Birthday Edition - Part Two!
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Today, I'm celebrating my birthday. I'm so glad to have made it this far!
I have been whisked away - to a lovely farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales. In anticipation of the unexpected - I'm sharing with you, in this digest one of my favourite places - but with a twist - new writing, new text - and a new book.
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An Arundel Tomb, Philip Larkin
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd—
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
What survives of us is the gaze.
It’s April 2025 and I’ve been on quite a journey to photograph several cathedrals. This time I’m scheduled to photograph Lichfield and Birmingham and then travel down to Windsor Castle to photograph St. George’s Chapel.
I have a bit of time to spare, so I head out to Warwick from the campsite and go straight over to St. Mary’s. The last time I was here I spent three wonderful days photographing the Beauchamp Chapel for a book.
This time there’s no shoot list, no deadlines, no hovering expectations – just me, unencumbered, drifting in through the doors without any agenda.
I walk down through the nave, drawn towards a doorway that cradles a rarefied luminescence — a mingling of dappled colour from stained glass, the glint of refracted light on metal, and a hint of the golden radiance that spring has blessed us with this year.
The doorway frames the entrance to the chapel and offers, for me, one of the most remarkably immersive and ambient views — a scene that stirs all the senses.
I feel as though I’m standing on the meniscus between two worlds, one that propagates a strange kind of inertia — amniotic — a sense of being held in place by a surface tension bound by the weight of history.
The dust motes suspended over Beauchamp turn inertia into action and I finally walk down the stairs into the chapel.
I step down to the old floor levels and into the room’s embrace. The space unfolds all at once – ribbed vaulting above me, the last judgement behind me, light pooling across Beauchamp and the Dudleys from the medieval stained glass in front of me.
Stepping into this place is like crossing a threshold in a dream. There’s a suspension of time, and with it, a deeper awareness. The everyday world fades to a murmur. This is one of the very few locations where place becomes a state of being.
The narrative here isn’t only in the carved stone or gilded detail — it lives in the space between, the presence of absence. There are things unseen going on here, and it focuses upon invisible lines and messages that are as powerful as those at Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland or St. Edmund's in Falinge.
The power of the place rests on an invisible thread — a tension that begins in the eyes of Beauchamp, held and channelled by his raised hands, bridging the silence between him and the divine (a depiction of God) above the east window.
For me this chapel, constructed from the finest materials and fashioned from the most revered artists, is held together by that gaze.
This effigy of a man who became one of the most powerful people in England has, through the centuries, unbecome. Time has washed the 'old tenantry' away and the gaze is all that is left. What remains is that which cannot be corrupted by time: the human condition diluted into that stare - the yearning to connect, to envision and to hope.
In front, the promise of heavenly delights, but behind the day of judgement waits.
Before him: the promise of paradise. Behind: the reckoning. And between them, we stand.
I find myself caught in that space — held, as if in amber, inside the arc of that gaze. Had I not noticed it, I might have passed through in shade. But now I’m part of it — drawn in, transported. My eyes, in turn, cannot help but follow the current — to the hands, to the line of longing, to the light that spills from the east.
This, I think, is what it means to be held by a place – not just to witness its beauty, but to be gathered into it, stilled, and, for a moment, lifted in ways the world has forgotten.
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St. Mary's Warwick - The Beauchamp Chapel
The chapel is a powerful expression, not only of the ambition and might of the Beauchamp family, but also of the human condition.
"...the only medieval chantry that stands comparison with Henry VII's chapel at Westminster."
Simon Jenkins. England's Thousand Best Churches.
The tomb of Richard Beauchamp is a marvel.
The chapel was built in the C15th to house the tomb of Richard Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick. It also houses the tombs of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, his brother Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and Robert’s son, the “Noble Impe”.
The tomb is made of gilt-bronze from a model by John Massingham. The stiffness of the repose is brought to life by a remarkably accurate depiction of the anatomy of a body including muscles and veins. Each strand of hair is beautifully depicted.
The weepers that encircle the tomb are also remarkably life like - but in miniature. Each detail is precious - they are the letters that form the sentences to the narrative at play.
The East Window.
I don't think I've photographed a window quite like this: the structure adorned with figures and the medieval glass by John Prudde bejewelled in the winter light.
At the top of the window, and returning Beauchamp's gaze is God in majesty.
Members can view several remarkable 'up close and personal' vistas of the Beauchamp tomb and chapel in glorious VR here:
Andy Marshall
Ambrose Dudley (d.1590)
Robert Dudley (d.1588) and his wife Lettice.
Robert Dudley was a favourite of Elizabeth I.
Members can view exclusive out-takes and videos from my three days spent at St. Mary's Warwick by clicking the box below:
Andy Marshall
To have been suspended in such stillness, gathered in by stone and light, was a rare gift — one that stayed with me long after I left. I’m delighted to share that The Beauchamp Chapel at St Mary’s, Warwick by Tim Clark — a book shaped by that very atmosphere — is now published. Many of the photographs I took during those three days are woven through its pages.
The book can be purchased here:
Books by Local Authors
I'm quite a hardened church crawler, but I couldn't help but be moved at the sight of this ghost angel on the blind arcading in the Beauchamp Chapel in St. Mary's Warwick.
It's quite common for medieval paintings to be hidden behind a coat of limewash - often painted over during periods of iconoclasm - such as the Reformation or the English Civil War.
As the wash fades, more of the angel appears - I'm told that the eye came first some time ago.
The Ghost Angel is on my Treasure Hoard Gazetteer:
Andy Marshall
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Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with Iphone 14 Pro and DJI Mini 3 Pro.
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