Weather

When you think of winter in the Cotswolds, it's worth remembering that Bridget Jones is not a documentary: most of the time, instead of (fake) snow at Snowshill, and Colin Firth in a comedy Christmas jumper, you get fog, rain, howling winds, and large quantities of mud. When C. R. Ashbee moved his Guild of Handicrafts from the slums of Whitechapel to Chipping Campden in the early 1900s, many of his workers were so horrified at the conditions they were being asked to put up with, they decamped back to the East End toot sweet - and for much of each winter I know exactly how they felt. There's a good reason for steeply pitched roofs being a feature of Cotswold vernacular architecture.

Today it wasn't actually raining, but it might as well have been, because the mist was thick and clinging. Late morning I had to go to Bourton-on-the-Hill to deliver some borrowed music back to our choir administrator, and by the time I was half way up the Edge the mist had turned to fog, driving conditions were tricky, and all thought of birding had to be abandoned. On the way back I dropped down into Chipping Campden to see if it was looking festive, which it wasn't, but it occurred to me that I'd never photographed the East Banqueting House in fog, so I stopped anyway and squelched down to the end of the churchyard. A birding lens wasn't the ideal tool for the job, I have to admit, but in the end I found an angle that let me get all of it in shot.

I've written about Campden Manor, and Sir Baptist Hicks who built it, many times before, so I won't repeat myself today. Sir Baptist's marble effigy in the church is here, and his daughter Juliana and her husband Edward Noel are here. The upper side of this building is here, if you'd like to see that, along with some information about the Landmark Trust, which currently owns it. And finally, while this cold greyness is quite atmospheric, the East Banqueting House really deserves to be seen in nicer, or better yet even nicer, light.