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Check out my profile hereSt. Mary and St. David's and the castle at Kilpeck, Herefordshire.
🌞 I love how the winter sun can reveal a story within a landscape. One told over centuries.
Kilpeck was part of the Welsh kingdom of Ergyng and the Welsh language remained strong here until the C19th.
“If our interest in buildings and objects is indeed determined as much by what they say to us as by how they perform their material functions, it is worth elaborating on the curious process by which arrangements of stone, steel, concrete, wood and glass seem able to express themselves - and can on rare occasions leave us under the impression that they are talking to us about significant and touching things.”
Alain de Botton The Architecture of Happiness
The Clasp
'Shapes carry weight. We do not look out at the world around us as though all things are equal. We have evolved to register and investigate and prefer certain forms over others in fractions of a second.'
Cognitive Architecture. Sussman, Hollander
I wake up in the van, and I’m ruminating again. Every day, I think about the conflicts raging through our world and the horror that people and families from all walks of life must endure. Sometimes, I find it difficult to see any light at the end of the tunnel.
My work, which allows me to travel to the remotest of places, helps. It gives me a sense of perspective and clarity. These places become a balm for my anxious mind.
Today, I’m visiting a Friends Meeting House in Coanwood, Northumberland. The Quaker meeting house dates from 1760 and is now redundant, but it is usually open during daylight hours.
I always get caught by the ecclesiasticals when visiting places like Coanwood. My rich photographic experience of fluted arcades, curvilinear tracery, and clasping buttresses has fed me an expectation of the spectacular. I have to admit my hopes are not high as I make my way through the hollow lanes of an isolated valley, a few miles south of Hadrian’s Wall.
When I first enter the building, the light is harsh, and I have to wait a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the gloom inside. I begin by photographing the fireplace at the back of the room until I sense a shift in the light behind me.
I turn towards the dais at the front of the room, and instantly, I feel a connection to something deeply human—even though I am the only person in the building. The room has a sense of harmony and scale that resonates with me, but there’s something more.
The light picks out the bench ends, drawing my eyes towards the rear wall.
I walk over, sit on a bench, and face the sun. And there it is—the human form, curvilinear, expressed in the benches that lead towards the dais. I’m reminded of the abstract sculptures of Barbara Hepworth, whose work expresses human connection and the innate human need to nurture. Even in this empty room, the warmth of humanity is present. I feel welcome and connected and not alone.
I don’t think anyone consciously set out to create a human form within the benches, but I believe these things are inherent within us. Despite our darkest selves, through the time-sieved collective, we can’t help but express what it means to be human.
And then I see it—a hidden projection of intent, a quiet yet deliberate message from the past. In this simple, stark, and isolated place, someone sought to share the joy of being human by extending the flame-like pattern of the medullary ray from one oak panel to another—a silent act of connection, a reaching across both material and time, as if to impress upon us that the human spirit endures, even in this remote building, even in this pared-down simplicity.
I think of the couple who leapt from the Twin Towers amidst the unimaginable horror of 9/11. In the final moment of their lives, they reached for one another, their clasped hands an indelible symbol of love—a flame in the darkest void, a final declaration of all that makes us human.
Brian Doyle speaks to this profound expression of our shared humanity:
‘Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe… that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.’ *
And here at Coanwood is the clasp expressed in a building through the dissolution of our forebears, from the essence of the accumulated past. It has grown incrementally over epochs of change - in times that people thought were the end of days, in times when people were persecuted, in times when democracy was fragile and uncertain.
Wisdom sits in places, and through the curve of a simple bench end, I find myself realising that our fleeting lives are, nonetheless, an integral part of the greater whole. And through the heart of a wooden panel, I feel a glimmer of hope that humanity has a future.
*I'm deeply indebted to the Marginalian for this quote from Brian Doyle: One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder
Members can see a short video I took of Coanwood here:
Andy Marshall
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Friends Meeting House, Coanwood (Pure Scroll - No Words)
Thanks to Friends of Friendless Churches.
My van has been caught by the ecclesiasticals - lots of architectural oddities - and a bit of bling - inside.
Outside at Coanwood - Woody blends with the grey wan of the winter sky - but I love how it is always a familiar place to return to after a photo shoot. On cold days I set the thermostat, and it keeps the interior temperature from dipping below zero.
Sometimes, the buildings I've been photographing have been so isolated and cold that I've had to de-camp to the van to unfurl my fingers.
Andy Marshall
I read this particular post regularly (a must read):
Maria Popova
Thanks to Diane for sending this:
Ella Foster
Thanks to Liz for asking me to participate in this:
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More on Quaker Meeting Houses:
If there were any poem to confirm that the clasp is eternal it might be this one. Here are some other intriguing ways that people leave their marks in buildings.
Coanwood on video
Andy Marshall
Andy Marshall
Andy Marshall
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Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with Iphone 14 Pro and DJI Mini 3 Pro.
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