Time, Art and A White Witch

So I didn't post for three weeks or so and then four weeks. And when it got about eight weeks I started feeling that was far too long a time to be away.  And now, it's getting on for five months, and, well, I'm not sure I remember what blogging feels like any more! But of course the best way to re-start blogging is to just do it. So I won't even try to catch up with my life since my last post in May, and I'll tell you instead about a trip we took out into Surrey a few days ago. 

Surrey's a county just south of London, and parts of it still feel surprisingly rural, even though it's incredibly different to how it was 100 years ago. Or 115 years, to be precise..... because, on a visit to Hungerford, Berkshire, we visited my favourite second hand bookshop, which is in The Hungerford Arcade.  There, I picked up a book written in 1906, simply titled "SURREY."  

It has many pretty watercolour plates of Surrey as it was then. 

 

And when T. looked at the pictures there were lots of places he liked the look of, and we thought how nice it would be to go and visit them. Some, like Betchworth, (above) are recognisable today on Street View, although gardens are tidier now, and the  roads are metalled and have parked cars, instead of chickens roaming about in the dust like in 1905. And of course those picturesque cottages would have been damp and uncomfortable by modern standards... and also it seemed a bit as if we were trying to turn the clock back to 100 years ago. But still, we got in the car and off we went, glad that we weren't in 1905 for the travelling, at any rate.  

The picture that had particularly caught T's eye was of Waverley Abbey, in the valley of the River Mole....shown here as a most picturesque ruin draped in ivy, sitting in the parkland of Waverley House mansion, so the text said.

 

We knew it wouldn't be draped with creeper now - it looks wonderful but wrecks the old buildings it grows on eventually.  And there was an overall rosy aspect to the watercolours which made us suspect that the artist, Mr Sutton Palmer, might have had his rose tinted specs on. 

Waverley is still very rural, so we parked nearby and walked about ten minutes down a footpath into what was obviously part of the grounds of Waverley House, which still stood across the River Wey to our right...  

Waverley Abbey was a surprisingly large selection of ruins and fragments to our left.

 The building shown in the old watercolour is visible towards the right, and we found that it led into a large vaulted hall which mostly still survives. We found that it had lost its apex since 1905, and the right hand top window had broken still more - so that creeper had obviously done its wicked work.   

We noticed that a system of fortifications had been built at the edges of the abbey site, one of a whole chain across the South of England in anticipation of a Nazi invasion in 1941. They are now swallowed in vegetation, with the tank tank traps (below) now attractively covered in green moss, 

and a large gun emplacement now a wildlife haven but originally intended to make the whole area a battleground. 

A great big gun banging away in their direction would have been the end of the abbey ruins, for sure, but luckily, as we know, that invasion never happened.  

Founded in the 12th century, Waverley Abbey was every bit as imposing as the largest of cathedrals. However, in around 1540, the king of England decided that neither Waverley, nor any other English abbeys, were OK with him.  He didn't see why others should be controlling all that cash when he could have it. He was also sure the people of England wanted an English religion.  By happy coincidence that would also allow him to divorce his wife, who he was very fed up with, since he had his eye on another one.  

So he closed down all the abbeys, kicked out the monks (and the poor and sick who they had looked after) grabbed the money, divorced the wife and converted the country to an English religion with him at the head.  Unfortunately "Good King Hal" as King Henry VIII was known by his fans, went down in history as loveable rogue.  But he established the Church of England and changed the course of history, whether for good or bad we will never know. 

Returning to the car, we spotted a footpath sign about 100 yards down the road. It was still a couple of hours until sunset, so we decided to stroll down the path, which was heavily wooded and overlooked a river to the left and rose up to the right to a small cliff.  We soon passed a wrought iron gate set into the rocks. It led into a cave, padlocked shut.   Outside it, a small sign announced that this was Mother Ludlam's Cave.   

A sign explained that Mother Ludlam was a white witch who lived in the cave in medieval times, and helped the poor by lending them things they needed. It seemed that the poor had to return the borrowed items after two days. One day someone from Waverley Abbey borrowed a cauldron and didn't give it back.  In fact, she flew into such a rage that the thief took sanctuary in the nearest church, which apparently still has the cauldron.  A witch's cauldron is a funny sort of thing for a church to own, so I expect the story has gained a bit in the telling over hundreds of years.  I hope to visit the church and investigate next time I'm in the area - if Mr. A.R. Hope Moncrieff book is to be believed, there's plenty more to see. 

 You could see into the cave easily.  I'm sure it's changed a lot and was probably cosier in 1400, but it certainly had a handy water supply.  

The book has plenty more suggestions of what to see in Surrey so we are looking forward to exploring more.  

We've been getting out on the bike as often as possible too, but I didn't feel energetic the other day and T. took a cycle ride across the top of London through Highgate Woods, along what was once a railway line. There, he came across a man painting something very, very small on the edge of what had once been a disused railway platform. 

He didn't mind being interrupted, and was very friendly. He is called Ben Wilson and he works as an artist. One of his projects is to paint bits of discarded chewing gum. He hates litter and decided that one thing you could do with it was make art with it.  Painting chewing gum needed no gallery, permission or license, since he was not littering himself, but only improving stuff which had already been discarded. 

He was a cheerful man and told T. he began as a sculptor, but has moved more towards the miniature chewing gum paintings in recent years. It can take him a long time to create a picture. To start with, he uses a blow torch to heat the gum and then paints it with three coats of enamel, and finishes it off with lacquer.  T. didn't get a picture of the picture he was painting here, but I found an image on the internet and here it is.  

(Photograph: Ben Wilson)

Ben told T that he makes little "trails" of tiny pictures, so our next project is to seek them out now we have an idea where they are.

We've been spending a lot of this lockdown time walking around Hampstead Heath and getting to know it really well. We literally have not got bored with it at all in all these months.  The other week I spotted some bits of - well,  "found art"  I guess you'd say, in one of the more remote corners of the Heath. First I saw a Dame (Queen) of Spades and thought she must be French - she looks so glamorous.  

But then I found the Jack of Spades, and decided the cards must be German, because the Jack (or Knave) is called the Bube.  

 There was no trace of the König (King) of Spades nor of any of the other cards in the court, and it looked almost as if the virile young Jack and the pretty young Queen had eloped together. This would explain why they were so far from home, in these shadowy evening woods above London, alone beneath the swaying trees. I left them undisturbed, and I hope their story worked out well! 

I've decided to take a 5 day course at the Royal Drawing School.  The subject is Interior and Exterior Space.  I'm hoping I'll learn a bit about drawing interiors from my imagination. But the funny thing is that I'm getting more and more interested in looking at nature, particularly nature on a tiny scale. The closer you zoom into nature, the more detail you see and the more amazing beautiful and harmonious it all is.  

In my semi-lockdown walks, I've been  photographing ordinary looking bits of grassland, woodland floor, patches of wild flowers and so on.  This typical shot shows leaves, dead grass and small bracken plants. It is pretty but walking around a wood you might not even notice it underfoot.  

 I play around with the resulting images in Photoshop with the aim of forgetting about what the things in the picture actually are, and only looking at the forms and shapes and way they are put together. 

Here is the image above, rotated 90 degrees,  and converting into a negative.   

The images I get may be partly or totally abstract, but they seem to me to show the incredible complexity, energy, and movement of Nature.  I feel I can pin any ideas I want on these images. The one below seems almost violent to me, reminding me of some kind of alien creature bursting out of  a torrent or flood.   Really, it's a group of toadstools quietly growing on a log, with bits of horse chestnut case scattered about.  

The picture below was not altered at all. It's just a patch of bracken, and looks as if it was waving in the wind, except that it was standing perfectly still. 

 I am not sure I'll be as interested in the man made interiors when I start my course, but I'm looking forward to it anyway as it is something different from what I have ever done.

I have been visiting all your blogs during the last few months, though not always commenting, and will continue to do that. Thanks for being there, and hope you are enjoying your autumn! 

Skeleton in the Cupboard, Money Down the Drain

Never thought I'd see a REAL skeleton in the cupboard, but here he was, the other day.  We were exploring woodlands near Guildford, Surrey, and dropped in at the Watts Gallery Artists' Village.  

I think it's a real skeleton, or at least it was a real artist's studio.  The Watts Gallery has been hidden in the Surrey woods for as long as I can remember.  My memory is of a forgotten, charming little museum with a very nice cafe run by local ladies and owned a slightly decrepit gallery crammed with the Victorian paintings of G.F. Watts (1817-1904)

Watts' paintings were very popular in their day. Between you and me I was never a great fan, but I loved the gallery. So, some years ago, when I learned it had appointed a dynamic new director, I feared its atmosphere might be spoiled.  Mostly, though, the changes have been good. The place is still delightful but now the buildings have been repaired and updated, many have been reopened, and as well as Watts' pictures there's now a gallery of contemporary work with ever changing exhibitions and a really interesting programme of events and activities - way better than most galleries I know.  Oh, and the cafe and shop are also good.  Here is the website. so consider it for a visit if you are in reach of Guildford. 

  I'd actually intended a flying visit in order to see a large detailed map which one of my favourite illustrators, (and a friend), Peter Cross, had made in aid of a crowdfund to erect Watts' statue "Physical Energy" nearby.  Here is a photo of, well, some of  the statue, but it's big and not easy to photograph it all inside the sculpture studio.

I find Watts' sculpture more energetic and powerful than his paintings and I think this will look good on a hillside. In the background, you can spot a cast of another of his sculptures. This one depicts the poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson - the finished statue was installed outside Lincoln Cathedral in 1905. 

The volunteer in the studio told me that the map  is everyone's favourite thing, and it is very typical of Peter's quirky and original work.   It's based on the punning idea of Watts and Energy, and features a wholly imaginary transport network and many local landmarks including an image of Watts' house, Limnerslease.  (Also, nearby Loseley House, built around 1568, a grand Elizabethan pile. I haven't yet seen around the house,but must.)

And... the map also features Mary Watts' chapel just down the road from the gallery.

Mary was G.F. Watts' second wife, and she sounds as if she was a lovely lady who doted on her (much older but very dynamic) husband.

Mary was very interested in art and design and started a pottery to give employment to the local villagers. (In those days, more than a hundred years ago, Surrey was full of hard-up farming folk - unlike today, when many local residents are wealthy).  Her biggest project was a cemetery chapel just up the road, using ceramic tiles from the pottery and designed in her unique style which is something between Celtic and Victorian. 

You can see what the outside of the chapel looks like from Peter's drawing - tall, thin, cruciform and made of decorative red brick.  Inside, it's a mass of multi coloured glazed saints covering the walls and ceiling, and saints in the same teardrop shape as in Peter's picture. 

Apart from the interior of their home, Limnerslease, this is the only surviving major work of Mary Watts. 

On our way home, we dropped in at the nearby church at Elstead, where we met the churchwarden who was just locking up. Here's a photo of the interior of the church. We were immediately struck by the massive beams at the far end,  hewn from oaks of gigantic size hundreds of years ago. This bit of the church is directly underneath the tower. 

The churchwarden pointed out something we would never have found.  On the right corner, there is a very old doorway, halfway up the wall and built on one of the beams. 

It is so narrow and hard to reach (impossible without a ladder) that you can tell it is very old. Peeping behind the huge beam, you see the door gives access to the tower up huge steep stairs cut directly into the oak.  I've never seen anything like this before, and can imagine that climbing those steps in such a confined space must have been very hard.   I took the photo below craning my neck looking upwards and so the perspective is strange, but take it from me that those maintained the bells or went to the belfry for any other reason, would need to be very agile indeed! Why, I wonder, did people in the past make life so difficult for themselves?  

On the way home we bought some eggs at a roadside stall. I liked the way the eggs were displayed on straw and there were some interesting cuttings and photos to look at. The stall is unmanned and you fill up the second-hand egg boxes yourself.  I think the owner had a sense of humour because ...

....payment for the eggs was made by an honesty system which involved literally throwing money down the drain!

Illustrating Surrey

I don't know what you think, but to me, this little signpost in the forest has a magical look, as if a gnome or an elf is about to trip past on some mystical errand.  I don't think it's because the orange-berried mountain ash trees shown here are thought to be magical trees  (I wrote a post about mountain ash - rowan - once, here). I think it's because rural Surrey, the county where I took this photo a couple of days ago, can seem a little bit apart from modern life.    

Admittedly, its current inhabitants are often pretty wealthy and have top jobs in banks, because the county has become prime commuterland now.  But Surrey was the home of many of the artists who created gentle, magical picture books in the late 19th and early 20th century.    Cycling through the narrow lanes on our own trips, does in some ways feel like going into a vintage illustrated book.   

Arthur Rackham, for instance, lived in Surrey and was famous for his gnarly trees.

I sometimes expect to see Rackham with his sketchbook in the steep sided lanes, worn away over the centuries.to reveal the roots of the trees that shade them.

Cicely Mary Barker lived in Surrey. She created the exquisite Flower Fairy books - here is her Mountain Ash fairy.  Later, her books were commercialized and franchised, so if you like this style of illustration, try to find the original pictures. They're so subtle; look at the colouring here.

...and Margaret Tarrant illustrated some of my favourite books.  Again, she was keen on fairies. 

Something about the colouring in my photo reminds me of her, though those people in my picture are not fairies (unless they are fairies in modern clothes)

I noticed a little display about Margaret Tarrant in the church at the Surrey village where she lived.  She painted some of the church banners  and there's a painting of one of the woodland scenes that inspired her.... and I suspect she might have decorated the church organ with flowers too. 

I once interviewed the illustrator, Peter Cross, author of that quirky masterpiece, "Trouble for Trumpets" in his home in deepest Surrey. He told me that his illustrations were inspired by both the landscape around him and the illustrated books of his childhood.

The illustrated books that had most impact on me as a kid are Alfred Bestall's picture-strip illustrations for Rupert Bear.   Bestall divided his time between Surrey and Wales.

The charm of these illustrations is cumulative, there were four per page

I remember noticing how the seasons were faithfully portrayed, and the small rolling fields and lovely deep woods which even then made me think of Surrey.  Bestall died too long ago to have a website. But google his Rupert Bear pictures, or, better still, find an annual or two, and you'll see what I mean.

More "serious" artists lived in Surrey and one day I'll write about the recently renovated Watts Gallery, which deserves an entry to itself. 

This photo, of course, was taken at bluebell time, in the Spring, but I like it.  And here is T, unpacking our bikes from the car, so we can explore the evocative woods and countryside of this county ourselves.

Windows

Bah! No sooner do I start crowing about having got 400 followers when one drops off. Oh well, I've got 399 followers, then.  :)

It's been quite a social week, doing more than usual with family and friends. It's lovely but some of them don't like being featured on blogs so I can't write much about it.   I've also been doing a bit of work and lots of boring stuff - you know, renewing insurance, trying to sort out the computer, trying to get the filthy marks the decorators left off the BRAND NEW WHITE curtains, juggling finances,  removing thick layers of dust from the builders, nope, you don't need to hear more....

Just as well then, that my photo editing program decided to reshuffle all my photos into alphabetical rather than date order, so it's thrown up several interesting ones of windows, which I enjoyed looking at and thought you might like to see too.

Some of the pictures, I must confess, well, I've forgotten where I took them now.  I think the one below was in Herefordshire, in a cottage belonging to an artist, I assume it was one of his sculptures.  If you recognise it, let me know!

The reflections in this window seemed wonderfully muddled and multi layered to me.  Two brass deer, and a street scene intermingled.



A windscreen counts as a window, right?

When I passed this Suffolk caravan park last year I felt that this window display must be telling SOME kind of a story - a funny one, I think.

 Here's another window scene in Suffolk. (What's with Suffolk and weird windows?) A little more emotion in this one, perhaps the black rat is the Mama trying to persuade her son not to go off to fire that cannon in the war?

Here are graffiti and classical reflections from my recent trip to Hamburg.  We stayed in an area full of marvellously varied old houses, covered in graffiti and/or painted up in odd ways. The area seemed to be populated by a mixture of hippies and yuppies.  Anyway this house was covered in classical statues, and painted black. Hence the window reflection. And the graffiti? Well, what do you think?

Fascinating naive-art pargeting in Northern France. This is a forgotten little corner not far from the Northern coast. Once again I've forgotten exactly where - but I think it's near Honfleur.  Pargeting is the art of decorating plasterwork.  I've seen a lot of it in East Anglia, but only rarely noticed coloured examples like these. Someone is keeping it very well painted up.

Disorientated in Southern Spain... yes, this is a real street, below, and it did look like that.  The crooked windows are a version of what will eventually be built (or which was there before). The design is printed on a huge netting hoarding, designed to conceal building work going on, but someone has had the bright idea of making it interesting and eye catching.  It certainly is that, as you walk along the street, specially since the pavement is paved in eye dazzling grey and white zigzags. 

Some feathery lampshades and velvet curtains glimpsed through a window in Oscar Wilde's old house in Tite Street, Chelsea.  I am sure Oscar would have liked pheasant feather lampshades.

I thought the fronds of these palms somehow echoed the closely spaced glazing bars of the window

And here is a distinctly child-sized window which I spotted at this little greengrocer in Shere, Surrey, recently (no fruit and veg in the window because it was Sunday).  Look at Daddy towering up there!   But then, undernourished poor people a few hundred years ago could be very small indeed, so doors and windows were often low. And it was cheaper to build small.

The scene below was taken by moonlight from one of our windows, in the snow.  It reminds me a bit of one of those very old French photos of the 1840s.  I lightened it, otherwise didn't process the image at all.

Another night scene, chugging down the Nile towards sunset, just us and the boatman.
!

These abstract reflections are the windows of a Disney hotel reflected in the water. The hotel looked ugly in the day, but came into its own at night.

And this is not a window, but a reflection, somewhere in the Middle East, where a huge mirror reflects the enormous inner courtyard of an old mansion.  Reminds me of an old fifties art movie. What is that woman thinking?



My next job is to get round to visiting some blogs - and peep through the windows into other peoples' worlds.