In the spring of 1996, I took my easel to the car park at the bottom of Coxley Lane and painted, in acrylics, a small canvas of this stile. I like the informal way the stile invites you to step over and explore.
As a subject, the variety of simple shapes is appealing to draw. Unlike the more user-friendly metal kissing gate fifty yards along the path that goes up to the right, this homemade stile is something that has grown from the landscape with those two blocks of local sandstone and the self-sown ash tree.
The ash saplings appear to have grown from the stump of a tree which has been felled. The one in the foreground has grown over the past twenty-two years to engulf a third sandstone block, clearly visible on the right in the original painting.
The Coxley Stile canvas is now in the private collection of an astute and discerning couple (have to say that as they read this blog) in Cumbria.