Wedding Photographer Southampton — Netley Abbey, the New Forest Shore and the Solent
Southampton is Hampshire’s largest city and England’s principal ocean liner port — a city whose medieval walls (the most complete surviving section of any English walled town south of York), the Tudor House Museum’s Norman vault and the Old Town’s medieval street plan provide urban historical portrait settings of considerable depth above the Solent’s tidal estuary of the Rivers Test and Itchen. For Southampton wedding photography, the city’s most valuable portrait settings lie beyond the centre: Netley Abbey’s Cistercian ruins in the parkland above Southampton Water five miles south-east, the New Forest’s ancient woodland immediately accessible from the Ring Road and the Hamble River’s tidal estuary at Bursledon and Hamble village together provide a portrait landscape of medieval ruin, ancient forest and maritime river of considerable range.
Netley Abbey, the Tudor House and the Medieval Old Town
Netley Abbey — the Cistercian abbey ruins in the parkland above Southampton Water at Netley, founded 1239 in the Cistercian tradition of seclusion in wooded valley situations and dissolved 1536, with the nave’s First Pointed Gothic arcades, the refectory’s rose window and the claustral ranges’ vaults substantially intact above the grass floor — provides a ruined Cistercian cloister portrait setting of considerable romantic Gothic character: the pointed arches against the sky, the ivy-covered walls and the parkland grass floor of the former nave create a portrait environment of English Gothic ruin of the type celebrated by the Romantics and rarely better preserved. The Tudor House Museum’s Norman vault in the town centre and the Bar Gate’s medieval arch provide urban medieval portrait settings.
The Hamble Estuary, the Solent Shore and the New Forest Edge
Hamble village — the small sailing village at the Hamble River’s tidal entry into Southampton Water, with the quayside’s yacht moorings, the village pub above the hard and the medieval church’s Norman tower visible above the boatyard roofs — provides a specific Solent sailing-village portrait setting of considerable Hampshire maritime character. The Solent shore at Calshot Spit — the shingle spit reaching into the Solent’s central channel, where the Solent’s fastest tidal current and the views of the Isle of Wight across the three-mile channel provide a specific coastal promontory portrait setting at the Test estuary’s mouth — provides an accessible shore portrait destination. The New Forest’s edge forests of Burley and Beaulieu Heath are twenty minutes from the city ring road.