Wedding Photographer Lincoln — the Cathedral on the Hill, the Bail and the Witham Valley
Lincoln is one of England’s most dramatically sited historic cities — a Roman colonia whose medieval cathedral and castle occupy the limestone ridge above the flat Witham valley, visible from thirty miles across the Lincolnshire plain as a profile of towers and spires that has defined the county’s horizon for nine hundred years. Lincoln Cathedral, completed in the thirteenth century and the tallest building in the world for 238 years until the spire fell in 1549, is the third largest English cathedral by floor area and contains some of the finest early Gothic stone carving in Europe. For Lincoln wedding photography, I work in the cathedral close, along the medieval Bailgate, through the castle grounds and down the famous Steep Hill into the lower city.
Lincoln Cathedral, the Castle and Steep Hill
The Cathedral Quarter — the collection of buildings around the cathedral close including the Bishop’s Palace ruins, the Exchequergate arch and the Pottergate arch — provides a complete medieval ecclesiastical landscape within simple walking distance of the cathedral’s west front. Lincoln Castle — built by William the Conqueror in 1068 on the site of the Roman forum — contains one of the only surviving original Magna Carta manuscripts and provides castle wall walks with views across the Witham valley. Steep Hill — the medieval street descending from the Bail to the lower city — is one of the most famous medieval streetscapes in England: the crooked timber-framed The Harlequin building, the Norman House and the continuous medieval shopfronts provide a portrait backdrop of extreme architectural antiquity.
The Witham Valley and the Lincolnshire Wolds
The Witham valley below Lincoln provides flat fenland immediately east of the city and transitions within ten miles into the Lincolnshire Wolds — a gentle chalk escarpment designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, one of the least-developed in England. Doddington Hall, nine miles west of Lincoln, is one of England’s finest Elizabethan mansions with an extraordinary walled garden and provides a complete country house portrait setting within easy distance of the city centre. The Lincolnshire coast — Cleethorpes, Mablethorpe, Sutton-on-Sea and the Gibraltar Point Nature Reserve near Skegness — provides wide, flat sandy beach and dune landscape available for coastal portrait extensions at the eastern end of any Lincoln wedding day.