sweet especial rural scene
drawings & paintings by Bridget Macdonald
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Friday 10th - Sunday 12th October
Open 11am - 5pm with pop-up cafe
Our exhibition title comes from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem 'Binsey Poplars' of 1879, in which he laments the felling of a row of trees near Oxford. The poem despairs of the casual destruction of natural beauty. It is also about the especial meaning of certain landscapes to our individual minds.
​My paintings and drawings are of two especial rural scenes which are important to me: firstly, my childhood landscape around St Catherine’s Point on the southernmost tip of the Isle of Wight. I was born a few hundred yards from St Catherine’s lighthouse at Knowles Farm, now owned by the National Trust. We had no car, so this small area became my world. It is imbued with a lifetime of memories.
The second especial landscape is nearer to Bromyard. Since 2003, we have owned 10 acres of land at the head of the Suckley Valley on the Herefordshire/Worcestershire borders. Here we have planted an orchard of old local varieties of apples and pears as well as many other varieties of native trees. Its in a particularly beautiful location with far reaching views across to the western slopes of the Malvern Hills from North Hill to the distant British Camp.
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Malvern 2025
Lighthouse with Ragwort