The Old Toll House, Pangbourne

That doesn't answer my question.

Where a picture was taken from and how it's afterwards viewed aren't the same. Europeans may scan them from left to right, Arabic speakers from right to left, and Chinese from top to bottom because that happens to be how they've been taught to read. What I'm saying is that not everyone scans from bottom to top, as you assume. If I'm right, then the right amount of lead in and where in the frame it needs to be depend on the viewer.

Red herring. Arabs and Chinese scan their texts in the direction that they're written.

This picture leads us from right to left along the road, and upwards to the chimneys.
I don't understand how your own eye is led downward.

If you did that with Roy's picture here, you would hit your head on the concrete.
www.ipernity.com/doc/isisbridge/51078674

The direction that Arabic and Chinese text is written is the same as the direction in which it's scanned, but Roy's picture of concrete slabs contains a "vanishing point" - converging lines - and these direct the eye independently of any cultural or personal (left/right eye) factors.

But I don't know enough about the mechanism of human visual perception to lay down any rules about where and how the eye is or should be directed, or to say how important it is vis a vis other factors in composition - overall balance, inclusion of interesting features like clouds and chimneys - I just accept that what to me looks right may not do so to others and vice versa.