Kathryn chose Houghton Hall for us to visit on her birthday.
It was the last opportunity to see the Anthony Gormley statues before they were going to be removed.
About Houghton Hall
Houghton Hall is a country house in the parish of Houghton in Norfolk, England, and is the residence of the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley
It was commissioned by the de facto first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, in 1722, and is a key building in the history of Neo-Palladian architecture in England.
It is a Grade I listed building surrounded by 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of parkland, and is a few miles from Sandringham House.
About the Anthony Gormley Statues
Featuring 100 life-size sculptures, the works are distributed across 300 acres of the park, the furthest away being approximately 1.5 miles on the West Avenue.
The cast-iron sculptures, each weighing 620kg and standing at an average of 191cm, are installed at the same datum level to create a single horizontal plane across the landscape.
Some works are buried, allowing only a part of the head to be visible, while others are buried to the chest or knees according to the topography.
Only occasionally do they stand on the existing surface. Around a quarter of the works are placed on columns that vary from a few centimetres high to rising four metres off the ground.
As visitors wander through the grounds of Houghton Hall, they are invited to contemplate the landscape’s vastness with the figures’ human scale. Gormley’s “Time Horizon” transcends the boundaries, offering a profound meditation on the human experience in all its beauty and complexity.” Artlyst
The visit
We parked our car and made our way to the courtyard. En route, my first shot was a first statue shot peeking over the walled garden.
I then spotted the top of a building which looked like a face.
As we made our way into the ground, we could see a number of statues installed across the grounds, and I captured a fisheye lens view of the hall, and my first statue in the ground shot.
I recognised the trees / hedge as an image a club member had taken and entered into a competition which I recall was an infrared shot.
As we wandered around, I took many shots of the statues and made the following collage:
One of the awesome things about wandering around the grounds is the fallow deer that are milling around.
At this time of year, the deer have grown huge antlers and are quite a majestic sight.
We were having a great time wandering around the grounds looking at the different statue installations.
There were lots of variations of shots on offer.
We then made our way to a very interesting art installation in a large hut.
American artist James Turrell contrived Skyspace for Houghton.
Turrell’s construction presents itself from the exterior as an oak-clad building raised on stilts.
From the inside of the structure, the viewer’s point of view is focused upwards and inevitably lured into contemplating the sky as framed by the open roof.
I got the shot above with the fisheye lens and by laying down on one of the benches around the inside of the hut.
It’s a very interesting experience looking up to the sky through this square space, and surprisingly relaxing.
Although the fisheye provides an 11mm wide view, it still wasn’t wide enough to get as much as I would’ve liked in the shot, but I’m pleased to get what I did anyway.
We stumbled into a side garden to find this interesting metallic art structure.
The light was starting to fade now so we made our way back to the courtyard and while Kathryn was browsing in the shop, I tried a shot of this water feature.
We made our way back towards the car park and decided to take a quick tour of the walled garden.
We were greeted by a spectacular set of featured gardens with some stunning flowers.
On went the macro lens for some close-ups.
I was really enjoying capturing some flower images, either with a narrow or wide aperture.
I’ve grouped the flower shots into similar colours.
The following shot is probably my favourite flower shot of the day.
On our way out, the fisheye went back on to grab my last Gormley statue shot.
We thoroughly enjoyed visiting Houghton Hall. It’s a lovely place with plenty to explore and enjoy, and definitely somewhere to return to on a Summer’s day.
I was pleased with the images I bagged albeit the two lenses I took were on/off quite a lot.
Onwards and upwards…