This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester.
I always thought I should give then and now photographs a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart.
Jedburgh Abbey, a ruined Augustinian abbey which was founded in the 12th century, is situated in the town of Jedburgh, in the Scottish Borders 10 miles north of the border with England at Carter Bar.
At Legoland Windsor there is a Lego model of Jedburgh Abbey, which I have photographed a lot over the last twenty years (or so).
I took this photograph in August 2006. At this point the park was ten years old.
Here is the same model two years later in August 2008.
By August 2014 the ruin had become overgrown with real plants growing across the ruins.
A year later in July 2015 it didn’t look too different.
When we visited in August 2017 there had been some gardening done and various small trees and plants had been removed.
For the most part I did not realise I was taking a similar photograph of the same model. However now this has come to my attention that I have been taking similar photographs I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place. So in October 2022 on my most recent visit to Legoland I sought out Jedburgh Abbey and took a photograph.
The trees behind the model had grown somewhat, but other trees around the model had been removed.
