Wedding Photographer Winters Barns — Canterbury, the High Weald Character and the Kent Countryside
Winters Barns is a converted Kent barn wedding venue in the countryside between Canterbury and Folkestone — a traditional barn complex in the East Kent Downs AONB, with the converted agricultural buildings providing a rural setting in the distinctive chalk-and-flint downland landscape of the North Kent Downs above the Stour valley, within five miles of Canterbury Cathedral and within easy reach of the White Cliffs of Dover and the Channel coastline. For Winters Barns wedding photography, the venue’s Kent barn setting, the surrounding North Downs landscape and the proximity of Canterbury Cathedral’s UNESCO World Heritage architecture provide portrait settings of Kentish downland character combined with the most celebrated medieval cathedral architecture in England within a single accessible portrait radius.
The Kent Barn Setting, the Downland Countryside and the Stour Valley
Winters Barns’ barn complex — the converted traditional East Kent flint-and-brick agricultural barns in the North Downs chalk landscape, with the barn’s oak-framed threshing barn interiors and the courtyard setting providing a portrait backdrop of Kentish traditional agricultural building character — provides a specific East Kent barn portrait setting of the chalk-downland farm type. The Stour valley’s chalk stream meadows below the Downs — accessible within a short drive south towards Wye and the Isle of Wye’s reserve — provide chalk stream water-meadow portrait settings of the Kentish downland valley character. The East Kent Downs’ open chalk grassland above Folkestone Hill provides elevated downland portrait settings.
Canterbury Cathedral, the City Walls and the Westgate
Canterbury Cathedral — the UNESCO World Heritage Site a few miles north, seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the English Church’s mother cathedral, with the Bell Harry Tower’s Perpendicular lantern and the Precincts’ medieval buildings providing the most historically significant ecclesiastical portrait setting in England — provides the primary city portrait destination from Winters Barns. The Cathedral Precincts’ medieval buildings — the Norman staircase, the Archbishop’s Palace, the medieval cloisters and the Treasury — provide portrait settings of English medieval ecclesiastical architecture of national monument status. The Westgate’s medieval city gate arch and the city walls’ surviving circuit provide urban portrait settings of medieval Kentish city character.