There’s a beautiful evening light tonight out on the fields after the recent harvest:-

I stopped on the way back to admire Basil Spence’s nuclear power station, designed in 1959 on the banks of an artificial lake on the recommendation of Dame Sylvia Crowe, the landscape consultant. I remembered that it looks particularly fine glowering from the south side of the lake:-

It’s impressive close up, too:-

Long decommissioned, there has been an occasional threat of demolition.

I spent the weekend in mid-Wales, north of Machynlleth – a very different environment from the north, more mountainous, less inhabited, dominated by the fact that much of the land was acquired by the Forestry Commission between the wars, creating a half managed treescape:-

I explored the surrounding woods and what survives of a old sporting estate, complete with early tennis court, boating pond and shrine converted out of an ice house:-

I walked down to the local waterfall and was pleased to find Chris Orr RA painting it under a makeshift tent, for all the world as if he was John Ruskin, but, unlike Ruskin, he was converting it into a Chinese Waterfall in the manner of Chiang Yee who made conventional English scenes look as if they were in Peking:-

I stopped off en route to Machynlleth to try and find St. Mark’s, Brithdir, which I have tried to do several times previously, but without success. The truth is that it is hard to spot, next door to what looks like a private drive and surrounded by a forest of thickly planted rhodendendra. But it is so worth it ! A magical, quiet, nearly perfect arts-and-crafts church, which miraculously turned out to be open, although I hadn’t expected it to be (it’s officially open in September), designed by Henry Wilson, who worked for J.D. Sedding, taking over his practice in 1891, but with the details of execution overseen by two of his assistants – Herbert North, later of Llanfairfechnan, and C.H.B. Quennell, co-author of A History of Everyday Things.

The church was commissioned by Louisa Jane Richards, a local landowner, in memory of her second husband, the Rev. Charles Tooth (Carlo Denti, as he was known in the family), chaplain of St. Mark’s, Florence, who died shortly after their marriage. The exterior is austere, but with a finely detailed bellcote:-

The interior is also mostly plain, dominated by a lead font, designed by Wilson and cast by William Dodds, who taught leadwork at Lethaby’s Central School:-

But what is amazing about the interior is the wonderful, low relief, repoussée beaten copper altar frontal, also designed by Wilson and a great masterpiece of arts-and-crafts design, glowing in the dark of the chancel:-

Charles Tooth is depicted with his guardian angel:-

The font is nearly equally fine, also by Wilson who established his own metalwork and jewellery workshop in 1898, just after the church was completed:-

I cannot recommend the church more highly.

I was wondering what these two butterflies were doing wing to wing, or back to back, and now, having looked it up, it does seem that they must be copulating. This should win me several points in the I-SPY book of Butterflies.

In preparation for the great Antony Gormley exhibition which opens at the RA on September 21st., I stopped off at Crosby Beach where he installed a set of monumental sculptures in 2007 (I didn’t see them all). I found them strangely moving, standing in the face of the incoming tide, looking out west towards the coast of North Wales, they are magnificently calm and immobile, sentinels waiting for what one knows not quite what: some form of the end:-

I slightly eccentrically had to come to Southport to get the car mended; but at least it has given me an opportunity to see the faded grandeur of the Lancashire seaside resort, established in 1792 to provide facilities for sea bathing, helped by its proximity to the recently constructed Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

Slightly implausibly, its main street, Lord Street, with its pedestrian arcades, is said to be the model for Haussmann’s Paris, on the grounds that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte lived in exile here from 1846 to 1848.

What survives is not exactly Parisian, but has obvious traces of its Victorian wealth:-

I have become minorly obsessed by the number and range – and beauty – of the butterflies which come out to bask in the hedges and gorse on the track down to the river.

Most of them are, as yesterday, Meadow Browns:-

But there was a beautiful Red Admiral which liked the whiteness of Romilly’s dress:-

The third species is different – brown and yellow wings. I assume a Speckled Wood:-

Then there was one I couldn’t get close to, but spotted on the wall:-

I tried to cheat by reducing the size of the photograph, but it just pixelates. I think it’s a Peacock. Lastly, a Cabbage White. I know it’s dead common, but I’m still pleased to have found five species in half an hour, just by walking down to the river:-