 As interest has grown in my photographs of local ancient sites, I thought I'd start to document some of these sites and the walks around them in videos. To begin, one of the furthest run places I regularly travel to from Bambri, Minster Lovell Hall. For me, the journey inevitably starts at the White Heart Buster on the old day 40, then descending into the Windrish Valley and across the water meadows towards the ruin, unless it's really wet weather, in which case I wonder who the village is required. Minster Lovell has often been the site for a first stop, using the picnic bench to have a snack, before setting off across the landscape between the Windrish and Evenlode valleys on a long day walk. Using the two free free bus from Hambri station, travel the half hour by bus to Minster Lovell, then walk back to one of the stations on the Cotswaud line to catch the train home again. Note that Coom, Finstock, Ascot and Ships in the stations are effectively closed right now, but Hamburg and Chalbury and even Kingdom are easily walkable from Minster Lovell, crossing the wide ridge between the valleys of the Windrish and the Evenlode, including the path through whichwood forest. Minster Lovell Hall has a surreal quality, especially if the weather adds to the atmosphere. It's a classic ruin, but at the same time you can see that centuries of less reverent visitors have scrawled graffiti over many parts of it, a practice common before modern times. More than anything, it's just an ethereally beautiful place to visit. From my own experience though, you can easily lose yourself for an hour or more exploring the nooks and crannies of this ancient building. The parish of Minster, its original name before the Lovell family took possession of it, is ancient, with history stretching back to the Stone Age. The modern age 40 is the course of an ancient ridge route, and the river valley itself has been a place of settlement for millennia. The Hall was probably a significant farmstead by the time in the Doomsday Book. From then it passed from one Norman Baron to another, until the Lovell family took up residence around the 13th century. William, 7th Baron Lovell, built the largest parts of the foundation and walls of the present Hall around 1431 to 1440. Unfortunately for the family, the next generation chose to support the losing side in the Wars of the Roses, and after 1485 the property was seized by the Crown, thereafter it was used by members of Henry Tudor's extended family. At the beginning of the 17th century, it passed to the Koch family, who occupied it until their wealth and power outgrew this quiet corner of Oxfordshire in the mid-18th century, when they moved to Norfolk. It was at this point the core of the building was ripped out for its valuable dress stone, leaving the shell much as it is today. As romanticism influenced popular culture at the beginning of the 19th century, the Hall became a place of pilgrimage for the new culture tourists of modern England, and, as was common in these times, they would scratch their names into the walls to mark their presence. In fact, it's only relatively recently that doing that has been frowned upon. I find the graffiti rather strange. Much of it is dated from the 19th to early 20th century. At one level it detracts from the building, but at another it speaks to the rampant individualism which grew out of the romanticism movement, where people sought not only to experience, but also to possess places like this by scrawling their names on it. Personally, I'm more than happy to pass through here, just taking a break on my travels and leaving no trace that I was ever here. More than anything, as in the tale of the other figure of romanticism, Ozymandias, for me this is somewhere to come and peacefully contemplate the impermanence of human society versus the enduring power of nature, which slowly and certainly is taking back the sight as the structure ever so slowly decays as the river ever so gently, incessantly flows by. On a bright autumn day, when this video is captured, or even in the fog of an early morning, it's a lovely place to sit and contemplate our place in time.