ORDER & CHAOS

 

Hampshire Churches. I've been working on this for a while now. Last week I was in Basingstoke and visited half a dozen churches by bus. This underlined for me the value of physical visits. Yes there is a lot of information online and my maps are totally indebted to a few splendid websites. But...

There is no substitute for walking up a small country road on a sunny day and taking in the unique context of a village church from ground level. This visceral experience then feeds into the background information I have on file for that church: when it was built, who was the patron, architect, economic context, current status, Google Earth images, historic England data.

I have started to make full-blown Revit models of a couple of these churches. That was before the scale of the project grew to the extents of these two sheets. So more recently I have started making simple massing models as Revit families, which can be used for comparative studies. Add to this spot details, like the recent window tracery example.

So now I'm back in Dubai. Let's see how the project proceeds from here. It's an iterative process, feeling my way forward, driven by curiosity, learning as I go. The data in the schedules is very provisional. Just a framework for further development at this stage.

Using Revit /BIM as a thinking tool. Tying together my visits, my research, my digital studies.

 

The UK branch of my offspring are doing the Zimbabwe experience right now. My son spent the first 18 years of his life there of course, but for his wife and my three grandchildren, it's a completely new experience and what a wonderful time they are having. Still a wonderful place for a very special holiday even though life is hard for most Zimbabweans.

Dubai is also an an amazing holiday destination, but I am living here, and based in an "affordable" suburb. It's taking a while to adapt to the heat etc after six weeks in UK, but I managed an early morning walk today. So to contrast with the Matopos at sunset, I took a pavement picture. No interesting depth of history like the ones I did for Basingstoke, instead perhaps a morality tale. Once things slide in the direction of chaos, it's difficult to maintain any kind of standards in the public domain.

Here you see bollards, bollards placed on the pavement illegally by a restaurant business and treated carelessly by parking cars. A concrete ramp, of sorts cast against the kerb, also unauthorised and breaking up rapidly. Also an abandoned shopping trolley with a scattering of mouldy red onions.

I have enjoyed living here but sometimes this kind of careless ugliness gets to me.

 

 

Why has it taken me a week and a half to get back into gear? (since arriving back in Dubai) It's frustrating, but I guess it comes with my age and health issues. Best to just go with the flow and not stress about it. Then a day like today comes and the contrast makes it all worthwhile.

I started the day with a physio session for my lower back. Mid-morning. Then brunch at the Plaza Cafe. Avocado stacker. Make the hospital visits into a special occasion.

Back home I did some work on the Hampshire Churches study. Time to document the naming and coding of the Heirarchy of land subdivisions. They are church of England structures, but they have always operated in parallel with the civil /political boundaries. It makes me think of the Domesday book.

Almost a thousand years ago a new elite invading the country, going through an exercise a bit like this, recording the subdivisions and attaching data to them. This is just a first draft.

 

This "Subdivisions Sheet" for the Hampshire Churches project is almost complete. The coding system is my own simplified version. It wouldn't really work for the whole country but it seems to be OK for my defined area. I've tried to capture the hierarchy down from Diocese (Bishopric) to Archdeaconry, to Deanary, to Benefice/Parish.

Interesting to know that the word Dean is derived from Ten. So one Bishop has two or 3 Archdeacons, who each have five to ten Deans. A dean would oversee a handful of parishes, each with a variable number of churches.

I'm not worrying about getting this all strictly correct. As far as I can see the lowest levels reorganise themselves from time to time and choose modern-sounding names for their Benefice. I just need a structure of nested folders to keep my data in, so basing it loosely on the official C of E divisions made sense.

There are some 400 churches in my map now. Goodness knows how I shall handle such a number. Random sampling probably. One step at a time. Looking forward to more visits. Probably next year.