Wedding Photographer Chichester — Cathedral City, Goodwood, the South Downs and Chichester Harbour
Chichester is West Sussex’s cathedral city — a Roman-plan walled town on the coastal plain between the South Downs and the sea, whose cathedral, the Pallant House gallery, the medieval cross and the Georgian terraces of its four principal streets make it one of the most consistently architecturally distinguished small cities in England. For Chichester wedding photography, the combination of a cathedral of considerable Norman beauty, the circuit of medieval walls above the city’s streets, the Goodwood Estate on the Downs six miles north and the extraordinary landscape of Chichester Harbour behind the coastal plain provide portrait resources spanning Norman ecclesiastical to open coastal and downland settings within a remarkably small geographical radius.
Chichester Cathedral, the Pallants and the Medieval City
Chichester Cathedral — a Norman cathedral of 1075 whose distinctive detached bell tower (the only detached medieval cathedral bell tower surviving in England) stands in the Cathedral Close to the north-west of the building — provides both ceremony-space architecture and exterior portrait settings of considerable Norman and Gothic character: the west front’s Norman arching, the spire (rebuilt after the 1861 collapse) visible throughout the city and the Cathedral Close’s surrounding Georgian canons’ residences frame the Cathedral in a Georgian close setting of great quality. The Pallant House gallery area — the finest collection of Georgian townhouses in Chichester, now housing the Pallant House Gallery’s modern art collection — provides portrait settings of formal Georgian urban symmetry five minutes from the cathedral. The medieval city walls — the Roman circuit surviving in almost continuous height — provide a portrait walking route around the entire city perimeter.
Goodwood House, Chichester Harbour and the South Downs
Goodwood House — the ducal seat of the Dukes of Richmond on the South Downs scarp six miles north of Chichester, accessible in twelve minutes via the A286 — provides a country house portrait setting of considerable Regency elegance: the flint-faced south front, the formal garden terrace looking south across the coastal plain, the stable yard and the Canaletto-quality view from the terrace across the Chichester plain to the harbour and the Isle of Wight beyond provide portrait settings of comprehensive south coast panoramic quality. Chichester Harbour itself — an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the most unspoilt harbour on the south coast, whose tidal creeks at Bosham, Dell Quay and Itchenor provide intimate estuarine-village portrait settings — is accessible from Chichester in ten minutes for golden hour sessions at the tidal quay.