What did the Romans do for us? Well, here in my hometown of Colchester (Essex, UK) they built quite a nice wall, much of it still standing after almost 2,000 years.
Not being able to venture very far during the recent (and seemingly endless) pandemic, I began to wonder if the wall could serve as a backdrop for some street photos.
I took everything with the new Fuji X100V, intermittently for a few days.
One shot
One day I only took one picture (above).
Walking into the Lower Castle Gardens, I was startled by the sudden appearance of yellow flowers on the bushes by the fence.
There is a good view of the wall from this vantage point – and I see the only male figure in the distance. All it needed was something more… then the cyclist arrived with not one, but two bikes!
Changing the Viewing Direction
Here’s the same stretch of wall (above), looking back at the gate the cyclist ran through in the previous shot.
It was a beautiful summer day at The Lockdown, with a small family group enjoying the sun. Recently, everyone is “anxious”, waiting anxiously for the virus to disappear.
Oddly enough, I can say that the tenterhook itself has completely passed. Because it was on this piece of land that in the seventeenth century Flemish weavers stretched their cloth – on tools known as “tenterhooks”.
The presence of Roman walls makes the seventeenth century seem like modern history. Meanwhile, weeds continue to colonize the ancient building, giving it a beauty its original creators never intended.
Walk on the Wall
One day I set out, with my partner, to walk around the wall in its entirety. It’s not a big walk, the wall is about 2,800 meters long, rectangular in shape.
Today they differ slightly in height, according to the conditions of preservation, but most are 6 meters high and almost two and a half meters thick. Its construction is said to have required 40,000 tons of building materials.
Walking around it is much easier than building it, but don’t thank the Romans for that. They got the local British to do most of the work.
The western stretch, which runs up Balkerne Hill, has small archways inside, built in the modern era to help preserve it.
One of the best-preserved sections is a long stretch atop Balkerne Hill, past the massive gate (Balkerne Gate) that served as the city’s main entrance in Roman times.
Push
OK, so this mini-project degenerates into “wall photography” rather than street photography, so we’ll soon be moving on to the far side of town where the wall is buttressed on Priory Street with a massive stockade.
Another man walking through the wall! Oh, dear!
I guess if I waited in a certain position for a few hours something more interesting might happen, but, remember, there were very few people around during this stage of Lockdown 2020.
So to conclude: here, in order are the shots I took to finish the trip. First, I asked my partner to walk in front.
Yes, I know it’s cheating, but the light is great and I could be waiting here for hours before someone else comes this way.
Next, I snap at a cyclist heading into a wall.
In fact, I waited a few minutes for someone to make a point of interest in this shot (below) near Duncan’s Gate. No, there was no Roman named Duncan! The gate is named after Dr PM Duncan who excavated it in 1853. The little boy in the picture probably didn’t know it.
And finally, here’s the closing shot of a girl rushing through a small archway set into the wall on the northern stretch from which we started.
At least the shots above have something in common, so I think the wall-walking idea is valid in street photography terms. However, such projects require more time. I will work on it again.
After all, neither Rome nor Colchester were built in a day.
If you’re visiting Colchester and want to know more about its Roman history, have a look:
Colchester’s Roman Wall Friends
Visit Colchester, England’s First City
Colchester Archaeologist
