Banbury: The Gate to Heaven

Banbury: The Gate to Heaven
25 August 2002

Location	Banbury, Oxfordshire, OS Explorer, 191 (west). I parked the car on a residential street on the edge of Banbury in an area called Neithrop. A friendly man who was tinkering with a car showed me the way to the footpath towards Wroxton. That's where I went. Initially the plan was to go to North Newington from Wroxton and then return to the car. But a heavy rain changed my plans so I just walked back and forth to Wroxton. I spent quite a while in the North Arms pub in Wroxton waiting for the rain to pass. I've visited Wroxton before, in August last year.

Weather	Partly cloudy but clearing up after some heavy rain.

Click on the images to see larger versions.


	It was cloudy at first as I walked along the edge of a field.

The break in the foliage below is where the bridge crosses Sor Brook. You can make out the obelisk in the top left corner.

	A mallow was growing by the side of the path. If you hadn't guessed it before I was back to using my Sony camera here. The old camera wouldn't have been able to show this amount of detail.

Here we are at the gate in the title of the page. When I said that there's no path through the gate, that turned out not to be true. There is a path and it leads to Banbury.

	Looking at the gate from the front, the Wroxton side. You can see clearly that it is a folly rather than a medieval gate. The indentations in the towers are supposed to mimic windows in a tower with a spiral staircase.

A folly it may be but you can still get very romantic pictures of it. Focusing on the sky behind it, the gate looks very medieval.

	Here we've started out descent towards Wroxton and are looking across the newly plowed fields towards North Newington.

We can also look more towards the northwest and see the obelisk in front of a clump of trees.

	Another mallow makes me focus more closely for a moment. This one is sans bug.

I looked back at the romantic folly. The dark specks in the lower right corner were crows. Their cawing suited the somber mood of the gate.

	Down by the brook, the mood is sunnier. The flowers are early marsh orchids, Dactylorhiza incarnata. Except they seem to have missed the "early" part of their name and are still flowering in August when they should have stopped in June. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. They add a lot to this scene.

You can make out some more early marsh orchids on the left of this photo but what I really like about it is the mysterious darkness in the middle. The eye is drawn into it, following the brook but I can't actually make out what is hidden in the shadows. Exciting stuff.

	The very yellow flowers of rape seed. Very, very yellow. We'll see more of the leaves later on in this walk.

And here is the glossy seedhead of a thistle. Each curly tuft of hair carries a seed. I can never pass one of these without wanting to reach out and touch it. The soft hair is such a contrast to the spiny rest of the plant.

	Wroxton Abbey is a college nowadays. By this account it's a very nice place to study. You can tell that it is genuinely old and was created as a place to live rather than an eighteenth century folly because of the windows on the gable on the left. It was clearly the function of the rooms inside that dictated their placement.

The fish ponds are positively alluring in this light. I love the way the sun shines through the ash leaves.

	The stately dovecote again. Again we have the difference between buildings whose form is dictated by a real need and those that are designed to look as if the fulfil a function that they could never hope to fill. Who would put a defensive tower in the middle of a pasture where it could be so easily besieged?

Last time I visited Wroxton I called it "a quintessential chocolate box cover village". It's a description I stand by, having explored it a bit more. These ducks are a case in point. They live on a pond in the middle of the village.

	These beautiful flowers belong to a garden variety of rudbeckias. Rudbeckia is a funny name for a flower. It's not exactly descriptive. As it turns out Linneaus named the genus rudbeckias after Olof Rudbeck Jr. Both Rudbeck Sr. and Jr. served as mentors for Linneaus in his career as an academic botanist. Linneaus even stayed with Rudbeck Jr. when he first came to Uppsala to study botany. You can find out more about Linneaus or Linné as he is called in Swedish, in the history pages of the web site of the Department of Systematic Botany at Uppsala University.

As I said in the introduction I spent a long while in the North Arms waiting for the rain to stop. It was not unpleasant at all. I was having a Pimms and reading a mystery. Once the sun came out again, I took this photo of a sun flower, Helianthus annuus, growing in a tub in the pub garden.

	Having decided that I didn't have time to walk to North Newington I explored a bit more in Wroxton instead. Growing against the wall of a lovely stone cottage, I found this hollyhock. The colour can best be described as "blush", I guess. At any rate it's gorgeous. On the flower that is facing us, you can make out the rain drops on the back of the petals. It's so pretty I want to eat it.

I ventured inside the church. There I found this monument showing Britannia, the personification of the British Empire. The monument was erected to the memory of Frederick North, the second Earl of Guilford. Frederick was Prime Minister to George III during the American war of Independence. Maybe that is what the olive branch in the top right corner is about. Judging from the winged cadeus in the top left corner he was also interested in medicine. But those weren't the reasons I took a photo of the monument. No, the reason was the way the sculptor treated the lion. Take a close look at it and you'll see what I'm on about.

	A row of stone cottages is glowing in the sun.

Here I have started back on the path towards Banbury. In this picture we see much more clearly how the dovecote leans. Still, with the feathery trees behind and the sun shining on the golden weather vane, it's very romantic. Never mind that it couldn't have withstood a half day minute siege.

	The sheep on the right is having a conversation with the sheep on the left. Alas, the sheep on the left is more interested in the photographer. Sorry, I'm not with Vogue.

The sun had come out and lit up the light clouds. Here they are reflected in the fish pond. As you can see there was no wind.

	The path next to the fish ponds is very green. It's protected by a sturdy and elegant gate.

In contrast, the path back up towards the hill that the obelisk stands on, looks positively bleak. This variety is part of what makes walking in the UK so pleasurable. "Variety is the very spice of life" as Pope said.

	Here we are back at the obelisk. Having grown tired of the phallic shape, I instead tried taking some close-ups. This one showing a broken corner and some nettles came out quite well.

Another break in the surface.

	From the obelisk we can see the gate. The houses in the background on the left are part of Banbury.

The botanical term for the greyish leaves of rape seed is "glaucous". It means "covered in wax". The rain drops, the evening light and the glaucous surface all combine to make this effect.

	Here we can see the uneven waxy coating even better. I think it's the air that's trapped under the drops that creates the effect.

Back at the brook, the change of light has changed the mood. This time, instead of mysterious shadows, we see the reflection of a brightly lit bush.

	The newly plowed fields also seem much more benign when lit like this.

Thistles don't carry umbrellas so their glossy manes are transformed into a tousled mess by the rain.

	If I had made it to North Newington, this is where I would have walked.

This is the same scene but seen from farther up the hill towards Banbury. As you can see, it was getting hazy.

	And once more from the gate.

Taking a closer look we see how long the shadows are getting. There's even a bit of pink in the sky.

	The evening light is flattering for the gate. Here is one of the mock windows.

Anyone who has seen my pictures from the Red Earth area, cannot doubt my love for it. On that note I end with one last photo of the gate to heaven.