Photographing Brasses

It was dark in the church. (St Peter's, Ardingly, West Sussex)

I had to move a prayer desk and roll back a carpet to expose the brasses.

Then I had to find somewhere to stand where the light from the chancel wasn't bouncing off the metal, causing dazzle, and my own shadow wasn't falling into the field of vision. The positions I ended up in were awkward and uncomfortable.

The best of the resulting pictures were the close-ups. This is often the case.

These are Nicholas and Elizabeth Culpepper. He died in 1510. She must have died after the brass was installed- because none of her 18 children could be bothered to fill in the blank that had been left to record her date of death.

18 children! Did they all survive? I don't know- it seems unlikely- but they're all shown as grown-ups at their parents' feet.

An unusual feature of this brass- as of its companion (same date, same family, didn't photograph as well)- is that the shields still hold some of their coloured enamel.

Side Effect

"That's not Surrey" I said as we watched our tortured antihero climb a hilly street lined with cottages in buttery Cotswold stone- and "That's not Surrey" I said again as his car drove through a rolling landscape of multicoloured fields and ample prospects. I was right. The programme had been filmed out west, with Bristol pretending to be London and Gloucestershire pretending to be Surrey. Bristol just about pulled it off- because one big city is very like another- but Gloucestershire villages and landscapes are nothing like their Surrey counterparts.

Knowing the difference between Gloucestershire and Surrey is a gratifying side effect of extensive church-crawling.