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All Saints', Harewood, Yorkshire.
" With sophisticated technology, we strive to see what is beyond us, but are often blind to the myriad sparkling facets that lie so close at hand. We think we're seeing when we've only scratched the surface. Our acuity at the middle scale seems diminished, not by any failing of the eyes, but by the willingness of the mind. Has the power of our devices led us to distrust our unaided eyes? Or have we become dismissive of what takes no technology but only time and patience to perceive? Attentiveness alone can rival the most powerful magnifying lens."
Robin Wall Kimmerer: Gathering Moss.
People help the people.
"The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material" - Abbot Suger (1081-1151)
I’m over in Ashbourne, Derbyshire at the church of St. Oswald. The church’s patron saint was the Northumbrian king Oswald - killed in battle at Oswestry (Oswald’s Tree) while fighting king Penda of Mercia and later venerated as a saint and martyr.
I’m walking through the church to get a sense of its layout before I start photographing it. This is the pinch point for me - because, during this process, more often than not, the material rises up to meet me half-way and gifts me a thread of an idea that feeds into my photography.
When I walk into the Boothby chapel I’m taken aback by a parade of effigies set out in parallel along both sides of the chapel. I begin to circle them and get caught up in their histories - a wealth of names and dates and occurrences typed out on little information boards stepped against each monument.
I can’t seem to get a grip of my practice - the facts and figures whirring through my mind. Should I start with the Cockaynes or the Bradbournes? Should I move chronologically? Follow lineage?
I often get moments like this - a sense of being overwhelmed by what is in front of me - not knowing where to start or how to convey. I think it comes less from the pressure of producing images for a commission and more from the responsibility of translation - of trying to pass on something that has had a profound impact upon me without flattening it in the process.
So I adopt an alternative approach and seek out the grounding essence of the microcosm: a small fragment of brass caught in the amber of time. On the wall of St. Oswald’s Chapel is the original consecration plate of 1241. When churches were built they were consecrated by a bishop. I’ve seen many consecration marks and symbols etched into ancient walls, but nothing like this - a record writ large in metal that is said to be the oldest example of its kind in England.
Stood in front of the plate, I once again find myself caught up in the angst of the words - reading each aloud and then searching for the translation: St. Oswald, King and Martyr. Hugh de Patishul, Bishop of Coventry. The Kalends of May.
I set up the camera to photograph it face-on. But this perspective has been taken so many times before. I feel frustrated. It’s as if my brain is standing between me and the wonder of it.
So I step back and put the camera down.
After a time, I stop reading the words and start seeing the human in the typography, the asymmetry, the negative spaces, the sharpness and blur - and I realise that this is more than just an old brass plate. It is a residue of thought, touch and movement captured in style, syntax and form - the lingering spirit of real people carried across centuries. As I follow each curve and incision, I begin to sense the song of the person who etched it into the metal surface. The plate ceases to be an artefact pinned beneath history and becomes something warmer and more immediate - a dash of light in the shadowy corners of the past.
I pick up my camera again, change my lens, place the camera obliquely, dial it in and try to capture, not the object itself, but the essence of encounter.
As the camera settles into my hands and the script resolves within the viewfinder, I’m immediately struck by the thought of how the past pushes its grubby nose to the present through a complex shadow world of artefacts, material gestures, people and places.
And then I see it - a single word, a single name, carrying within it the ambiguities of our human story - bodily hung from a tree, raised to martyr and saint - horror set against hope, mortality against continuity.
Oswaldi.
And there it is - the nub of it all. The material has risen to meet me half-way and I see everything differently. I now feel 'of' this place and not just in it.
I walk back over to the Boothby chapel and strip away the scaffolding of names and dates and dynasties. I stop photographing monuments and begin photographing people - their hopes and fears, their vulnerabilities and their certainties - all weathered by time - as if they’re no different from you and me.
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The Consecration Plate at St. Oswald's
A world within the microcosm.
The consecration plate at St. Oswald’s is extraordinary not simply because of its age or rarity, but because it preserves the physical gestures of the person who made it. The lettering is not mechanical or uniform. Each incision carries pressure, rhythm and decision.
The elongated strokes, compressed spacing and subtle asymmetries begin to reveal themselves the longer you stand before it. What first appears as information slowly becomes expression. This is typography before typography truly existed - script caught between inscription and art. Over centuries the plate has become more than a historical document. It is a surviving trace of touch, movement, patience and human presence. To understand it, I stoppered the act of reading, and saw it as a piece of art - the movement and flow of it all.
The inscription reads:
ANNO AB INCARNACIONE DNI MCCXLI VIII KL MAII DEDICATA EST HEC ECCIA ET HOC ALTARE CONSECRATUM IN HONORE SCI OSWALDI REGIS ET MARTIRIS A VENERABILI PATRE DOMINO HUGONE DE PATISHVL COVENTRENSI EPISCOPO.
Translated:
“In the year one thousand two hundred and forty one from the Incarnation of Our Lord on the eighth day of the Kalends of May this church was dedicated and this altar consecrated in honour of St Oswald, King and Martyr, by the Venerable Father in God, Hugh de Patishul, Bishop of Coventry”.
All Saints', Harewood
As soon as I stepped into it I felt as though the recumbent incumbents might rise in admonition.
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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.
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