• Part 1: The Exhibition
• Part 2: An Idea is Born
• Part 3: The Plans Take Shape
• Part 4: A Visit to London
• Part 5: Hanging the Exhibition
• Part 6: The Great Day

Part 1: The Exhibition

by Steve Wells

What can one say of Falling Plate Hall?

Falling Plate Hall is no ordinary ancient pile. Imagine, rather, a stone outcrop on some bleak part of windswept Yorkshire. If it were in the Cotswolds where the colour of the stone would fail to match the aspirations of the "Authority for the Preservation of all things Twee" (an apt name). Imagine, now, that this stone outcrop grows windows and turrets and surrounds itself with gardens, tennis courts and croquet lawns. Imagine that some parts of the rock, in an appropriately slanting light, begin to take on the form of outbuildings and garages and that the narrow defile between the ice shattered ramparts of the tor begin to form a lane through which a cart might with care be driven behind a single horse. Now let centuries pass and let the mighty towers fall. Let brambles and bindweed overtake the tennis courts and the croquet lawns. Finally, let the cart be replaced with the exploding exhaust of a non-too-well maintained large limousine of indeterminate make and vintage (known universally as the "Rolls" but unlikely ever to have left the doors of that esteemed factory.)

This, then, is Falling Plate Hall: an ancient seat which falls on the fold of every map and to which there are no signposts. If you need to know where it is, you will know. Otherwise it will remain invisible: as elusive as an undeveloped latent image.

I remember fondly those Winter evenings spent in the study at Falling Plate Hall. I would be welcomed at the Great Door by Sir Isambard's daughter in law, Lady Proudfoot, and shown into the presence of the old man who, due to his old infirmity, was not so agile now as in earlier days. On a small table to my right would be a glass and a decanter, perhaps of claret made from the blackcurrants behind the larger croquet lawn, perhaps of mead made from the fermented sump oil of the Rolls. Settled into the creaking leather chair before a log fire I would listen to Sir Isambard tell tales of the Falling Plate Camera Club.

In past editions of this journal I have reported some of these tales but never, I think, has the story been told of the exhibition held to mark the end of the century. In deference to my host I shall allow Sir Isambard to narrate this story. I shall simply report his words as best as I recall them and to the extent permitted by the content of the pleasant glass already mentioned.

top of page