Martello Tower, Aldburgh

England's Martello Towers were built on the south and east coasts between the years 1804 and 1812. They were fortified buildings with guns and a small garrison designed as part of the country's defences against a Napoleonic invasion. The tower at Aldburgh, Suffolk was the last to be built. In plan view it is four intersecting circles (a quatrefoil), on each of which a large cannon was mounted. The structure required about a million bricks. Today this building is managed by the Landmark Trust and can be hired as a rather different holiday cottage.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Canon 5D2     2012

Willy Lott's cottage

If there is a more famous cottage in Britain than the one shown in this photograph I can't think of it. The building is Willy Lott's cottage at Flatford Mill near Dedham, Suffolk. Willy Lott (1761-1849) was a tenant farmer who lived there and worked thirty nine acres nearby. It is well-known because it appears in a number of paintings by John Constable (1776-1837) whose father owned Flatford Mill, the building behind me when I took this photograph. Constable's most famous work, "The Haywain" features the cottage.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Timber-framed houses

I once read that the order and symmetry of the exposed woodwork of timber-framed medieval and later houses revealed something about their age. Broadly speaking asymmetrical, seemingly (though not in fact) haphazard wok was usually an indicator of early work - say, the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. The more orderly, symmetrical timbers that were often arranged to form patterns and sometimes include ornamental quatrefoils and such were invariably later, usually dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By that reckoning this photograph taken in Lavenham, Suffolk, shows some reasonably early timber-framing.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Garden pavilions

I know a few people with garden pavilions, small, wooden structures, often open at one or more sides, sometimes with a door and windows. They offer somewhere to sit and admire the garden, perhaps have a cup of tea or and alfresco snack. No one I know, however, has one quite as grand as this example at Melford Hall in Suffolk. Built of brick with a tile roof in 1559 it is contemporary with the great house and from its upper floor offers a fine view of that Tudor building as well as the garden by its perimeter wall.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Photographing Queen Elizabeth

I'm not a fan of our system of constitutional monarchy so you'd be unlikely to see me going out of my way to photograph Queen Elizabeth II. But Queen Elizabeth I is another matter. Any photograph I took of her would, of necessity, be of a representation, and there are some very interesting examples to be seen. The portrait in stained glass shown above is in Melford Hall, Suffolk. It dates from the nineteenth century and is based on a well-known Elizabethan-era painting. As I waited for the photographer in front of me to complete her shot it occurred to me that the inclusion of her silhouette might make for a more interesting image.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10