River Axe Crossings: A visual survey along the course of the river
The River Axe flows through Dorset, Somerset and Devon, rising near Beaminster, flowing west then south
by Axminster and joining the English Channel at Axmouth near Seaton. During its thirty-five kilometre course
it is fed by various streams and by the tributary rivers Yarty and Coly.
Taken during the period November 2007 to March 2008, the photographs look directly upstream and down-
stream from the centre of each of all the forty-one extant crossings, ranging variously from plain wooden beam,
to stone arch, to concrete road bridge; excluded are weirs, railway bridges, and crossings by ford or stepping
stones. From the front of the book the right-hand page sequence shows the direction from mouth to source,
while from the back the left-hand sequence is downstream with the river’s flow. The crossings are numbered
from source to mouth, and while the distances between vary, no account is made from one to the next other
than the immediate stage of the river beyond and the particular landscape pictured.
Back and Front Cover
With 84 full-page plates and descriptive texts, introduction and diagrammatic aerial view.
ISBN–13: 978 0 9537048 9 7 hbk | ISBN–13: 978 0 9537048 8 0 pbk
96pp, 147 x 218; 2008. Signed casebinding £32.00 | paperback £7.95
The Complete Guide to Lyme Regis: An A to Z of the Town, Landscape and Coastline
This alphabetical guide is intended for the general, inquisitive visitor—both as a practical directory of what
the area has to offer, and to make available straightforward background information on the unique variety
of natural and human history that is here.
Exploring the Town; Museums & Entertainment; Outdoor Activities; Eating & Drinking; Shopping; History;
People; Where to Stay, and things you might need; Further Afield, and much more.
With a town map, photographs throughout and full-colour cover.
ISBN–13: 978 0 9537048 7 3
32pp, 220 x 150; pamphlet. First published 2004; Revised edition 2008, £3.00
John Bevis | Direct From Nature: The Photographic Work of Richard & Cherry Kearton
In 1892 Richard and Cherry Kearton took the first ever photograph of a bird’s nest with eggs. Realising the
camera’s potential to reveal secrets of the natural world, they resolved to make the best possible records of
their discoveries in the habits and behaviour of birds and other creatures. Three years of field work resulted
in the first nature book to be illustrated entirely with photographs.
This was the springboard to two outstanding careers in wildlife photography. Richard, with his patience and
intellectual clarity, developed the photographic hide through a series of devices which included the
extraordinary Stuffed Ox. Cherry became the world’s first professional nature photographer, and travelled
the globe as a prolific film cameraman and producer.
Numerous natural history photographers have proclaimed them as founding fathers of their discipline; none,
however, of the thirty-odd volumes published in their lifetimes is now in print. This new study examines the
methods and procedures behind their work, and reproduces a selection of the remarkable photographs that
they proudly advertised as having been taken ‘direct from nature’.
With 40 full-page plates, illustrated Biographical Commentary.
ISBN–10: 0 9537048 6 6 | ISBN–13: 978 0 9537048 6 6
64pp, 210 x 140; sewn paperback. 2007, £9.00
The True Line: The Landscape Diagrams of Geoffrey Hutchings
Geoffrey Hutchings published just a handful of books, all addressing the search for geographical and
topographical truths, and for the ways of recording and depicting these truths precisely and economically
by the handwritten word and line.
In addition to his contribution to the development of the teaching of field studies in Britain in the late 1940s,
with its emphasis on the direct observation and interpretation of landscape, he achieved a masterly
ability to ‘read’ and transcribe a place in a graphic composition—be it a sketch-map or a plan, a tabular
profile or a section, or an annotated panoramic drawing. In all of these compositions he integrated line and
text in a perfect balance of brevity and detail.
With 50 half-page plates, illustrated Biographical Commentary.
ISBN–10: 0 9537048 5 8 | ISBN–13: 978 0 9537048 5 9
40pp, 210 x 140; sewn paperback. 2006, £9.00
Colin Sackett | Englshpublshing: Writing and readings 1991–2002
“Since the 1980s, Colin Sackett, a book artist, designer and printer based in Axminster, has been publishing
books which take peripheral information as a source material, and rejuvenate it so as to make it newly
intelligible and vital. Sources as diverse as book indexes, Ordnance Survey maps, watercress labels and radio
commentaries are singled out. These texts are edited and rearranged, sifted and panned and sieved, so that
language comes to the surface new and raw and untarnished. The art here is typographical, and the end
product of these explorations is a backlist of impeccable publications of simplicity and plainness.
Englshpublshing sees a body of work published discretely in the 1990s, with essays, commentaries and
unpublished pieces, compiled into a single volume with a standardised format. An opportunity, then, to
concentrate on content, rather than product, and what is striking is the consistent wit and audacity charging
this assault on an unsuspected hotchpotch of source material. Unrelated words and works strike off each
other in counterpoint, building a compelling impression of some coherent whole from the parts, like the
variations of a Bach suite.” (John Bevis)
ISBN–10: 0 906630 21 5 in the UK
96pp 216 x 145 offset, paperback. Coracle, Tipperary / Sixtus, Limoges / Spacex, Exeter 2004, £8.95
Distributed by Cornerhouse: www.cornerhouse.org