Heads up — A rogues-gallery (with a touch of Lovecraftian horror) on the outside of St Mary the Virgin, Fen Ditton
Just click on any photo to enlarge it
This morning, I went for a walk from the centre of Cambridge (where I live) along the River Cam to the village of Fen Ditton, where I enjoyed a sandwich and a flask of tea for lunch. As always, I had my camera with me and took a few photos of the many pleasing scenes of the river, grazing cattle, perching magpies, fallen branches of trees, flowers, rowing boats, assorted people, horses, gravestones, benches and graffiti, that whooshed up all around me along the way, some of which I imagined I might post here. But, on the way back, I chose to walk slowly around the outside of the parish church in the village, St Mary the Virgin. For some reason, today, my eye was caught by one of the corbel heads on the north side of the church that graces — if “graces” is the right word — the head of this post. It seemed to represent an almost Loveraftian kind of creature, and certainly one that belonged on that shadowed-side of the building. I could resist taking a photo and that, in turn, led me to taking a photo of all the corbel heads on the outside of the building, and you can seem them all below. As you will see, amongst the more conventional faces, there are a couple more that evoke a bit of Lovecraftian horror!
Just for reference, the photos are in the order they appear on the church, starting at the eastern end of the north wall of the chancel and running along to the west end of the wall of the north aisle (nos. 1-14 — I include again the photo at the head of this post); then those found on south wall of the chancel (nos. 15-20); and, finally, those on the east wall of the chancel (nos. 21-22), the very last one of which is, I think, supposed to be smoking a pipe, but which now looks like he’s having a quick fag.
I took them all in black and white (using Luis Costa’s Kodak Tri-X Push recipe) with a Fuji X-T2 fitted with an SMC Takumar 135mm f3.5 lens.
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