretary Dr Mike Sasse Flat 4 8 Boyne Park Tunbridge Wells Kent TN4 8ET mike.sasse@btinternet.com Treasurer Garry Bisshopp ARPS 6 Belgrave Crescent Seaford Sussex BN25 3AX gb.photo@btinternet.com Committee Members Ken Keen FRPS Rodney Throng LRPS Jim Tonks ARPS Eric Houlder LRPS Walter Brooks Gwil Owen ARPS Published by the Archaeology and Heritage Group of the Royal Photographic Society November 2017 ISSN 0-904495-00-0 Copyright in all text and photographs is held by the credited authors, or as otherwise stated. No part of this publication may be reproducd, transmitted or stored in any form without prior written permission of the Publisher.
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n this issue of Heritage Photography we have, again, a varied range of articles, which have photography at heart. I am always reminded by our illustrious member and former Chairman of the group, Ken Keen FRPS, that what we all have in common is PHOTOGRAPHY - that’s what we are all about, and we should not forget that. One of the main reasons why people join the Royal Photographic Society is to further their knowledge and obtain a distinction. In this issue we have included some images from a successful ARPS panel by Keith Lynch that he produced with photographs from Burleigh House. It is an exquisite panel, both aesthetically and technically; and I hope this will encourage our members who are thinking about ‘going for it’. The front cover is by Sara Rawlinson, as part of her article on Cambridge Universitiy libraries. Written with a personal approach, we get a glimpse into the mysterious world of these old college sanctuaries of wisdom. Mike Sasse explores the English landscape and how its been shaped by man, from marshes to holloways and burial mounds. Over centuries, human activity has transformed our landscape, the evidence is there for the keen eye to discover.
John Eaton presents an impressive set of photographs all the way from Buffalo, USA. We are glad to include articles from all over the world and I would encourage you to send contributions, wherever you are. The back cover is a fun collage of photos taken during Group outings. These events take place where we have a volunteer to organise them! So, if you think you know a place that other members would enjoy visiting, don’t hesitate to suggest to the Committee and we will arrange a field trip. Local help is welcome, to get in touch with venues or do recce trips. For many years now, I have been visiting Dartmoor with my family, as it is the area where my husband grew up. In a way, it is like “going home”, although I never lived there. And every time I go, I discover so many new things. With its dramatic whather conditions and isolation, I never tire of exploring its remotest granite formations and sacred woods. I leave you, then, with “Homeward Bound”, a photo taken during our summer pilgrimage, and a promise to visit with A&H group members in the spring.
Editorial Board Chelin Miller & Eric Houlder Cover photo “Wren Library, window detail” by Sara Rawlinson ARPS
Heritage Photography Heritage Photography is published by the RPS Archaeology & Heritage Group twice a year: Spring and Autumn (contribution deadlines are 1st March and 1st September, respectively). All contributions should be submitted to the Editor. Items covering any aspect of archaeology and heritage photography are welcome, including inspirational stories, technique, reviews of equipment, exhibitions, books, etc. Copy should be sent as .txt or .doc files by email. Digital images (portrait or landscape orientation) should be supplied by email or through a file sharing platform (such as Dropbox, wetransfer or similar) or CD rom. Please rename your photos: YournameSurname_PHOTONAME, CMYK or sRGB colour mode, high resolution (300dpi) jpgs or tifs, file size approx 6MB. For more information, please contact the Editor at heritageweb@rps.org.
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BURLEIGH HOUSE ARPS Panel by Keith Lynch.
The Blue Silk Bedroom
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urghley House in Stamford, Lincolnshire is a magnificent and imposing historic house. The vast, impressive rooms and corridors give a sense of the tastes and traditions of past generations.
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South Closet
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State Bed, Black&Yellow Bedroom
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Black & Yellow Bedroom
North Closet
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Ceiling, Second George Room
The Chapel
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Queen Elizabeth's Bedroom
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Landscape and Heritage
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By Mike Sasse
ngland’s landscape is both highly varied and significantly shaped by the hand of man. Traditional landscape photography concentrates on the impressiveness and beauty of the natural world, or uses natural forms as a foil for spectacular light (‘painting with light’). I share the view of our current Chairman that photography of those aspects of the landscape that relate to human influence, or are intrinsically linked to built heritage, can be considered as heritage photography. Landscape and built heritage are often connected. Take two lowland areas, Romney Marsh in Kent (with adjacent lowland in Sussex), and the flatlands (‘fenland’) of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk . The former is not a true marsh at all. Drainage of the land to generate lush grazing was already underway in the Saxon era, as the land level slowly rose. So Romney Marsh is an old landscape dotted with many mediaeval churches and villages. Both the built heritage and the landscape tell the story of earlier times, when Rye was on an island, and ships sailed up to unload at the port of Old Romney, now a small settlement several miles from navigable water. Most of the ‘fenland’ is not true fen either – the alkaline wetland that deserves this description is now found only in small pockets of carefully protected habitat. Drainage here started with the Romans, but much of the
landscape we see today is the result of efforts from the 17th C onwards, So medieval churches cluster on ‘islands’ of higher ground, and buildings of this age are generally absent down on the levels. Drainage was challenging – the peat shrunk as it dried out, and the land, now lower than before, was again inundated. Wind power, and later steam, diesel or electric power were used to pump water into the drainage channels, which eventually became higher than the surrounding land, and sluices controlled the movement of water between the network of channels. All these aspects of man’s taming of the Fens are prominent in the modern landscape. Other areas of England contain the sites of deserted settlements, often abandoned hundreds of years ago. There may be remains of the church or other stone buildings, but sites are often marked just by the moat of the manor house, the outline of property boundaries or the sunken ways delineating former village streets. Sometimes can be seen grazing land marked by parallel raised strips – this is ‘ridge and furrow’, the visible remains of arable fields cultivated with mediaeval ploughs, and preserved under grassland where grazing replaced arable farming. Landscape and traces of buildings are part of the same story, particularly so where farmworkers were driven out by landowners keen to convert their land to less labour-intensive sheep rearing.
Sluice gates on South Holland Main Drain, Lincolnshire.
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The Iron Age fortifications of Maiden Castle nr. Dorchester, Dorset – heritage and landscape feature
Earlier patterns of travel can be traced through ancient ways that are no longer part of our modern transport network – long disused grass tracks, sunken lanes or holloways deeply incised into the landscape by centuries of use, or long-distance routes like the Ridgeway in Wiltshire that follow the high land. These features are surely part of our heritage. In West Cornwall, small fields of irregular shape are found to date in some cases from over a thousand years ago, the granite having simply been cleared off the fields to create boundary walls. In parts of Wiltshire the many burial mounds, often of Bronze Age date, seem part of the landscape as they break the skyline on ridge tops. The same could be said of the many Iron Age hillforts that occupy prominent positions in the landscape. Hadrian’s Wall is an important heritage site, marking the northern limit of Roman influence, yet the impressiveness of the wall itself is partly due to its setting, the Romans having built some of it on the naturally elevated line of the Whin Sill, an outcrop of tough dolerite. So built heritage and landscape often go hand-in-hand, and I would suggest that it is the purpose and intent of images as well as the subject matter which justify their inclusion as heritage photography.
Windmill, Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire – used not for grinding corn but for drainage.
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Fenland water management, Norfolk - flooding of the Hundred Foot Washes between the Old and New Bedford Rivers acts as a reservoir to protect valuable farmland.
Ancient holloway in Dorset created by centuries of use – Hell Lane nr. Symondsbury.
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Old Romney Church, Kent – once the church of a thriving port.
Hadrian’s Wall following the line of the Whin Sill, Northumberland
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Illuminating Libraries of Cambridge By Sara Rawlinson ARPS
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Binding detail, Old Library, Queens' College
ibraries are rooted in my mind as the perfect location for escapism and amusement within a calm and tranquil environment. My weekly visits to the library as a child, borrowing eight books at a time, created a sense of devotion so strong that I often today refer to libraries as ‘houses of the holy’. Later on (as a grownup), academic lecturing turned out to be a great way to help disseminate knowledge, but it didn’t have my desired accompaniment of visual aestheticism. As such I turned to a photographic study of libraries – both to honour these memories and also to honour the many librarians in my family.
like shelving joins and lecterns, ceiling beams and floor tiles, cupboard handles and key holes. Photographs also encompass the spirit of the main room and decorative features, like stained glass windows, cornices, busts, and decorative wood carvings.
The old College libraries at the University of Cambridge, some built as early as mid-15th century, hold impressive priceless collections of medieval manuscripts, incunabula, first editions, and large collection bequests. Over the centuries, these volumes and their buildings have been protected, preserved, and painstakingly restored by the librarians and conservators. The libraries in which such volumes and collections are held are normally accessible to members of each particular college, or others who request to consult a specific and otherwise-unobtainable book.
Libraries included thus far are: Trinity College’s Wren Library, Queens’ College Old Library, Peterhouse’s Perne Library, Corpus Christi College’s Parker Library, St John’s College’s Old Library, Christ’s College Old Library, Darwin College’s Library and Study Centre, Clare College’s Fellows’ Library, and the departmental libraries of Earth Science.
My large photographic study of these old Cambridge College libraries aims to honour features that enable this dissemination and preservation of knowledge. Rather than focusing on the knowledge contained within the volumes, I illuminate the aesthetic environment in which such books and documents are displayed and preserved. In addition to book spines at various stages of deterioration, preservation, and restoration, photographs focus on integral architectural and structural details,
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Technically, the photographs were taken with a tripod and shutter release cable. I use Nikon D750 with Tamron’s 15-35mm f/2.8, Tamron’s 70-200mm f/2.8, and Sigma’s Art 50mm f/1.4. I also consistently waited for the cessation of reverberations due to people walking, and wore socks (both for warmth and sensing said reverberations).
Nearly 70 of these images were on display and available to purchase at my major solo exhibition at Michaelhouse in Cambridge (CB2 1SU) from 2-14 October. For the exhibition, the two areas showcased the physical spaces and specific architectural features within the libraries, whereas photographs of the book spines were transformed into a ‘bookcase’. Alongside the exhibition, a one-day workshop was held on Sat 7 Oct, providing participants an opportunity to look at the architectural and decorative features of the 14th century chapel and chancel of Michaelhouse – one of the oldest churches in Cambridge. Please contact Sara if interested: photo@sararawlinson.co.uk .
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Old Library, St John's College
Library, Darwin College
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Traces left Behind at “Concrete Atlantis” By John Eaton ARPS
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races Left Behind is a visual tribute to the role Buffalo’s grain-elevators and silos played as strategic economic infrastructure, technology innovators, and architectural icons in America’s industrial heritage. In the 19th century Buffalo gained leadership in handling grain shipped from the plains of North America to feed the growing population in the rapidly-industrializing and rapidly-growing east-coast cities. This was a critical element in supporting the dynamic economic development of the then center of US industry. Grain was shipped from the far west of the Great Lakes on large lake steamers to Buffalo at the eastern end of Lake Erie (the Niagara Falls prevented further progress by ship), where it was offloaded and stored in silos before being shipped on to the east coast via the Erie canal and the railroads. Through to the Second World War, Buffalo maintained it’s leadership position in the grain trade: but alternatives increasingly diverted traffic away from it’s facilities, finally culminating in the opening of the St Lawrence Seaway in 1957. Consequently many of Buffalo’s elevators and silos closed down in the 1960s and 70s, abandoned and left to slowly decay. All of the transhipment and storage was handled manually until, in June 1843, a local merchant, Joseph Dart, Jr., and
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an engineer, Robert Dunbar, put the world’s first steampowered grain elevator into service – the elevator lifted the grain from the ship to conveyors on top of the silos in which the grain was stored until it was drawn-off for onward shipment from bins at the bottom of each silo. However the steam-driven wooden elevators and silos were very susceptible to fire and were destroyed on a regular basis. It wasn’t until the end of the century that electric-motor driven elevators were introduced, initially with brick silos and steel storage bins (the brick Great Northern still stands). In 1906, Buffalo’s first tall (~125’) cylindrical grain-silos were constructed along the Buffalo river using slip-formed reinforced concrete (think of intercontinental missile silos, only above ground!) -- a major innovation: easy and quick to construct, strong and, above all, fire-proof. It was followed by more than 40 more in the next three decades.
“In abandonment and death they evoke the majesties of a departed civilization” ~Reyner Banhama, “A Concrete Atlantis” 1986. Autumn 2017
At the time European architects cited these monumental edifices as key examples of modernist functional design. In 1913, Walter Gropius published a series of images of Buffalo’s grain elevators and daylight factories in the ‘Jahrbuch’, sparking international interest (though Gropius himself didn’t visit the US until 1928). These were reproduced by Le Corbusier in his manifesto, ‘Vers Une Architecture’, and recaptured by the German architect Erich Mendelsohn, who visited Buffalo in 1924 specifically to photograph and draw the grain elevators at first-hand, publishing them in his book on American industrial architecture, ‘Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten’. Also in 1924, the leading Russian architect of the time, Moisei Ginsberg, published ”Stil’i epokha” (Style and Epoch), which included illustrations of several of the Buffalo silos. The history of these structures and their importance to the development of modern architecture is well documented in the English architect, Reyner Banham’s, ‘A Concrete Atlantis’, (1986).
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Today the grain-silo’s dramatic, austere form against the skyline remains — inside, 50+years of decay alongside chaos in a black maze of derelict grain-handling equipment, machinery and workshops produces powerful photographic testimony to the original functions. From the outside the silos rise like Greek temples from the banks of the Buffalo river. Inside, the conveyors and their associated mechanics still span the tops of the silos and in the basements below the bin-bottoms are ready to disgorge onto now non-existent conveyor belts, while a maze of engineering and analytic workshops and offices provide further testimony to a once thriving enterprise.
You can visit John Eaton’s website http://www.englishmedievalcathedrals.com/
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Dartmoor Archaeology By Chelin Miller
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he archaeology of Dartmoor is special and is now recognised as being of national and international importance. Within today’s wild moorland landscapes dominated by heather and grasses can be found extensive remains of past human activity. Here can be seen prehistoric ceremonial and burial sites, some dating as far back as the fourth millennium BC; field systems and settlements three and a half thousand years old; medieval farmsteads and associated fields established nearly ten centuries ago; and remains of a tin industry which is certainly 700 years old and possibly much older, and which only ceased during the early years of the 20th century. Other, more recent industrial activity is also recorded in the landscape. The exceptionally good survival of Dartmoor’s visible archaeological remains is largely due to the durability of the local granite used for building, and to the limited extent of modern exploitation and intensive agricultural development on the moor. With so much to see in such a vast and remote area, the A&H group are organising a guided tour of some of the archaeological sites. These are my favourite choices:
Communication in remote areas Getting from one part of Dartmoor to another has never been easy. Rivers and streams, difficult to cross, traverse the moor, containing some treacherous bogs and in places lack easily recognisable landmarks. Many of the granite crosses which are so much a part of the Dartmoor landscape were probably erected in the period between 12th and 16th centuries, and most are considered to have been placed by monks of the great moorland abbeys to mark safe routes across the moor. Whitehorse Hill The unexpected discovery of a collection of objects dating to the Early Bronze Age was made during the excavation of a prehistoric burial cist on Whitehorse Hill in 2011. The unusual environmental conditions within the cist had resulted in the survival of cremated human remains together with the organic materials (which would normally disintegrate in Dartmoor’s acidic soil). These, together with other unique and precious artefacts have yielded insights into materials and technology, contacts and trade networks and given a rare glimpse into the personal possessions of
Excavating the cist at Whitehorse Hill
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Remains that appear to be of a woven bag, Whitehorse Hill
Beads made from amber found at Whitehorse Hill
an individual who lived on Dartmoor 4000 years ago. Moreover, study of the pollen and plant remains found in association with the burial have revealed the environmental conditions and land use around the time the cist was built. This was the first prehistoric burial to be excavated on Dartmoor in over a century and has allowed archaeologists the opportunity to apply the very latest techniques of scientific analysis to the remains.
of the moor, combine to form bronze, the alloy that gives its name to one of the major periods of prehistory. However, it is the work of the medieval and later tin miners that has left an enduring impression upon the face of Dartmoor. Tin is not only a major component of bronze but also (with lead) of pewter, which was used extensively in medieval times
Merrivale Antiquities High up on one side of the River Walkham lies one of the most complete prehistoric landscapes on Dartmoor, known as the Merrivale complex. Here there are stone rows, a stone circle a menhir, two cists, cairns and hut circles. The whole site lies only a few yards from the main Tavistock/Princetown road. Industrial Dartmoor Although now very much a rural landscape, Dartmoor has in the past witnessed much industrial activity. In particular, it has been a major producer of tin, but also of other minerals such as copper. The industries of Dartmoor are many and varied – mining quarrying, lime-burning, even arsenic production, gun-powder manufacture and ice-making. Tin mines The archaeological landscape of Dartmoor is dominated by the remains of the tin industry. There are good reasons for supposing that the rich veins of cassiterite (tin ore) found within the granite mass were exploited by prehistoric peoples. Tin together with copper, which can be found in the periphery
Animal hide, found in Whitehorse Hill
I would like to thank the Dartmoor National Park staff, in particular Lee Bray, DNPA archaeologist, for all the information provided and their assistance in the future organisation of photographic field trips. All images are © Dartmoor National Park Authority
Group Outings - Announcements The Archaeology and Heritage group is organising a guided visit to Dartmoor for Spring 2018, to explore some archaeological sites and places of heritage and historical interest. Also in preparation is a visit to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London after last year’s failed attempt. At the beginning of 2018 join us for an exclusive visit to the Getty Images Archive. In a small group of RPS members, you will experience Getty’s working analogue archive with an introduction by Matthew Butson, (Vice President, Getty Images,
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Hulton Archive) and Melanie Hough (Curator). During this visit you will find our more about the Getty business model, see important items with heritage relevance from the archive, hear about the history and challenges the archive faces, as well as its value today and in the future. For more details, keep an eye on the RPS website and Journal. Back-cover photos taken during various Group events.
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