View allAll Photos Tagged stutter
I found this Gondola Quattrosentesca in a shipyard on Giudecca in Venice. Covered gondolas are unusual, and this one is a relic, in dire need of restoration. Bare wood, broken window, ripped curtain, weeds inside. End of the fairytale, perhaps.
I shot this with a Norita 66; its a nice 120 manual camera, with a lovely bright 88mm f2 lens. But it needs a service, the cloth shutter is known to occasionally bounce open - it happened here- that's the dark bar on the left cutting into the frame. Its not consistent; one shutter bounce out of 4 rolls. Its an interesting artifact. Nevertheless, I wish it hadn't happened.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, nr. 700. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
French comic actor and musician Darry Cowl (1925-2006) appeared in more than 150 films, often as a clown with a chronic stutter. Many of his comedies were not worth his talents, but at the end of his life, he made a glorious come-back and won the César twice.
Darry Cowl was born as André Darricau in Vittel, France, in 1925. His father was doctor. He studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris. After he had finished his studies successfully, he did not chose to work for an orchestra, but became a musical clown in the nightclubs and cabarets of Paris. He made his film debut in Quatre jours à Paris/Four Days in Paris (1955, André Berthomieu) with Luis Mariano and soon appeared insmall roles in films like Bonjour sourire/Good Morning Smile (1955, Claude Sautet), and En effeuillant la marguerite/Mademoiselle Striptease (1956, Marc Allégret) with Brigitte Bardot. Director Sacha Guitry cast him twice in Assassins et voleurs/Assassins and Robbers (1957) and Les Trois font la paire/Three Make a Pair (1957). Cowl decided to focus on film acting He gained celebrity status with his role as Antoine Péralou in Le Triporteur/The Tricycle (1957, Jacques Pinoteau). The stuttering Antoine is a football fanatic, who follows his favorite team from one game to the next madly peddling his tricycle to his various destinations. Between 1955 and 1965 he played in more than 60 films made by directors like André Berthomieu, Jean Girault and Jacques Pinoteau. Cowl often played the silly ass who stumbles on his lines on purpose.
Darry Cowl was a game addict, and he often acted only for the money in films that did not stretch his acting ability. An exception was Archimède, le clochard/The Magnificent Tramp (1959, Gilles Grangier) in which he apperaed opposite the great Jean Gabin. In 1964, Cowl directed a feature film himself, Jaloux comme un tigre/Jealous as a Tiger (1964, Darry Cowl). He also appeared in this comedy, wrote the scenario and composed the score. Sadly it was not a success. He continued to appear in dozens of comedies, including Les tribulations d'un chinois en Chine/Up to His Ears (1965, Philippe de Broca) and an episode of Les bons vivants/High Lifers (1965, Gilles Grangier, Georges Lautner). In 1974 he played Major Archibald in Touche pas à la femme blanche/Don't Touch the White Woman! (1974, Marco Ferreri) with Catherine Deneuve, the only film he pretended to be proud about. The next decades most of his films were not very interesting. He wrote three memoirs, Le flambeur (1986) about his passion for the game, Le triporteur se livre (1994) and Mémoires d'un canaillou (2005). During the 1990’s, he appeared in better films like Ville à vendre/City for Sale (1992, Jean-Pierre Mocky) starring Michel Serrault, and Les misérables (1995, Claude Lelouch) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. In 1999, he even made a magnificent comeback as the only Caucasian employee of a Chinatown shop in Augustin, roi du Kung-fu/ Augustin, King of Kung-Fu (1999, Anne Fontaine). Twice he was a awarded a César, the French equivalent of an Oscar. In 2001 he received a César d'honneur for his career, and in 2004 he won another César for for his supporting role as a concierge in Pas sur la bouche/Not on the lips (2004, Alain Resnais). He also won a Molière for Best Supporting Role on the French stage, in 1995. He had hoped to return to theatre acting in Hold Up, a play by Jean Barbier, in September 2005, but ill-health prevented this. His last film was L'homme qui rêvait d'un enfant/The man Who Dreamed About a Child (2006, Delphine Gleize). He would never see the finished film. In 2006, Darry Cowl died in Neuilly-sur-Seine from complications of lung cancer, aged 80. He was married twice, first to Nelly Marco, and the second time to actress Rolande Kalis.
Sources: Hal Erickson (All Movie Guide), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
Little more stuttering then I would have like but I had a little trouble getting my thoughts out this morning. I guess I'm not quite awake yet.
I love the ring of me mickey. I’m not talking about me prepuce, it’s the delicate alliteration of the words I like. 'My mickey' is not me, 'me mickey' is. It may be the ‘cod Oirish’ that’s in it, but it’s truer to what I stuttered as a child. Later I learnt to speak posh, that’s when I contrived to culturally appropriate your ‘teanga’, so the ‘Cod’ was what I spoke then, and it is what I am remembering to be do be doing now, or some such codswallop.
I remember the elocution class teacher and her gorgeous intonations of “Though there’s dough there, there’s love there too though boy”, as we struggled with “Dough dere’s dough dere, dere’s love dere too dough boy”. I struggled more than most with that, as me stutter hung around enjoying the first word repeatedly. I was sorta definitely dough boy, a bit of a rake of a dough boy really, a skinny freckled fecker, but stuck there all the same masticating all dem words, or at least the first one. But one great thing about a stammer is that you have to constantly flick through your inner rolodex of words (this was way before we had hard-drives, or hard anything for that matter), when you are stuck at one, I mean. You have to find another one, quickly, as you staccato away, another that might remotely fit, that is sayable, that won’t get bloody stuck. So, as you are enjoying this damning word, you are also running through that childish thesaurus in your head desperately searching for that alternative dam-buster.
Sometimes the word found was just plain-old wrong, and you got beaten with a leather strap for your efforts, but at least some semblance of a word was found that might describe what you were trying to say. Since then I have always enjoyed malaprops, and remember loving watching Mrs Malaprop masticate as she tread the boards in ‘The Rivals’ (I watched it more than 20 times), and that it was Geraldine McEwan doing said mastication only made the whole shebang more drippingly delicious, as she basked like an allegory on the banks of the Nile. Fiona Shaw was there too, in her big professional debut, velveting the stage with her posh Irish, something I hadn’t truly appreciated as a possibility until then. I would become posh and never speak cod again. I know, it’s all very Scarlet O’Hara, after the buggering battle of Atlanta, as she grasped the soil in her grubby mitts, but hey ho, chicken-butt, and all that, I blame me mammy. Tara, how are ye?
In my childhood Darby O’Gill was real and Audrey Hepburn was a nun, and me mammy’s grand-aunt was the Irish governess for the posh children of the frigging Empress Sisi of Austria, and I was born in the ‘Marian Year’ of 1954, as designated by Pope Whoever XII himself. There had only been two Papal Marian years, and I was born in one of them, this destined me to the priesthood, there was no doubt about that at all, at all. As I said, I blame me mammy, and I don’t think that will ever change, but who knows?
I am sure I will get back to me name-dropping problem later (see above). Everything in due course, as they say.
I'll tell you what you can do to really confuse a stuttering 6-year-old child. If you tell him that his grand-aunt is/was off gallivanting in some foreign country with some Empress or other, and then drag him to watch a two part fillum of said Empress (Romy, how are ye?), in German, that would be you making a very good start indeed.
It was such a joy when the dam burst, and the posh eejit emerged, that malaproping, name-dropping, blaggard. But, as would be expected, he brought, with him, his own problems too, ushering in that curse of too many words.
Can we still say ballerina? (Et tu-tu, Brute?).
Aside from the visuals, the sound stutters and it eventually makes me nuts enough to turn it off...but the printer won't work for the rest of the network if I do...
1977 Stutz Blackhawk.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stutz_Blackhawk
Downtown Flint, Michigan.
Saturday, August 15, 2015.
My 365 in white stuttered a bit whilst I was ill, but I did take some shots of my mornings!! From a white X of vapour trail to a white cup of tea. I hope this works as a catchup!!
Ps feeling much better now!!
Requested for an article about stuttering. Apparently Bruce Willis had a stutter when he was younger!
This picture is available to use for free, under the creative commons licence. All I ask is that I'm given a photo credit & a courtesy email to let me know how it's being used.
Ex Hong Kong (China Motor Bus) Leyland / Dennis Condor at Market and Stutter in San Francisco working for Big Bus Tours.
AFC Wulfs stuttering start to the season continued with a comprehensive defeat at the hands of high flying league newcomers St Andrews
Pasadena, February 2011
Me: "I'm not gonna buy ice cream but can I take a picture of you?"
Paletero: "Whatever" (Goes back to talking to his buddy)
Me: CLICK!
Washpool National Park, New South Wales.
For use of this photo please contact clancywildlife@gmail.com
The Senior Stutters Line Dancers of Valdosta performed a show at Lake Park United Methodist Church on March 1, 2011.
Photo by Patsy Casteen
(Actitis macularius) Bertram Creek Regional Park, Kelowna
(From Cornell's All About Birds):
"The dapper Spotted Sandpiper makes a great ambassador for the notoriously difficult-to-identify shorebirds. They occur all across North America, they are distinctive in both looks and actions, and they're handsome. They also have intriguing social lives in which females take the lead and males raise the young. With their richly spotted breeding plumage, teetering gait, stuttering wingbeats, and showy courtship dances, this bird is among the most notable and memorable shorebirds in North America.
Spotted Sandpipers are the most widespread sandpiper in North America, and they are common near most kinds of freshwater, including rivers and streams, as well as near the sea coast. Their range includes water bodies in otherwise arid parts of the continent, and it extends into the mountains, where they may occur upwards of 14,000 feet above sea level. Breeding territories generally need to have a shoreline, a semiopen area where the nest will be, and patches of dense vegetation for sheltering the chicks. Spotted Sandpipers spend the winter along the coasts of North America or on beaches, mangroves, rainforest, and cloud forest up to 6,000 feet elevation in Central and South America.
Cool Facts
• The Spotted Sandpiper is the most widespread breeding sandpiper in North America.
• Female Spotted Sandpipers sometimes practice an unusual breeding strategy called polyandry, where a female mates with up to four males, each of which then cares for a clutch of eggs. One female in Minnesota laid five clutches for three males in a month and a half. This odd arrangement does not happen everywhere and often they are monogamous, with the female pitching in to help a little.
• The female Spotted Sandpiper is the one who establishes and defends the territory. She arrives at the breeding grounds earlier than the male. In other species of migratory birds, where the male establishes the territory, he arrives earlier.
• The male takes the primary role in parental care, incubating the eggs and taking care of the young. One female may lay eggs for up to four different males at a time.
• Despite the gender roles, male Spotted Sandpipers have 10 times the testosterone that females have. However, that’s only in absolute terms. During the breeding season, females see a sevenfold increase in their testosterone levels, perhaps accounting for their aggression and the overall role reversal between male and female.
• The female may store sperm for up to one month. The eggs she lays for one male may be fathered by a different male in a previous mating.
• Its characteristic teetering motion has earned the Spotted Sandpiper many nicknames. Among them are teeter-peep, teeter-bob, jerk or perk bird, teeter-snipe, and tip-tail.
• The function of the teetering motion typical of this species has not been determined. Chicks teeter nearly as soon as they hatch from the egg. The teetering gets faster when the bird is nervous, but stops when the bird is alarmed, aggressive, or courting."
zoe: This thing just made my head explode.
leroy: what the fuck is that thing?
zoe: I know! I saw the video and actually stuttered. "what! what ! what! what!
what?!? the hell is that?" it's so obviously not supposed to be here. and
it's good the video is silent, just bubbly noises. no dumb ass commentating
to dull the experience.
I'll tell you just what I felt like: I felt like joaquin phoenix's character
in signs watching that party video of the alien.
leroy: they say it's called the Deep Sea Frill Shark, but i see its head breaking
the surface. i bet it's freaked out because of global warming.
zoe: it was sick I guess. I want to say poor thing, but I'm honestly having some
trouble with the empathy here. my gut says no. but all the same, it should
stay down at 2000 feet. avoid all the superficial bullshit.
leroy: this fucking thing is the dragon from "neverending story".
seriously! it looks like it, it moves like it
leroy: i was watching a nature documentary i got from netflix last night. 'deep
blue'. it wasn't the best thing ever - nice photography, but no information
in the voiceover - basically the 'armageddon' of nature documentaries, empty
eye candy. but at the end of ... they had this sequence of killer whales -
orcas, if you will - you know how they creep up right next to the beach and
then leap out and grab a seal? they were doing that, and so they showed
that for like five minutes. leap out, bite a seal... leap out, bite a seal... and then
they gradually segued to how the whales would take them back out to sea
and start playing with them, sort of like cats... and they showed this one
whale tossing a seal, one of the big males, up in the air with his
mouth... he did it over and over again... just playing... until finally,
the kicker: the whale actually put the seal ON HIS TAIL - i saw this shot
starting, a big whale tail sitting on the surface with the seal on it, and
was like, "what the..." - and FLIPPED IT IN THE AIR WITH HIS TAIL. STRAIGHT
UP. this bull sea lion must have gone 100 FEET IN THE AIR. NO JOKE.
because the killer whales were THAT BORED.
zoe: damn, son.
will haunt mine — tender, delicate
your lovemaking…
the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth —
your touch on me, firm, protective, searching
me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers
reaching where I had been waiting years for you
in my rose-wet cave — whatever happens, this is.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 12: <> attends the American Institute For Stuttering 17th Annual Gala Hosted By Emily Blunt on June 12, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for American Institute For Stuttering )
So, it appears you have decided to dry-mount yourself into being. After a stuttering start you have, perhaps, found your beginning. You have decided to submit yourself to a Galápagos finch spreadeagling, a pinning to a specimen board, a desiccated permanence, exposed to the inquisitional gaze of the curious.
It’s not like it’s the first time you have been dry-mounted.
You realise that all anomalies will be on show, everything that marked you out as ‘strange’, and set you on your relentless choiceless course. The microscope will show that shrunken hippocampus, whilst the descriptions will provide some evidence of coping mechanisms generated to deal with that particular state and its nascence.
You have collaborators in this self-pinning, you hand-picked women for that role, three mainly, but there have been others. You ‘choose’ women, from outside family, for their caring and delicacy. This generated itself naturally because for the most part, you don’t like men, or rather you don’t trust them. There have been a few exceptions, of course, and perhaps there will be more of that later.
Rack,
Now I'm worried about you and glad I'm coming over soon. Don't croak, but I'm sure that's not immediately imminent. Fuck this lurgy! I'm going to phone you this evening because e-mail is not enough, and I want to hear your voice reassuring me, or telling me that you are scared, or whatever. You know you upset me but that's only because I love you too much and I know you might need a sounding board to share your fears with. Thank God (who?) for your ‘him indoors’. I hope he's managing OK. I wish you were here, but I recognise that this is just a selfish wish. I will see you again very soon. Galvanised to write, eh? Write then. Write to me. Let's write an e-mail novel together; a sort of 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' with contemporary STD undertones...sounds a bit like ‘Rent’, doesn't it?
Talk to you later
Your Bilious Ruin xxx
PS: I didn't get your last missive.
The unravelling began casually, or in retrospect it seemed casual, even though it began with the spectre of mortality looming. They had already been through this too often together in their history, their shared story. That tale embraced tragedy and humour early on, in fact from the first day, or at least from that day when she impressed herself on his consciousness indelibly. Ruin guessed she had been a presence before that, but only one that merged attractively with all that was exciting about negotiating a new and bohemian life in New York City in 1987.
Central to that excitement was another plague. This lurgy was different from the one we are all, universally, enjoying now. It was a plague with an added sting, that stigma generated by the unfortunate entanglement of sex and shame in the human psyche, that particular hatred of one’s own needy, hormonally generated, essence.
"The vampire finch is sexually dimorphic as typical for its genus, with the males being primarily black and the females grey with brown streaks. It has a lilting song on Wolf, a buzzing song on Darwin, and whistling calls on both islands; only on Wolf, a drawn-out, buzzing call is also uttered."
The Divine Wiki
I hereby extend to you a heartfelt welcome to this spiralling, purple, display-case of our dry-mounted utterings, stutterings, liltings, whistlings, buzzings, and drawn-out vampiric screechings, permanently fixed in this skewered skewwhiff comedy of missteps and celebratory 'fatal' errors.
Ex Hong Kong Leyland / Dennis Condor at Market and Stutter in San Francisco working for Big Bus Tours. passing Neoplan AN440 #8346 on route 2.
Forza Horizon 3’s PC performance has not exactly been flawless, and stuttering may be exacerbated by new Microsoft DRM.
Water based oil on canvas, 36" x 48"
Original tiger photograph by Tommy Simms on Flickr.com
The ancestors of modern tigers evolved of 42 million years.
www.livescience.com/17723-sabertooth-cats-powerful-arms.html
Hearing the interview with Alan Rabinowitz on Krista Tippett’s NPR show called, “Being,” touched me on many levels. As a child Rabinowitz was crippled with a stuttering problem that was so severe, they put him in the classes with the kids who had learning problems and forgot about him. He couldn’t speak to people, but he could speak to animals. And as this broken child connected with a broken, caged leopard in the zoo he made a promise. If he could ever complete a sentence, he’d be the voice for the animals. Rabinowitz went on to learn how to control his breath and now he is doing what he said he would do for the big cats. He’s doing it very well. He's got a PhD in Zoology, acts as the CEO for panthera.org, and he's really making a difference. Years later as he’s tracking a wild black panther through the jungle, the panther slips in behind him and he comes face to face with it. Now he measures his spirit to this healthy, wild animal and the story comes full circle. Rabinowitz says this about tigers:
“Spiritually I feel very strongly about the tigers. I think you can drop me off any place in the world and I can tell you if the big cats are around me or not. I have been face to face with wild lions, with wild jaguars, and there is a real energy emanating from them. I’ve been in jungle and watched as big cats move through the jungle and hear all of the animals go silent as the big predator moves through it. The energy in a jungle with big predators is a very, very different energy, and when you truly merge with it and feel it, it’s not a dangerous energy. It’s not a negative energy — completely the opposite. It’s this huge, positive, overwhelming force which humbles you, makes you realize that there are things much greater on the Earth than you.”
Peter Levine wrote one of my favorite books. It’s called, “Waking the Tiger.” Levine talks about the fight or flight response everyone has to a traumatic event. When something bad happens to you and it leaves you paralyzed with fear, the energy of the event slips inside you. It keeps hurting you. You spend all your time replaying the event over and over looking at the situation from different angles to make sure it never happens to you again. Meanwhile it saps your strength. However, if you can look at the event, re-write the story, re-focus the energy and wake the tiger, you can get the energy to move through you instead of letting is get stuck inside you. This process makes you strong. Learn how to re-create yourself. Learn how to re-create the world by waking the tiger and facing what paralyzes you.
It really works. I had a healthy case of PTSD from a car accident as a child. I connected with parrots to make myself strong. I helped write a book that rocked the avian world. When I was in a second car accident a few years ago, I knew what to do. I avoided a lot of the pitfalls I stepped directly into as a much younger person because I moved the energy differently. And now when I look at the gut wrenching incident at Zanesville, Ohio where all those animals got shot. I watch how the pain disappears from the horizon but still rolls around in our psyches and I simply must say out loud it’s not enough to witness the event. We have to do something with it.
Here's the link for Krista Tippett's show
being.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/applications/formbu...
Beth Martell - Your Voices, Your Stories | A Voice for the Animals with Alan Rabinowitz [onBeing.or
being.publicradio.org
With the extinction of the tiger so close, transforming our own hearts is paramount.
Video stutter due to Flickr compression. Follow this link to see smoother results: www.timelapse.ie
Ex Hong Kong (China Motor Bus) Leyland / Dennis Condor at Market and Stutter in San Francisco working for Big Bus Tours.
This is the time lapse movie I made of the rock sculpture I did yesterday. You're probably getting bored of me saying it but click play then pause to download the video then once downloaded you view it with stuttering. And you'll need to play it twice. The first time it plays an AVI it seems to go at 4 times the speed it should. The second time should be fine. I have no idea why.
It was interesting to see that the rainbow arches I made yestreday weren't very popular despite getting a few views. That is very useful feedback for me so thank you. I hope that it means that the comments I do get are genuinely because you like something and if you don't like something as much then you don't favourite or leave comments. I really hope my assumption is correct because it should mean what you are writing are genuine, useful comments rather than just being nice!
There were a lot of people around yesterday in the park and I felt rushed and a bit pressured and didn't put enough effort into all the things I normally would. I think it shows and it seems so do you. Resting on my laurels (as opposed to making something out them!) is not good and constructive feedback will keep me focussed on doing what I do to the best of my ability.
Also please know that I do read every single one of your comments with great interest and I really appreciate the time that everyone gives to write comments on my pictures. I may not answer everyone individually (but I would like to) but I take a lot of notice of what every single person writes. I appreciate it a great deal.
I had many 100's of new contacts made last weekend and it will take me a good while to be able to look at everyones photos as I like to do. So please don't think I am ignoring anyone or not grateful for the kind words you all have left me, its just that I am a bit swamped at the mo and have too many projects on the go at once. A lot of my effort is going into two books I am compiling at the moment, I hope to have them finished soon.
It is also quite challenging to keep coming up with new and different ideas whenever I make something so it may be time to step back for a little while and refresh my inspiration. (However I am always saying that as I expect my ideas to dry up any moment as I don't know where they come from but the ideas do seem to keep coming)! So I hope everyone sticks around if I do take a short break, I still want to share what I do with everyone if you want me to.
A few hours sat at my desk at work will soon put me in the right frame of mind though. It only takes a little pointless shuffling of papers to help me come up with some fresh ideas to carry out! Who would work a job with so little creative content? Me and countless millions of others I am sure.
Have a nice rest of the weekend whatever you are up to.
Richard.
Ps. Apologies for the lack of humour but my comedy writer has gone on holiday!
non-woven landscaping (ground cover, weed control) membrane, weatherings, encrustations and other cumulative stutterings and insults
Niihama / Cambridge
20 August 2018
He loved words. That, he learnt much later, would be his undoing. At some point the words got stuck. He wasn’t sure when that happened, it might have been in the fallopian tube, it might have been much earlier. He didn’t remember when they first began to tumble out, or stutter out rather. To begin with there were so few of them, but at the same time he couldn’t recall when they turned staccato, when they had begun to trip each other up, when they started to pile up in his head refusing to let each other fall out of his mouth.
It was usually just one word. The thing was he saw it, that word, coming. Even as he was boasting to his friends about a new adventure, or whatever, he could see it coming. I say that word, but in truth, there were a lot of them, and one word would be fine one day, and on another could quietly set up a barricade in his throat and refuse to budge. Some words were impossible, his own name for Christ’s sake, why the hell would that get stuck? His own name in Gaelic was even worse, but that’s jumping ahead.
Anyway, in the long run, he ended up with all these words stuck up inside his head, all blocked by one little bastard of a word flicking his epiglottis and making a ridiculous noise there, impersonating a machine gun in his throat. It hurt too, that stoppage, or rather those far from standard stoppages.
However, he had realised lately that he wasn't going to let pronouns, or any other words for that matter, stop him now. This was a new talking anyway, this was a talking to himself. It was a talking he was doing with a keyboard on a screen, stuttering didn't matter at all, at all. There was sometimes a hesitancy, but that could always be corrected, nudged into a type of flowing. He knew no one was listening anyway, so it didn't matter. This was a new sort of freedom.
He knew it would have to become more private as he went along. He was both dreading and looking forward to this.
My knowledge of the county where I spent the first 25 years of my life, is largely restricted what you could see from the main roads through it, or where Shreeves Coaches would do tours too. Therefore I know the A12 and 143 very well, but away from those, not so good.
I grew up in a household that did not own a car, I am the only one to have passed a driving test, so any exploration would have to be where there was a railway station nearby, or where a coach might call.
Before my current interest in churches, I would see signs pointing down leafy lanes towards the parish church, and I would not be tempted. I knew there was such a sign from the small stretch of dual carriageway near to Saxmundham.
Having been to Snape, I turned onto the A12 intending to go north, but instead turned west following the signs to Benhall.
Down a long, straight lane, lined with mature trees and carpeted with golden leaves that had just fallen: i reach the end and can see no church, but a hand painted sign points the way right, and a hundred yards away, hidden behind trees sits St Mary.
I like a church with a gallery; even better if is open, or accessible. All round a fine and tidy, well kept church, and despite only a minute drive from the main road, is a million miles away.
------------------------------------------
One of the great things about being a harmless Suffolk eccentric is that you get to meet other harmless Suffolk eccentrics. I hadn't known Aidan Semmens very long, and Benhall was part of one of our first jaunts together. This site was on its first, fresh legs, and he was writing about churches for what in those days was still called, quaintly, Eastern Counties Newspapers. We would bounce ideas off each other to the advantage of both our work, and may one day even get round to writing that book we kept talking about. However, Benhall stalled us in our creative endeavours, because on that occasion we couldn't get into the church.
When I first wrote on this site about finding this church locked, in what was otherwise an area of open churches, I had a wry e-mail from the Archdeacon of Sudbury, telling me that, in fact, Benhall church was open daily from 9 am - 5 pm. However the door is heavy and some people find it difficult to open. The hand has to be turned to the right and the door pushed forward. Neither Aidan or I had ever laid claims to being macho, and so we enrolled on an intensive fitness programme at the local gym, limbering up to open stiff doors. But in fact it would be more than eight years before I came back to Benhall.
Benhall is one of those parishes bisected by the A12. Unhappily, this cuts the church off from its village centre, but both village and church are in rather lovely settings, St Mary being reached down a long, straight high-hedged lane from the busy road. I freewheeled along, enjoying the birdsong and the emerging sunshine as July stuttered into life. Soon, the noise of the traffic fell away behind me, but as I approached the church a lunatic dog erupted in the garden across the road. I dare say that I was the first stranger it had seen all day, but its slavering barking suggested that it thought I was definitely up to no good.
At first sight, St Mary is an entirely Victorian confection; the double-breasted east end consists of the original, repointed chancel, and a north transept and chancel aisle, both with 19th century windows. The style is similar to Somerton, across the county. The northern extensions were to contain an organ, vestry and schoolroom. On the eastern face of the original chancel, an internal memorial has been placed, rather ill-advisedly; the Victorians sometimes seem rather embarrassed by these, although they normally just banished them to the west end of the nave. Mortlock thought that the tower showed signs of being early, with late Saxon work at three of the corners; but, as he says, the 19th Century touch is so overwhelming elsewhere, there is no reason to think it original. It certainly doesn't look older than about 150 years. As I wandered around the church taking photographs, the dog kept up its hellish litany, verging on the apoplectic whenever I came back into view. I wondered if it did this for church services as well - if so, Benhall weddings must be fun. I found that by jumping up and down and waving my arms I could raise its anger to absolute fever pitch. However, reasoning that if it broke through the fence and rushed across the road, the smile would be on the other side of my face - if, indeed, I still had a face at all - I decided to curtail my amusement and have another go at that south door.
There is a substantial south porch, with the first inkling that this church is something rather interesting after all; a large, Norman doorway. It shows signs of being recut, but is in its original place, and is perhaps the clearest inclination of the date of the superstructure of the building. The door opened easily. The interior is clean, light and well-kept, a pleasing balance between old brick floors and early 19th century furnishings. This is essentially a Georgian interior, from the days of the Rector John Mitford, brother of the more famous Mary. The pre-ecclesiological features include a gallery, a double decker pulpit looking along the ranks of box pews, and a curious birdbath font on a stubby stem. The clear glass of the windows benefits the nave, filling it with a simple, restful light.
To step past the organ in the transept, and into the chancel, is to enter a part of the building with a quite different feel. Unfortunately, the fitted carpet makes a view of the church's brasses and floor slabs impossible - there are three sets of brasses to members of the Duke family, and Sam Mortlock was most impressed by them when he came here in the early 1990s. I don't know when the carpet was fitted, but it did occur to me that if I had bothered to come back to Benhall sooner then I would have seen them as well. The striking memorial on the north wall of the chancel is to another Duke, Sir Edward, who died in the 1730s. An antiquarian, he used the opportunity to record almost 150 years worth of his forebears, which must make him very popular with his own ancestors if any of them are genealogists.
Benhall church is a simple, restful place, off the beaten track and probably little-known. But I was glad I'd come back, and as I waved the dog a cheery goodbye, he whined and put his head between his paws, perhaps reasoning that he might have to wait some considerable time before he had any more fun.
Simon Knott, September 2008