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Coming soon: Photographing St. Mary's in Westwell - a remarkable medieval church in the Cotswolds for Member Powered Photography (MPP)
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Stick insect eggs by Levon Biss on Instagram
Boring places make us stressed.
Boring places make us sick.
Boring places make us lonely.
Boring places make us scared.
Boring places contribute to division and conflict.
Boring places are unsustainable.
Boring places are unpopular.
Boring places are unfair.
Thomas Heatherwick: Humanise.
Layers of Seeing
I’m walking up and along Catherine Hill in Frome (pronounced Froom) in Somerset.
I think that Catherine Hill is one of the great streets of England. It isn’t full of grand statements or iconic buildings. Its strength resides in its slow disclosure – in the way it asks to be read in layers.
Some streets declare themselves at once while others demand many layers of seeing. It’s much the same as the most enduring works of art, which refuse a first and final understanding, offering instead a continuity of seeing, where something remains just beyond reach – for the next visit.
Today my intention is to walk to the top and take it all in one fell swoop – but Catherine Hill is having none of it – my linear perspective has been confounded by the nuance and the incremental. The first complication is a bookshop – Sherlock & Pages, which sits at the bottom of Catherine Hill and feels like an anchor point in more ways than one. Luke Sherlock is the author of one of my favourite books Forgotten Churches – and so I’m caught up outside looking in – the street behind me lingering in the reflection in the shop window, tugging at my coat tails.
As I walk up the hill I feel like an observer – taking in the view until, at the very top, the hum of a cafe draws me in. In a single act of alchemy the street has altered my perspective – converting me from an abstract onlooker into an unconscious participant – sat on the inside looking out.
At Bistro Lotte, I let everything go – eat, pause – and then, with a little time on my hands, pull out my sketchbook and begin to paint the daffodil in a jar on the table. The act of painting draws me into the particulars: the stigma, the stave and the filament – until the flower begins to feel like an entire world – but somehow set gently within my own small orbit – this table, this room, the street just beyond the glass. There is a joy in it – a sense of participation and belonging – as though, for a moment, I am held within the same order of things; as if I am in this place rather than on it.
It is a feeling I have come to seek out more and more over the years: that shift from observing to entering – from an abstract street to a lived sense of place, shaped by countless small, intangible elements.
Perhaps it lies in the way the best places refuse to be exhausted – their richness layered over time, their complexity never fully resolved, yet somehow settling into a simple sense of wellbeing.
It brings to mind a photograph I once came across of stick insect eggs – the realisation about the innumerable ways we can approach this world. I wrote about it in my diary:
“Hundreds of beautifully shaped organic forms…earthly hues, vibrant textures, spirals, star-shapes, circles, triangles (with softened edges). Each one perfect and unique. The image shows them lined up in rows, all lit up from one light source – each piece delicately articulated. Then I discover what they are – stick insect eggs. No two are the same – different shapes, sizes, hues, textures and tones. A marvel."
Catherine Hill is just like that.
Beyond the immediate beauty – underpinned by those varying states of undress – the ebb and flow of use, of frontage, of repair and neglect – there is something fundamental at work.
A continuity held within the incremental – within nuance, within the microcosm – within the almost imperceptible shift from one epoch to another.
It is there in the verge, in the gable wall, in the subtle friction between the vernacular and the polite.
Imagine demolishing the street in its entirety and replacing it with contemporary buildings, drawn from our modern systems – trusting today’s mindset to create the perfect street – trying to provide all of the answers – peculiar to this year, to this day, to the politics and pressures from all around – and, perhaps, committing the greatest hubris of all – believing that, because we stand at the peak of our own moment, we know best – and expecting it to provide not only for our present generation but for those still to come. Seen in this light, I suspect that my world – with me in it – instead of holding all the answers might be intent on obscuring many of them.
This is why places like Catherine Hill matter - not because they contain answers, but because they hold a way of arriving at them that seems to accommodate the flaws of the present.
Its depth of expression lies in its incremental accumulation – a response in bricks and mortar that leans toward the long view, contributing to a steadier, more enduring sense of how we might belong.
I finish my walk with a visit to the church of St John the Baptist nearby, and it is here that I get the feeling that the street has not quite finished with me.
The church is held within its own street – a remarkably unique Via Crucis – that seems to mirror the complexity and energy of Catherine Hill.
Inside, as my eyes begin to cater for the light, I start again – looking, adjusting – the eye recalibrating to a more formal order than the street I’ve left behind.
And then I notice it – high up – almost beyond reach.
A small carving, easily missed – two faces held within one form, their eyes morphing into each other. It resists a single reading. One face becomes two, then two collapse back into one. I move slightly, and it alters again. There is no fixed position from which it resolves. Even the weeping stain from a leaking roof informs it – another layer, another possible meaning.
In that moment, it feels less like decoration and more like instruction - that seeing is not a single act, but a layered one. That what appears simple might disclose something more diverse and more complex - and that complexity is not something to be solved, but something to be celebrated. The street has been asking this of me all along - through its fractals and its fragments, its refusal to be fully known - and here, held in the half-light of an aisled wall, my eyes are fully opened.
Soon I will be photographing a church in the Cotswolds for free thanks to Member Powered Photography.
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I'm offering a copy of Luke Sherlock's book 'Forgotten Churches' to the next person that signs up to the Parlour Tier. The book is signed by Luke and has a thank you message from me.
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St. John the Baptist, Frome
Mark Brown
Walking the streets of Lincoln
"The walls are not mute. They tell me of the people that first came here, they impart the clay that lies beneath, they teach me of the geology of this place and reflect the pattern of nature. They consummate boundaries that are possibly two thousand years old, and protect plots of land that were once tilled by Romans: the soil here is rich with their detritus."
Read on here:
Andy Marshall
Kind words from a subscriber:
Andy your work is becoming wonderful, remarkable. A so-called breakdown has been milled into its constituent parts, becoming profound construction: through perception, architecture, the lens and the pen. In your Repton crypt essay a deep description of our social anxiety - and our reason to be....
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Andy Marshall
The coming weeks will see me visit two remarkable churches as part of Member Powered Photography (MPP) - where I'm able to travel, stay over and photograph for a day a historic building for free.
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Andy Marshall
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Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with iPhone 17 Pro and DJI Mini 5 Pro.
🔗 Connect with me on: Bluesky / Instagram / Facebook / X / Tumblr / Flickr / Vimeo / Pixelfed / Pinterest / Flipboard/ Fediverse: @fotofacade@digest.andymarshall.co
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