Last summer I had a day out along the small, seasonal river, called the Winterborne. I took my Canon EOS 30 with the STM 40mm and loaded it up with a roll of Kodak’s E100 slide film. The first slide film I’d used in years. It took the lab quite a time to process the E6 film, and when it came back to me, there were quite a few light scratches on it that took quite a bit of time to photoshop out. I briefly thought about a repeat this year, and looked at E100 again but the cost of the film, processing and postage makes it just too much. From my usual supplier £41.11 !! Wow!
I had a roll of Ektar 100 in the fridge, so that was to be my film for the day, and I used the same camera and lens. This time I chose another of Dorset’s “little rivers” the Tarrant. As you can see from the sign post above, there are many little villages that carry the name as it flows by. I started high on the hills surrounding the catchment valley at the Collingwood Battalion Memorial. It commemorates the officers and men of the Collingwood Battalion who died in action during the Third Battle of Krithia at Helles on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 4 June 1915.
The river has no single source, it sort of grows up out of the valley, and the first village to carry the name in Tarrant Gunville. Here stands St Mary’s Church -mostly remodelled in the 19th century but with a 15th century tower. The decoration inside is lovely, suble paint effects. There is however a plaque that is of interest to us!
Thomas Wedgwood, third son of the famous potter, was born in 1771. By then it was well known that silver nitrate or “silver of nitrate” darkened on exposure to sunlight. Placing a fern on a sheet of paper soaked with a solution, Thomas found he could make an image. Of course in short time it faded. Critically he did not give up and decided to “improve” this, so he made a “camera” and “allowed light to pass through a shutter! Just keep in mind he died in 1805! Sadly Hypo-sulphite of soda was in fact discovered by the time of his death, but it’s use as a fixing agent, was not. He was almost certainly the first person ever to own a camera!!
Thomas died in Eastbury House, the entrance to which is just 200 meters from the church. This gate, another gate (below) and one wing of the house, not open to the public, is all that remain of what was once thought to be the third largest house in England after Blenheim and Castle Howard!
Just a short a drive downstream is the next village – Tarrant Hinton… but that’s another story!
S.H.O.U.T. 