Wedding Photographer Cotehele — National Trust Medieval Manor, the Tamar Valley and Cotehele Quay
Cotehele is one of the least altered medieval manor houses in England — a National Trust property above the Tamar valley in Cornwall near Calstock, whose Great Hall (with its original armour and weapons displayed as in the fifteenth century), the Tudor courtyard and the terraced garden above the Tamar estuary have remained in essentially unchanged form since the house was built for the Edgcumbe family between 1485 and 1539. For Cotehele wedding photography, the house’s medieval granite fabric, the chapel with its original clock (one of the oldest in England), the medieval deer park above the valley and the romantic descent to Cotehele Quay below on the tidal Tamar provide a portrait setting of mediaeval and Victorian-industrial contrast that is entirely unlike any other National Trust property in the South West.
The Great Hall, the Tudor Courtyard and the Chapel
Cotehele’s Great Hall — the medieval hall range with its original timber roof, the armour and weapons hung as period display on the walls and the heavy Tudor furnishings throughout — provides an interior portrait setting of extreme medieval character: the low light, the strong chiaroscuro of the armour against the stone walls and the massive timber roof trusses overhead create portrait compositions of powerful historical atmosphere. The inner courtyard — enclosed by the granite hall, the solar range and the domestic service wing — provides an enclosed exterior portrait space of medieval domestic character whose granite walls and the winter jasmine growing over the south range provide seasonal textural richness. The Chapel’s fourteenth-century interior (with its original clock mechanism of 1485 — one of the earliest surviving mechanical clocks in England) provides the most historically poignant interior space on the estate.
The Cotehele Garden, the Tamar Valley and Cotehele Quay
Cotehele’s terraced garden above the valley — a sequence of planted terraces descending from the formal garden beside the house through a meadow orchard to the valley below, with a medieval stewpond, a Victorian domed dovecote and the ancient summerhouse above the Tamar viewpoint — provides a garden portrait sequence of exceptional historical and botanical interest. The descent from the estate to Cotehele Quay below traverses ancient coppice woodland of particular atmospheric quality, arriving at the Victorian quayside where the National Trust’s restored Tamar sailing barge Shamrock is moored at the restored lime kiln quay. The Tamar valley from the quay — the tidal estuary between Devon and Cornwall with its wooded sides and the Kit Hill granite summit above Callington in the background — provides one of the most beautiful river portrait settings in the South West.