Pinkneys Green - Malders Lane - Brick and Tile Works - Mount Farm - Cannon Court Lane

16 Jan 04

• Total distance : 4 miles (of which over two miles are on metalled road).
• Start point : Anywhere on the circuit. I started from my house in Farm Road SU 866814.
• Weather : Bright with scudding clouds. Temperature at start +7C
• Muddiness rating (*=dry, *****=awful) ** , although one 100m stretch east of Mount Farm is pretty slimy.
• People passed : Kite flyers, horse riders and dog walkers aplenty on Pinkneys Green, and several families on the path, walking off their Sunday lunch.
• Camera : Olympus C-5060W. Images taken before deletions = 72, of which 50+ were of kite flyers on Pinkneys Gn.

At first glance, a walk from one's back door holds little promise for the landscape photographer. It certainly doesn't offer inspiration in the form of sweeping vistas or distant blue hills - not where I live anyway. But I've had enough failures in the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales to have learned that good photographs are as much a consequence of the light, the seasons and the arrangement of the components at the instant the shutter is pressed, as they are of the accepted "beauty" of the location. Given the high accessibility of a place we can get round in a couple of hours, as long as we're there when the chips fall into place we should happen on images which please us. As Bert Hardy said, the secret's "f8 and be there".

When I moved to Maidenhead twenty years ago, the south western part of Pinkneys Green was in use as municipal playing fields. Today it's a much more placid space, with the part immediately south of Pinkneys Drive allowed to develop as a wild flower meadow. The National Trust sowed it with linseed about five years ago and now let it grow naturally, although it's mown at the end of each summer. Moorlands Drive leads north from the road and is bordered on both sides by walnut trees, identifiable in winter by their pale, fissured bark. Every year the actual walnuts themselves disappear in a day. I hope the NT picks them - although Ernie Weller, a professional photographer who lives nearby, claims they just fall off.

The northern part of the green is fast becoming a Mecca for kite-flyers and kiteboarders. Like all automatic cameras mine was clearly over-influenced by the sky whenever a lot was included in the frame. This meant I had to search for the exposure compensation dial. I found it, and it proved straightforward to use, although the layout of the controls around the camera's body is scatty to say the least. Passing The Lemon Tree, Golden Ball Lane has nothing to do with David Beckham. In fact it came into being when the owners of the nearby Brick and Tile Works (off Malders Lane) built houses there for their workers. All along one side the houses bear names and an abbreviation such as R.O.R. or H.E.R. Perhaps someone can tell me what it means.

The Tile Works themselves are open to the public, but attract few visitors. Established in the 1800's by Charles Cooper on a site rich in Reading Clay, the enterprise became a major undertaking and produced most of the decorative ridge tiles, pinnacles and gargoyles which can be seen on Maidenhead roofs today.

After the company passed from family control its fortunes declined and it closed in 1967. Today it's a nature reserve, rich in wildlife, and there are few signs of its previous use - amazing when you think that there must still be people in the area who worked there.

The path over the fields skirts Mount Farm, and heads back towards Maidenhead. This is one of the few places you can get a good view of the town from an elevated position. Glynn Grylls took a memorable photograph here a couple of years ago, with some gaunt trees in the foreground and a steamy Taplow paper mill in the distance. But knowing Glynn, the sky probably came from Lanzarote and the foregound from the Galapagos. I didn't see any iguanas up there myself, put it that way.

The final stretch, along Cannon Court Lane and then Courthouse Road, isn't scenic but I passed hundreds of examples of the output of the tile works, up on the ridges and gable ends. There are some truly beautiful ones along Courthouse Road, and despite the ravages of wind and rain over the many years they've been there, few of them seem the worse for wear. The people who worked for Charles Cooper must have been great craftsmen, and wonderful artists.

Click here for map > PinkneysMap

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-- RodBird - 21 Jan 2005