The theme for my portfolio is Morden Hall Park which in many ways is quite a wide brief as so many different activities occur there. I decided on the theme after I saw the results from a test roll of film I used on my new medium format camera, a Lubitel 166U. I bought the camera in December to experiment with medium format and although it is very basic and quite fiddley, the results it produces are impressive for a camera that only costs £30 when new.
Morden Hall Park, which is now owned and maintained by the National Trust, was originally created by the monks at Westminster Abbey, and has had a variety of owners and tenants over the last 4 hundred years since its creation. The property (125 acres) is quite extensive and owes much of its character to its last owner, Gilliat Hatfield, who fancied himself as a country gentleman and made Morden Hall into his country estate. The hall itself was built in 1770 and has been used for a variety functions including a school, hospital and an office block for the local council and is currently used as a restaurant. The estate has a number of buildings including stables block, two mills, walled garden and a number of lodges and cottages. The walled garden contains a big car park, garden centre tea room and craft workshops.
The grounds, however, remain the main feature of the property and are freely available to the public. The park consist of discrete areas or habitats which are crossed by a number of leets and the river Wandle itself. The whole site is a conservation area with some sections being out of bounds to the public either permanently or seasonally. Many traditional maintenance techniques are now being employed like hedging in order to encourage wild life. A number of islands are used as bird sanctuaries and are out of bounds to the public so that they can nest and breed in safety.
I decided to concentrate on three themes, namely, the buildings, the river and the people. My portfolio is intended to reflect the nature and life of the park.
This portfolio was created for my first City & Guilds 9231 module in 1997. The images displayed in the same format and organisation as they were submited to the City & Guilds examination board. The images have been kept small to reduce download time and make the pages faster to load. If you uses Explorer4 or Navigator4, you wll get a Dynamic HTML version of the pages which are a bit slicker. Please click on the icon below to see the portfolio.
