Dark Hedges
— two rows of beech that grew into one room.
Not only on a wall.
“A short stretch of country road in County Antrim, planted in beech by the Stuart family around 1775 to dress up the approach to Gracehill House. Two and a half centuries later, the trees have leaned across until their branches meet overhead and the road reads like an aisle. About ninety of the original hundred and fifty remain. The rest fell to storms or age. The light works best in soft grey weather, when a low sun catches the bark and the canopy holds it. Bregagh Road is closed to cars now. People walk it.
Dark Hedges, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Dark Hedges sit on Bregagh Road, between the villages of Armoy and Stranocum in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, roughly 80 km north of Belfast and 20 km inland from the Causeway Coast. The avenue was planted around 1775 by James Stuart, who built the nearby Gracehill House as the family seat; the beeches were meant to make the entrance imposing for visitors arriving from the road. The site falls within the Causeway Coast and Glens area, the broader stretch of coast that includes the Giant's Causeway and Carrick-a-Rede. The road itself was closed to motor traffic by Northern Ireland's Department for Infrastructure in October 2017 to slow root damage to the trees.
The avenue runs roughly along Bregagh Road for a few hundred metres, oriented east-southeast, and the canopy filters the low sun the way a clerestory does, sending bars of light down between the trunks. About ninety beeches remain from an original planting of roughly one hundred and fifty in 1775. Photographers favour the hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset, though the grey even light of an overcast Antrim morning works as well; the lack of contrast lets the texture of the moss and the smooth grey bark carry the frame. The trees are common beech, Fagus sylvatica, and the bark is what gives the avenue its tonal range.
Bregagh Road has been closed to motor traffic since October 2017, when Northern Ireland's Department for Infrastructure made the closure permanent after compaction and root damage from cars accelerated tree decline. Visitors park at the Hedges Hotel about 400 metres east, or in the gravel pull-offs along Ballinlea Road, and walk in. The site is free, open to walkers at any hour, and most photographed at dawn and dusk. The closest village is Armoy, about 3 km south. Belfast is roughly an hour and twenty minutes by car; the Causeway Coastal Route passes 15 km north.