New Hardback
Holme Fell is one of Alfred Wainwright's two hundred plus Lake District fells, located a few miles north of Coniston, Cumbria. The lower slopes, cloaked in woodland, mask an industrial heritage: reservoirs rewilded, the yawning chasm of Hodge Close, an archaeology of slate quarrying. Ascending the fell, trees give way to open hillside topped by rocky outcrops, and a panoramic vista is revealed. The Langdale Pikes dominate a skyline which brims with Lakeland's finest peaks.
Holme Fell is a 'sample of landscapes' as the subtitle says, in two senses. Firstly, as a series of photographs of Holme Fell, with a focus on Hodge Close, the old slate quarry, at its centre. Secondly, as a sequence of poetry and prose that reacts to the photographs themselves, and through which are also woven some historical accounts of quarrying along with the narrative of a contemporary architect escaping her responsibilities but questioning the nature of things as she encounters them. 'Hodge Close' operates as an inner section of 'Holme Fell', landscape within a landscape.
The images and texts exist in a loose symbiosis, with parallel truths and connecting paths between them.