Deconstructed Landscape at Kirtlington Quarry

When you want to capture everything you love about a place, sometimes one landscape image just isn’t enough. This is especially the case with Kirtlington Quarry.

Park up down a track road just off the village green of Kirtlington, Oxfordshire, and you’ll find a little mud footpath under a canopy trees. You’re expecting it to continue like this – just your average walk in the woods – when suddenly everything opens up and you find yourself up high on the grassy ledge of a disused quarry.

A stone spiral draws to you down to the base of the quarry floor, and you follow a path lined with purple-tinted leaves to arrive there. You duck into another tree-lined path, turn a corner and there’s a canal in front of you, the serene water calmly reflecting the far shore.

You decide whether to follow the red-brick steps back up, or walk by the canal-side awhile. You’re glad you chose the latter, because you find yourself back in another wooded area, with wooden staircases like treehouse structures taking you between the different layers and past yellow-gray walls of un-mined stone.

The different areas are like walking from room into another: suddenly everything around you is changed. It’s this variety, and the very modest way in which Kirtlington Quarry under-promotes its own beauty – that appeals so strongly to me.

One landscape photograph couldn’t hope to capture all this, so I’ve opted for the ‘deconstructed’ landscape you see here instead.

Kirtlington Quarry is a designated Local Nature Reserve in Oxfordshire.

Sarah Plater is a writer and photographer based in Bicester, Oxfordshire.

(c) Sarah Plater Photography