Lud's Church

A still, sepia-toned photograph of a magical hidden place of furtive gatherings and gothic legend.

As I look upon this simply captured bounded work I receive the constant reminder of how meagre my expression is as compared with my experience. It was only a short time after I visited this place that I began to consider nature and music as having something essential in common: that music and nature, when unaccompanied by language or person, can bestow beauty with as much force as when meaning is explicitly conveyed.

Deep in the Back Forest Staffordshire Moorlands, towards the winding River Dane is an ancient crevice, cut ten thousand years ago as the glacial ice retreated further north. This place is difficult to find. There is no easy road nor tourist sign to guide you. I walked from the south west approach from its highest, tapered point of most unfolding reward.

I look up from the floor of this five story high landslip that runs the length of six humpback whales, and no more than one arm's width at its narrowest point. Everything is wet with life, everything is verdant green, with moss, fern and foliage.

A dance of clean clear water-pearls patter from one leaf to another before diving, deep into the greater body of life that is my muse. Quietly, with shallow breath, I hear the sound of seep and faintest flow towards the patient pause of hidden brook.

I am with nature's gentle force, long tempered night and day.