Beautiful tiny gardens

This terrace with cottage-like fronts is on an urban street in Ledbury, Herefordshire. I've often walked by it and enjoyed how so much has been made of so little. The small canopy porches break up the essentially flat facades and give a focal point to the exterior of each dwelling. Rather than fill the space between the public pavement and the house with solid material - stone, concrete, gravel etc - a very modest garden strip, about two feet deep, has been created and the owners have used it for conifers, annuals, perennial, shrubs, climbing and rambling roses, and pots with plants. This has transformed the buildings and given them a pretty, homely, almost rural character that is a pleasure to behold.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

Medieval timber porch, Brampton Abbotts

Quite a lot of the oak timbers of the south porch of St Michael's church, Brampton Abbotts in Herefordshire, date back to the 1300s when the structure was first erected. Any wood that was rotten and unable to be salvaged was probably replaced in 1907-8 when a wider renovation was undertaken by the architect, W. D. Caroe. The wooden pegs that hold the pieces together would have been drilled out where required and then replaced with new. It is not unusual to find timber porches that have lasted for many centuries. The fact that oak hardens as it ages, and that the tradition is for a south porch that dries out quickly in the sun accounts in part for this.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Fan vaulting

It's always a pleasure to come across fan vaulting. This way of supporting and embellishing a stone roof is peculiar to English Gothic and dates from the years around 1500. This particular example is in the south porch of Cirencester church and consequently is invariably lit by a raking light from the entrance: often they are lit by artificial light to show off their beauty. It received some restoration in 1865 by George Gilbert Scott and he, doubtless, simply made good what he found.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

St Andrew, Hampton Bishop

It is a characteristic of medieval churches throughout Europe that they are mainly constructed of local materials and that, consequently, though they share similar architectural features, they nonetheless differ from region to region. Herefordshire churches tend to feature a lot of Old Red Sandstone and timber framing. The example above has a stone tower extended upwards using the latter. However, porch at the church of St Andrew at Hampton Bishop appears to eschew the plentiful stone for a harder less red variety. And, in the carved vesica near the apex of the porch what appears to be terra cotta proclaims the symbol of the patron saint.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100