Wedding Photographer Rutland Water — Normanton Church, Hambleton Peninsula and England’s Smallest County
Rutland Water is the largest man-made reservoir in England — a 1,254-hectare reservoir completed in 1975 by flooding the northern end of the Eye valley, whose creation famously required the partial demolition of Normanton village and the raising of Normanton’s neoclassical church of St Matthew on a causeway-island above the new waterline, creating the iconic image of Rutland Water: the white church dome and colonnaded portico reflected in the still reservoir water with the Hambleton peninsula’s wooded hillside beyond. For Rutland Water wedding photography, the Normanton Church reflection, the Hambleton Island’s oak-wooded promontory and the open reservoir landscape provide a portrait setting of quite unique English created landscape character.
Normanton Church, the Reservoir Reflection and the Causeway
Normanton Church of St Matthew — the neoclassical church of 1826 raised on its stone causeway above the reservoir’s waterline, with the Corinthian portico and the dome reflected in the still water of Rutland Water’s southern arm — provides Rutland’s most distinctive and most immediately recognisable portrait backdrop: the church’s causeway approach, the reflection of the white facade in the water and the reservoir’s horizon beyond create a portrait composition of created landscape character unique to this church and this reservoir. The causeway walk to the church, with the water on both sides, provides a specific arrival portrait sequence. The reservoir’s south shore sunrise — the water’s surface lit by the rising sun with the church silhouetted against the glow — provides specific golden-hour portrait settings of considerable atmospheric quality.
Hambleton Hall, the Peninsula and Old Rutland Villages
Hambleton Hall — the small Victorian country house hotel of great distinction above the Hambleton peninsula’s north shore, providing a Relais et Châteaux-standard hotel with Michelin-starred restaurant overlooking the reservoir — provides Rutland Water’s finest country house portrait setting above the water: the hall’s Victorian terrace above the reservoir, the kitchen garden and the wooded hillside below provide intimate portrait settings of Victorian lakeside hotel character. The Hambleton peninsula — the wooded headland nearly enclosed by the reservoir, with the circular peninsula lane providing a six-mile walk through woodland above the water — provides an accessible landscape portrait setting of wooded reservoir shore character. The small Rutland market towns of Oakham (the county town, with the Norman great hall of Oakham Castle) and Uppingham provide portrait settings of English small market town character.