The Seven Colours

'Sculpt' Arts Trail
Our final destination on the Arts Trail was the church at West Tanfield. The installation here, 'The Seven Colours' by Eduardo Niebla, was a sound recording. It blended sounds the artist had recorded locally - church bells, the church choir, school children, the local blacksmith and the sound of water in the River Ure - with global sounds like a steam train, Gregorian chant and musical rhythms from around the world. The resulting collage of sound played for about 15 minutes and was strangely soothing. It was intended to symbolise and celebrate community and connection across all seven continents.

Though there was no artwork to photograph here, the church of St. Nicholas is filled with interest and history. It dates to the 14/15th centuries, with Victorian restoration. It holds the tombs of Sir John Marmion, a knight who died fighting in Spain with John of Gaunt in 1387, and his wife Elizabeth. The tomb has an unusual iron canopy, known as a hearse, with prickets for candles that would be lit on special occasions. It is believed to be the only one of its kind in England. The alabaster statues show Sir John with his feet on a lion (signifying a knight) and his wife with her head on a pillow held by angels.

The Marmion family lived in a manor house near the church. It is now vanished but its crenellated gatehouse, known as the Marmion Tower, remains, adjacent to the church. See it in my top photo. 

Rock of Ages

'Sculpt' Arts Trail
'Rock of Ages' by Harriet Hill is a huge sculpture like a hovering rock, suspended by cords. It is made of wool from local Masham sheep, along with straw, hay, baler twine and netting. It represents the layering of history, linking the people who have lived and worked the land in this area through the 1000 year history of the church in Well.

The church of St Michael the Archangel, in Well, dates back to the early 14th century though there were churches on the site prior to that. It holds many treasures including the tomb of Sir John Neville, last Baron Latimer of Snape, who died in 1577. There is also lots of 16th century graffiti defacing the tombs!

Wonder and War in Heaven

'Sculpt' Arts Trail
'Wonder and War in Heaven' by Jon Gabb takes its name from a fresco, by Antonio Verrio (1636-1707) on the ceiling of the chapel. Twisted branches and knotted cords, in the original colours of the now-decayed fresco, form a tangled web across the whole chapel. They are supposed to depict the casting out from heaven of Satan (Rev 12:9).

This installation was in Snape Castle Chapel, a fascinating place with a sadly damp and mouldering atmosphere, rather 'Miss Havisham' in its ambience. The castle dates back to the early 15th century and was once the home of Katherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII. It has a wonderful and interesting history (see HERE) but, trusted to the care of an agent, all but one wing were left to decay. During the 18th century the chapel (on the right of the photo below) was used as a grain store, which is thought to have been what ruined the painted Verrio ceiling, now just a blackened mess.

Much of the castle itself is a rather romantic ruin, set at the edge of the very pretty village of Snape. 

Neons from Heaven

'Sculpt' Arts Trail
'Neons from Heaven' by Silvia Lerin was a striking installation of 100 blue tubes with reflective bases, suspended centrally in the church. It is apparently about times we need guidance in our lives, looking for enlightenment. Heavenly blue light is suggested by the tubes and we see ourselves reflected as we look up at the bases. The guidance you need is potentially within you.

I'm not always sure that my interpretation of an artwork is anywhere near that of the artist's... It was an impactful piece, nevertheless and picked up nicely the touches of blue around the church, in the stained glass windows and furnishings.

The church is question was the large church of St. Mary in the centre of the market town of Masham. I've visited it before, on a rather nicer day (see HERE).  It's lovely and has the air of a well-used and well-loved church, the hub of the community.

Le Bon Temps Viendra

'Sculpt' Arts Trail

'Le Bon Temps Viendra (The Good Times Will Come)' by Ana Rosa Hopkins. This was an installation of six large cocoons, made of silk, woven metal thread and glass balls. They hung from the central tower of the church and represent the potential of human beings to change and transform: our outer facade and our inner soul, where change must start. Glass butterflies represented our fragility and hope. 

The artwork's title is the motto of the Harcourt family, who built Healey St Paul's Church, completed in 1848. It is an unusual design, by Edward Buckton Lamb, with its central spire supported on well-disguised buttresses. It is reputed to have been financed by the winnings of a racehorse, Ellington, trained in nearby Middleham. It won the Derby - but not until 1856, after the church was built. 

Cloud of Unknowing

'Sculpt' Arts Trail
'Cloud of Unknowing' by Alexandra Carr was a large perspex cube with coloured lighting, hanging in the church's nave. When we first went into the church that is all we could see, but as we moved around, after several minutes, a fog erupted from the cube, slowly wreathing the church in its vapour. The fog represents our human quest to understand our place in the cosmos and our fleeting, ephemeral comprehension of 'the unknown'. It was intriguing, anyway, and rather beautiful as it unfolded.

It was installed in the small church of St John the Evangelist in Mickley, another church dating from the early 1800s. It is constructed of cobblestones from the nearby River Ure. It has an unusual memorial window of etched glass, in memory of Lt-Col Samuel Hutchins DSO, Royal Irish Regiment, who lived locally in his later years.

Every Small Difference

'Sculpt' Arts Trail 
A friend and I spent a fascinating day touring seven churches in the area between Ripon and Masham, in North Yorkshire. They were each hosting an artwork as part of an arts trail called 'Sculpt', an Arts Council-backed project. It is part of the 'art in the churches' initiative, a voluntary effort aiming to bring contemporary art to the countryside and to utilise and showcase some of England's vast treasury of small, often ancient, village churches. The installations are site-specific, inspired by the church in which they are displayed. The trail continues until 28 September.

It was a dismal day of incessant drizzle and low cloud, not the best for photography. That didn't dim our enthusiasm (nor prevent me taking photos!) and anyway, the artworks were all inside the churches.

Our first stop was  to see 'Every Small Difference' by Sarah Williams. This was an oil-painted triptych, with reflective domes. It represents, apparently, 'the vulnerability of our planet to climate change and our responsibility to protect it'. It had painted bubbles, suggesting the delicacy of the planet and our own fragile lives. Somewhat underwhelming, we thought. I'd have liked it better if the painted bubbles had contained reflections of trees or nature.

It was hosted in the church of St Mary, North Stainley, a small and unpretentious church. It was built in the early 1800s after the passing of the Church Building Act in 1818 that was designed to provide the growing population with access to a church nearby. Like most churches, it has been added to and altered since then.

It was neatly kept and had some nice stained glass windows, including the one (left) that appears to depict the story of Jesus' raising of Jairus' daughter. Sadly, the glass panels were in urgent need of conservation, I thought. They were horribly bowed, particularly the lower panels.

I also liked the unusual mosaic memorial in the wall.

Stainforth Force - and the thin blue line

The Hoffman Kiln (see yesterday) is near Stainforth, a village beside the River Ribble. Here the river tumbles over an impressive waterfall known as Stainforth Force. In the autumn you may be lucky enough to see salmon leaping upstream over the falls. On the day we visited, the water was coming down fast enough to deter any salmon. It's not called the Force for nothing. The only species you would have spotted was 'the greater tripod-wrangling club photographer' of which there were several in evidence!

There was so much water that slow-mo photos looked a little too confused, though that didn't stop me trying...

I was intrigued by 'the thin blue line'. Someone had strung a rope swing above the falls. One can only conclude that the water reverts to a mere trickle on some days. You'd have had to harbour a death wish to swing out on the day we were there!

The Hoffman Kiln, Stainforth

I'd never heard of it before, but a camera club outing took us to the Hoffman Kiln, near Stainforth in Ribblesdale. The surrounding area is limestone country, famous for the Yorkshire Three Peaks of Ingleborough, Pen-y-Ghent and Whernside, favoured by walkers and cavers who explore the vast network of potholes and underground caves. Lightly populated and rural now, in the 19th century the area was a hive of quarrying and industry. Lime was used in agriculture, building (mortar and lime wash) and in a host of small industries like tanning, textiles and soap making. There were small field kilns across the whole area but demand began to outstrip their capacity. The Hoffman Kiln was built in 1873 by the Craven Lime Company, to produce lime, from limestone quarried nearby, on a huge scale. The kiln ceased production in the 1930s and is now an atmospheric ruin. 

It's so big it's hard to get a real sense of the whole structure (let alone a photo!) but you can walk inside. Once your eyes accustom to the dark, you can see the relics of the 22 chambers in which limestone blocks were piled up, together with coal, and burned. The chambers form a huge oval, punctuated by the archways where the loading doors were. The chambers were fired in turn. More coal was fed in through holes at the top to keep the fires burning and a system of air shafts and flues allowed the process to be controlled. The entire circuit took an average of six weeks to fire completely. The stacking of the limestone rocks and then the arduous chiselling out of the burnt lime all had to be done manually. It was horrible and dangerous work. A network of rail tracks brought in the limestone and coal and took away the processed, burnt lime. (See HERE for a more detailed explanation).

It was very fascinating to explore. The stone inside the kiln is blackened with heat and smoke. There are even small stalactites hanging from the roof and archways, where water has slowly trickled through the residual lime to form stone 'icicles'.

Petwood Hotel

Whilst I was staying with my sister in Lincolnshire, we went for a leisurely stroll around the little town of Woodhall Spa. It grew up in the 1800s, when a plan to sink a coal mine instead revealed mineral-rich spring waters, leading to the town's development as a healing spa. It's very attractive and has some interesting independent shops, including a great secondhand bookshop, where we spent quite a while browsing.

We also went for a coffee on the garden terrace of the Petwood Hotel, in the town. Its award-winning, restored gardens are beautifully kept and well-used for weddings and other events.





The hotel has an interesting history. It was built as a country house for a wealthy heiress, Baroness Grace Van Eckhardstein, in the early 1900s, after a painful divorce. She wanted a retreat, located in her favourite wood or 'pet wood'. Built in an elaborate Tudor/Jacobean style, it has lavish details such as beautiful oak panelling and a hand-carved staircase. She lived there, eventually with her second husband, although during WWI it served as a military hospital. Returned to private use after the war, it became a hotel in 1933.




At the beginning of WWII it became a base for RAF officers, notably of 617 Squadron, the famous Dambusters. They were a top-secret squadron entrusted, among other things, with the destruction of three German dams in the Ruhr, which was achieved in 1943 using the innovative Barnes-Wallis 'bouncing bomb'. The Petwood Hotel is now full of RAF memorabilia and tributes.

Wellingore

The area of Lincolnshire where my sister lives could not be more different from my own Yorkshire home area. I love exploring its fields and villages. The buildings are an interesting mix. Some are made of the local limestone, some are mellowed old brick, mostly with lovely terracotta pantile roofs. Many of them have pretty little gable windows in the roof. There is a lot of new building, though some of the houses are so skilfully blended in that you can't really tell their age. In fact, nearby, there is one whole village that has been built quite recently and it really looks like it's been there for centuries. Nowadays, there are a lot of modern executive developments too, which are generally a bit less imaginative.

I found this medieval stepped cross in the village of Wellingore (below). It would originally have had a cross head on the shaft but many of them were destroyed by iconoclasts in the 16th and 17th centuries. It may have acted as a boundary marker or a market cross. They are sometimes called butter crosses.

There is also a windmill in Wellingore, though its sails and cap were lost and the tower is now part of a private house. The base is 18th century and the upper layers were added in the 1850s. It was defunct by 1945. Windmills were common in the area at one time. Before she moved to a bungalow, my sister lived for many years in a mill house, though the adjacent windmill had long since been demolished.

Harvest time

I spent a few days with my sister, who lives in a village just south of Lincoln. It's an agricultural area with a patchwork of large arable fields, where the farmers were busy with the harvest. My uncle, whose business supplies lime to farmers, was saying they have been very concerned by the weather this year (again). The run of wet weather we've had lately has come just at the wrong time, delaying the harvest and lowering the quality of the grain. Mind you, I don't suppose there are many years in our variable climate where the weather patterns really do favour farmers. 

The fields were full of stubble. Once the straw has dried it is baled up, these days into huge cylindrical bales that are lifted by spiked forks on tractors. When I was a young girl, I had a friend who lived on a farm and I used to like going to help with the work. In those days, straw bales were much smaller oblongs that I could just about lift by hand.

Most of the cornfield poppies seemed to be over. I just found a few in the field margins.

Nostalgia

I had a bit of a nostalgia trip in Leeds one day, finding myself up in the university area. I didn't actually attend Leeds University (I studied at Bradford) but I had friends at Leeds and often came to gigs at the Students' Union. I haven't been up to the university quarter for ages and I was surprised to see how much has changed and how much new building there has been, although the wonderful art deco Parkinson Building (below) with its prominent tower has been there since the 1950s.

Friends, it was here on these steps that I queued overnight in the snow to get tickets to see The Rolling Stones in 1971. Yes, I have lived! Happy days.

The curious chimney on the pavement outside the Laidlaw Library, above, is actually a sculpture: 'A Spire' by Simon Fujiwara. There's a touch of nostalgia in that too, since it references Leeds' industrial heritage. The base contains pulverised coal, upon which Leeds' prosperity was built. The Spire also relates to the two adjacent church spires, as the very modern, glass-fronted Laidlaw Library is shoehorned into a space between two churches.