Dunster, village and castle

Dunster in Somerset is one of the many UK villages and towns that grew up below the walls of the adjacent castle. Today many of these castles are derelict, having suffered during or after warfare. However, the castle at Dunster was remodelled and extended over the centuries and transformed from a predominantly military structure to a large, private house. Since 1976 it has been in the custody of the National Trust and welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Corfe Castle

click photo to enlarge

Corfe Castle is the name of a village and of the ruined castle to be found there. The village was an area of occupation c.6000 BC and was probably still so c.50AD during the Roman occupation. It is an area of limestone in the Purbeck Hills, Dorset, and many of the the village buildings and roofs are made of this stone. The castle we see today was founded shortly after 1066AD. In the Civil War of the C17 Corfe Castle was a Royalist stronghold and after hostilities ended Parliament ordered that it be "slighted" i.e. deliberately wrecked with explosives. What we see today is the remains following the slighting with further damage by local people who saw it as a useful quarry for building stone. It was my misfortune to see it on an afternoon when the sky was virtually cloudless.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Beach at Beer, Devon

The oddly named coastal village of beer in Devon gets its name from the Old English bearu meaning a woodland grove. The present village is wooded and has a stream flowing through it down to the sea. Today the beach reflects the settlement's two main sources of income - fishing and tourism. In the past Beer was associated with smuggling that made use of the cove and the caves in the cliffs.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Late October view of Goodrich

Coppett Hill is an area of common land above the Herefordshire village of Goodrich. It is owned and managed by a Trust of local people that bought the land in 1985. On a recent walk we looked down from near the summit (201m, 659 feet) at the rabbit-cropped grass, over the autumn-brown bracken to the houses and church below and then across the south Herefordshire countryside. The ploughed fields, pastures and the fast-appearing winter wheat framed by green, brown and yellow hedges and trees told the story the advancing season, as did the showers and intermittent sun that dogged our brief walk.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Goodrich, Herefordshire

September is a good time for photographing agricultural landscapes. The cereal harvest is in and those fields have a sandy hue, dark or light depending whether they have been ploughed or are still stubble. The pastures often have a slightly yellow tinge in September, but where a second crop of hay or silage has been taken from a meadow they can be very pale green. Other fields, rainfall permitting, are frequently deep green. And, of course, the hedges of the field boundaries are deep green with few autumn colours yet evident. So the land was when we looked down on the village of Goodrich from nearby Coppett Hill, its church spire prominent among the clustered houses.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Hoarwithy church

The sight of Hoarwithy village church among Herefordshire's rolling green pastures, hedges and woodlands, strikes the passer by with an interest in historic architecture, as very incongruous. Were to be seen among the dry, stony, sun-baked countryside of Tuscany its tall, narrow tower, rounded arches, apsidal chancel, loggia and roof of Roman tiles would arouse much less interest. The fact is English church architecture of the countryside is invariably Gothic or Romanesque, is rarely Byzantine (or Italianate), and when it is, usually signals the Roman catholic religion. Here it is a nineteenth century building of the Church of England.

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