Knowlton Church & Earthworks

On the way back to Bournemouth this weekend, I managed to convince my wife to make a small detour to Knowlton Church. I've seen photographs of this place appear time and time again from photographers based in and around the area, and I suspected it was something of a favourite local haunt. With it being relatively close to where I now live, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally stop by and see what all the fuss was about.

As it turned out, I wasn't really there long enough to find out, in fact, I was probably on location for about ten minutes. With darkening skies looming behind the church, I was so focused on making a few images that I completely ignored the rather obvious band of heavy rain rapidly approaching from behind me.

Big mistake.

I went from perfectly dry to absolutely soaked to the skin during the roughly 15-yard dash back to the car.

Horrid.

Still, despite the rather abrupt end to the visit, my first impressions of the location were very positive.

Plenty of potential

Knowlton Church is an unusual location. The ruined medieval church sits within the earthworks of a much older Neolithic henge, forming part of the wider Knowlton Circles complex. The church itself is Grade II* listed, while the surrounding archaeological site is a scheduled monument. From a photography point of view, though, it's the setting that really caught my attention. The church has almost uninterrupted views in all directions, and there's plenty of room to move around the structure rather than being restricted to a single obvious viewpoint. The surrounding earthworks also add another layer to the landscape, offering plenty of opportunities to experiment with foregrounds, perspective and composition.

Of course, ten minutes in a location like this isn't remotely enough time to properly explore it. Which is rather the point of this visit, this was really a scouting trip to see if wanted to see what was there, work out where I could position myself and get a feel for how the location might work at different times of day and in different conditions and I suspect Knowlton Church could be particularly interesting after dark.

With the church, the surrounding earthworks and relatively open horizons, it looks like it could make an excellent location for some Astro landscape photography under the right conditions I'll definitely be going back, hopefully next time I'll remember to check what's happening behind me before I start taking photographs. 

I'll definitely be going back.