Battle Abbey

I took this photo of the Abbey in 1952 on a wooden half-plate camera and the definition was superb. It seems to capture the atmosphere of the period of austerity in the early post-war years.

Alas, the original plate was broken and I scanned this image from a booklet I produced for charity at that time. The booklet is described on my site.

Nowadays Battle is a thriving community, and also the skyline of the Abbey turrets has been ruined by the addition of some new buildings behind the main gateway, so this picture is now unique. I took it from the bedroom window over a greengrocers shop to avoid disturbance from passers-by as I had to manually remove the lens-cap and count the seconds for the exposure needed on those slow orthochromatic plates.

Battle Abbey has connections with Cowdray Ruins at Midhurst.