Day 32: Churches and Horses

“I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

We stumbled across ‘St Michael and All Angels Church’ today although I couldn’t even begin to tell you where it was. The purpose for stopping and taking photographs was the rather strange knobbly trees.

 

But after googling the church to find out where it actually was, I came up with about a million of the same name, and 4 – 5 in the same area. It seems impossible! Suffice to say, it was in between Winchester and Andover and pretty much off the muddiest most flooded track around.

 

The weather, that they warned us about, hasn’t exactly hit just yet. The wind has picked up and the rain keeps coming and going but there’s no sign of a storm. Probably a lucky thing!

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Day One Hundred & Three: Whitchurch

“If life were a camera, I’d have the lens cap on.”
― Charles M. Schulz

Today was busy and being stuck in a warm noisy office for the best part of it was frustrating whilst the sun was shining! Neverthless I survived, and once I escaped I took the scenic route home from Basingstoke and spent a bit of time enjoying the fresh air and snapping some Photographs.

The scenic route takes me through the quite quaint towns/villages of Overton and Whitchurch – both look a bit backwards and oldy worldy! I remember choosing to do a crime survey in Whitchurch once as part of my Geography A Level course work and I was stood in the middle of the town clutching a rather hopeful 100 questionnaires. I came home with four answered. Four! Because that’s the extent of the people passing through across a five hour period!

So Whitchurch is quiet and peaceful – mainly! And the church was empty and peaceful too. I didn’t venture inside though, I don’t do that alone! Whitchurch itself is set on the Test Valley and the River Test rises in the east of the town. This morning I didn’t have time to capture the shots I wanted but it was breath-takingly beautiful with the sun rays piercing through the trees.

Whitchurch is well known for the Silk Mill. It was built on land owned by the Dean of Winchester Cathedral in 1815. Nobody knows really why it was built in the first instant, but it was put to use, sometimes shockingly. It has been documented that children between the ages of eight and thirteen worked six and a half hours a day.

By the 1860s, the Mill was going into climb probably due to the new laws on importation of silk and a dose of silkworm disease hitting Europe. In 1886 employees had dropped from over 60 to 10. Byt 1901, they had decreased to just eight!

So after the brief pause in Whitchurch the rain came down – in buckets! Almost quite literally. I was quite glad to be heading home but hopefully it will perk up for the weekend ahead because I’m going out to hunt bluebells – armed with the camera of course!

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