As detailed in Image of the Month for July 2022, the village of Hambleden is in the southwest corner of the county of Buckinghamshire in England, at the foot of the Hambleden Valley some 4 miles West of Marlow in Buckinghamshire, 3 miles east of Henley in Oxfordshire, and on the North bank of the River Thames.
The village name is Anglo-Saxon in origin, and means ‘crooked or irregularly-shaped hill’. It was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Hanbledene, though previously in 1015 it was known as Hamelan dene. The civil parish also includes the villages of Fingest and Frieth, and the hamlets of Colstrope, Mill End, Parmoor, Pheasant’s Hill and Skirmett. At the 2011 Census the population of the parish was 1,445.
The village has a history dating back to Roman times, and despite it’s small size has been home to a number of famous residents over the years. Because of it’s picturesque rural charm and close proximity to London it is a popular film location, as indeed are the other small villages and hamlets further up the Hambleden Valley.
Some notable films shot around the village and up the valley include Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Sleepy Hollow, The Monuments Men, An Education, and numerous episodes from TV productions of Agatha Christie’s Poirot series, Inspector Morse, Lewis, Endeavour, Midsomer Murders and various others of that ilk. Higher up the valley, admittedly just over the border into Oxfordshire, the adjacent village of Turville has often featured in films and TV series also, such as Went the day Well?, Calendar Girls (admittedly the only scene not filmed in Yorkshire, but the windmill from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is clearly visible in the background), and the very popular TV series The Vicar of Dibley.
The barn in the photo has featured in an episode of Endeavour (S4, E4 – ‘Harvest’), and also of Midsomer Murders.
My interest in Hambleden village stems from when I lived in nearby Marlow, and by coincidence still is now that we live on Dartmoor in Devon – we first bought a holiday/weekend cottage in the village of North Bovey back in 2004, and learnt that our cottage had been sold off along with many other properties in the village from the Hambleden Estate at an auction in 1928, when the Hambleden family was hit with two lots of major death duties in the space of about 8 years. As a result, there are many links between North Bovey and Hambleden, both being very small villages or hamlets having been owned by the same family, and preserved from major developments and ‘improvements’ over the years.
Over the years I have tried to capture various scenes and viewpoints in the valley throughout the seasons in all weathers and all lights – bright sunny days to gloomy and chilly frosty days in winter, and even in the snow when it becomes quite monochrome. This photograph was taken after a night of heavy snowfall – I had planned to photograph the allotment gardens in the village, but on the way saw the barn and was taken with the composition, particularly the stark spidery trees framing the barn.
It isn’t easy to photograph snow scenes – the snow bounces a lot of light around which can easily fool the camera’s exposure meter into believing that the scene is brighter than it really is, resulting in the camera and the photographer over compensating and using a slower than required shutter speed, which results in an under-exposed image. At least with digital one sees an instant result, and in manual mode one can easily experiment to find the best exposure. Of course one can also try HDR given the right conditions.
Unsurprisingly, snow tends to be very white and bright, making it hard to retain details of texture such as footprints for example, without the snow coming across as a dirty grey colour. In this instance, the snow had fallen the day before and was just about starting to thaw, but the heavy and low dull grey clouds gave a very overcast mid-morning light which seemed to sum up the general gloomy atmosphere. I particularly liked the tracery of the dilapidated metal fence and the two ancient oak trees leading towards the barn.
The image is an obvious candidate for conversion to black & white, but I personally prefer the subtle shades of brown from the barn timbers and the trees, and golden yellow from the stalks of dead grass by the side of the track and the hedgerow, which give just a hint of colour and soften the image to avoid it becoming too stark. I did also try brightening the image, to bring out the golden yellows, but that just made the snow too bright resulting in a loss of textural detail.
Reducing the contrast of the B&W image didn’t work, as it revealed the footsteps in the field immediately behind the barn, where there is a footpath (Public Right of Way) rising up from the track to the woods above the valley, and I felt that the tracery of the footpath rather over-complicated the image and detracted from the barn. A justifiable touch of ‘artistic licence’ perhaps?