Industrial Nature

Today I decided on a trip out to revisit the wonderfully atmospheric church of St Mary's at Burham as I felt I'd done it a disservice on my last encounter by only capturing a view from the graveyard looking out across the neighbouring valley (see previous blip 15/09/2023).
This flint and ragstone Norman church stands peacefully under the North Downs, on the Pilgrims' route to Canterbury and has a history stretching back over almost 1000 years. It is sited where the original village of Burham would have stood but was deserted and left largely redundant by 1850 (it finally closed in 1973 but it is now thankfully in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust and has been re-opened to the public), the village having already relocated some years earlier to higher ground a mile away from the River Medway as it expanded and became known as a "cement village", after the discovery of the manufacturing process for Portland cement (so called because of its resemblance to Portland stone). A new church was built at the new location in the 1880's - ironically this church no longer exits as it had to be demolished due to its poor foundations, whilst St Mary's is still standing proud after nearly a millennium.
Unfortunately, I was still having trouble capturing an image of St Mary's as it surrounded on nearly all sides by mature trees so I decided on following the footpath next to the church which then opened out onto an elevated riverbank.
This stretch of the River Medway has a long history of industrial use - with stone quarrying, brickmaking (by 1852 Burham had the most advanced brickworks in the world, producing up to 30 million bricks a year!) and the aforementioned cement making and there is still an industrial presence to this day but many of the old abandoned industrial sites have now been reclaimed by nature or regenerated and include a nature reserve, a community trail, grasslands and tidal reed beds - just part of which you can see in my main image. If you squint the buildings do look a bit like some kind of river monster emerging from the water - or maybe I just need to book a new eye test!
I'd given up hope of getting an image of St Mary's church and it was only as I was retracing my steps along the elevated riverbank that it suddenly came into view and I managed to capture the shot you can see in the extra. It's not quite the image I wanted (it's spoiled somewhat by the electricity pylon in the background) and I still don't think it quite does it justice but I will be back again soon and try to find a more fitting representation.

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