Valued Landscape in Memory: The View from Prebends' Bridge

Abstract

The memory of the classical view from Prebends' Bridge was tested in two stages of introspection by respondents after their departure from Durham, one in anticipating their photograph in sketch-form, then later in reacting to sketch and photograph in relation to the view as remembered. The reconstruction in memory, which retained some items 'larger than life' while reducing or omitting others, was preferred to the reproduction by camera. The memory thus engages the subjectivity of the artist. Turner's painting of the scene may be considered a memory made visible. In 1778 the Dean and Chapter of Durham completed a new stone bridge across the river Wear to replace an earlier one destroyed by floods at the beginning of the decade. The siting of the new Prebends' Bridge, named after the cathedral prebendaries or canons, was some fifty metres further downstream and thus clear of the southern loop in the incised meander of the river. It therefore opened up a classical prospect of cathedral and castle amid the wooded slopes or 'Banks' of the gorge, which several decades earlier had been landscaped by its ecclesiastical owners for the benefit of promenaders. In 1753, for example, the poet Thomas Gray had pronounced the walks to be in 'one of the most beautiful Vales in England'.1 Now, the new prospect from Prebends' Bridge was soon to become a highlight, perhaps the acclaimed point, from which to view the peninsular acropolis. A succession of artists was attracted, including Turner in 1834; the painting was included in his Picturesque Views in England and Wales project.2 Six years earlier, Mendelssohn on his way to Scotland had visited the spot and painted the scene nearby, while incorporation into the bridge of a tablet with lines from 'Harold the Dauntless' containing reference to the 'grey towers of Durham', led to the spot becoming known as 'Scott's View'. The acclaim of this particular landscape has continued to the present day. Thus, Pevsner, bringing with him the critically comparative eye of a mid-European, considered the prospect from Prebends' Bridge the 'most moving one' from which to view what he termed 'one of the great experiences of Europe', where the picture of the cathedral rising above the trees appeared 'as it were the vision of a Caspar David Friedrich or Schinkel'.3