Andy Marshall's Genius Loci Digest: 6 September 2024

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PHOTO-HOARD

A charming blend of architectural styles in this row of houses in Portchester, Hampshire - each with its own unique character.

WORDS

“To be a bird, or a flock of birds doing something together, one or many, starling or murmuration. To be a man on a hill, or all the men on all the hills, or half a man shivering in the flock of himself.”

Richard Siken

OBSERVATIONS

Hive Mind.

We are birds today. With our hive minds, we are tethered in murmuration - a beautiful synthesis of thought and action. We arc and curve over the juvenile Tyne. To the west we can see its two sources become one at a place called Watersmeet. Beyond that, where the hills rise like hogs’ backs, Hadrian’s Wall snakes its way into the mist.

Far below, a door opens on a camper van lodged in a nook at Tyne Green Country Park. It reflects the early morning sun upwards into our eyes. Blinded, we cut our wings and dip towards the streets of Hexham. We’re working the blasts of air that scuttle off the North Pennines and, for once, there’s a lull in the weather - an airless sanctuary where we can hover and observe.

The sight before our eyes is divine. In a kind of organic harmony, the town rises upwards towards the abbey.

Other birds - our Pembrokeshire cousins - might get the same sense of awe and wonder when hopping around the rocks at St. Govan’s - a building rising above the boulders, cockled to the side of a cliff.

There are bonds between both places, St. Govan’s and Hexham - elemental, faceted forms, shapes and textures rising to the sublime.

Whatever the constituent parts, Hexham speaks. Within the jaunty roofscape, the earthy tones, and the hierarchy of style, there are pockets of decay, renewal, and remembrance. The honeycombed burgage and the curvilinear streets rise from town to abbey to reveal a continuity of purpose—a visual stock-take on how things have been and, perhaps, how future things should be.

Not only has Hexham come about from a hive consciousness, but also through an intergenerational mind. This place is a sublime coalescence of collective consciousness through time. But this isn’t a place that has been built by automatons. The collective whole depends upon flashes of brilliance, on talented individuals as well as dedicated communities.

The dip in the weather is the calm before the storm, for a sharp blast takes us above the market place and then on to the abbey proper. Below, in a pocket of the abbey that was once part of the cloister, is a travelling photographer - recently breakfasted in his camper van at the park, but now sat upon a slab observing and sketching a wall spliced into a building.

The photographer has come across something that fascinates him - an old part of the cloister incorporated into the wall of a later building - a ghost cloister. Hive mind at work - he thinks - here is the coalescence of time and place.

The sight of the wall jolts me and I try and sketch onto the paper how it makes me feel, rather than how it should look.

Whilst I’m sketching, I sense another person stood beside me, watching me at work. The man tells me that he is called Bill and that he has wanted to sketch outside for a long time, but he struggles with the immediacy.

“Oh, it just takes practice,” I say, brushing off the compliment a little too casually.

The man is very kind, ignores my smugness, and compliments my work.

He then asks me if I would like to see some of his work. What he shares with me completely bowls me over.

Bill then tells me something so remarkable that I feel like the birds hovering above my head.

He tells me that he has had Parkinson’s Disease for quite some time and with that came a tremor in one hand. He tells me that, during the past three years, he has started to work with pen and ink and after working on his art, after using different parts of his brain, his symptoms, especially his hand tremor, have reduced significantly. Bill recently spoke at a Parkinson’s Education Day to other people newly diagnosed with the disease, and passed on his wisdom so that others might benefit.

He passed on his wisdom.

As I listen to his story, it strikes me that the hive mind isn’t just a collective force building over centuries; it’s also alive in each of us. The organic growth of places like Hexham, with its layers of history and form, echoes in the journeys of individuals. Just as Hexham’s architecture is a tapestry of time, shaped by many hands, so too are we shaped by the challenges we face, and the creativity we use to overcome them. In that moment, standing by the ancient wall, I realise that our best places—and our best selves—are formed by both the collective and the personal. The intergenerational action is not only found in bricks and stones but in the resilience of people like Bill, each adding their own thread to the larger weave.

Like a murmuration, when we move together—each of us playing our part—we create something far greater than ourselves. We arc and dive, shaping the air, guided by a shared instinct towards something meaningful.

Later that day in Hexham, I found the meaningful at work - something that might dispel the guilt of our current generation and teach our children to face the future with resilience and confidence.

In the tired Queen’s Hall, the hive mind brought about a masterpiece of community planning. Instead of shrinking their ageing library, it was as if past generations of this town all leant in and whispered: 'Make it a place of beauty, of awe, so that people will feel inspired, part of something, then, they might help polish and burnish the facets of this place, helping us all overcome the challenges of the present.’

In a world that sometimes feels overwhelming, it’s easy to forget that change, no matter how small, is still change. Like Bill who used his art to quiet the tremors of his hand, or the people of Hexham who built a place to inspire them, we too can find moments of clarity and action in the midst of life’s noise. The most beautiful places grow organically, and so too do our efforts—whether shared or individual—shaping the world around us. We’re never truly alone in this; we are part of something bigger, something that can lift us, even when it feels like the weight of the world might burden us.

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HOTSPOTS

Hexham, Northumberland.

Part One: The Town

Hexham is a place that is close to my heart. I spent some time there working on a project for the abbey which I'll touch upon in next week's Digest.

The town rises up via streets that were laid down centuries ago. The best way to enter Hexham on foot is via Hallstile Bank which takes you past the delightful Henry King Memorial Almshouses and its standing portal.

The isolated door case corresponds with another unrelated one at the entrance to the park next to the abbey. I say unrelated - because I brought them together in a little sketch I did:

Members can see a beautiful aerial video of Hexham Abbey and its remarkable townscape below:

Hexham - Pure Scroll (no words)

My journey takes me up Hallstile Road and into the market place and thereabouts. Buildings of note include The Shambles - the covered market built in 1766; The Moot Hall - C15th gatehouse at the east end of market place; The Old Gaol - one of the first purpose built gaols in England (early C14th).

Hallstile Road

Market Place

St. Wilfrid's Gateway and Cowgarth

Market Street

Old Church and St. Mary's Chare

Fore Street

The Moot Hall

The Old Gaol

VAN LIFE

I take lunch in Little Mexico on Market Street/Church Row and I do one of the hardest things to do when sketching - I start to sketch from the table in front of everybody.

Jenna, who works there, catches my eye and puts me at ease: 'Would you like some water for your paints?', she says. My constant looking up and down seems to bamboozle the waiters - they think I'm trying to catch their eye.

I take it back to the van to finish it off.

ON MY COFFEE TABLE

BOOKMARKED

FILM AND SOUND

FROM THE ARCHIVE

This time last year:

I drive into the timeless landscape surrounding Hadrian's Wall. It's a unique place, defined by the ancient ribbon of limestone that runs through it.

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