Change Chance and Circumstance: Field Notes

The day arrives when we can take the ferry onto Orford Ness. Entry and movement around the Ness is strictly controlled to protect the marshland and shingle habitat, and to avoid the public finding unexploded ordnance left from successive testing in the C20th. The presence of secret activities is felt everywhere on the Ness. We take no head of this historical sign in one of the Information Buildings, and again use sound, still and moving image recording to document the textures and forms on this strange landscape.

We head towards the buildings we have been viewing from afar: Black Beacon, the Bomb Ballistics viewing platform and the Lighthouse.

There are remnants of metal and concrete structures in the ground which would not look out of place as a land art installation in the desert by Nancy Holt or Richard Smithson.

The vastness of sky and flatness of land are striking. I feel very small and exposed to the elements. Perhaps that is why I’m drawn towards traces of the human presence here as a way of trying to make sense of this land.

Although the control of visitors to the Ness is strict, the coast of the Ness, is not immune to the global problem of marine debris (largely plastic).

The Orfordness Lighthouse Trust run monthly public tours of the Lighthouse and we’ve managed to book a couple of spaces on the tour for the next day, so we concentrate out efforts on the other areas that are accessible to the public.

From the top of the observation tower, you can clearly see the ridges of shingle which are evidence of centuries of longshore drift (strong southerly action of sea currents depositing material on the shore).

Each ridge is a trace of an ancient shoreline. Whilst some areas of the Ness show this progressive action of deposit. Other areas, particularly where the Lighthouse is situated are being eroded. The starkest reminder of this is that when the lighthouse was built in 1792, it was sited a significant distance from the shore; now it is only a few metres.

Some of the most iconic structures on the Ness are the nuclear shell testing Laboratories, commonly referred to as ‘The Pagodas’. We are allowed to visit Laboritory 1. Here the robustness of the outer shells were tested on vibration pads. The buildings are incredible: abandoned, steeped in ominous history, an oasis for greenery. Felicity and I are drawn to the painterly colours and textures which we find both beautiful and immensely disturbing.

The next day, we walked from Aldeburgh to the northern end of Orford Ness by Slaughden. Here, the distance between the North Sea shingle shore and the marsh of the River Alde is a matter of metres.  We saw a bank of concrete and artificial structures that had been used to shore up the northern end of the Ness and maintain its only, and somewhat precarious, link to the mainland.

The sculptural forms of the geometric structure were striking, becoming contorted by the force and persistence of the waves. Again, I was stuck by relationship between the land, sea and the human presence on the Ness. The coastline engineering, the over-the-horizon radar masts and structure of Cobra Mist and the Lighthouse all strive to make contact, or maintain presence in relation to the sea. However, all were fallible, or now redundant.

Orford Ness is a spit of shingle precariously attached at the north end at Slaughden, near Aldeburgh. It is the largest vegetated shingle spit in Europe and best preserved in Britain largely due to control in visitor numbers by the National Trust Nature Reserve. Felicity and I discovered this when we arrived mid-week in June, not realising that the Saturday only ferry was still in operation. We would have to wait until the weekend to access the Ness. So ’til then we  observed it from afar. We decided to walk along the River Alde from Orford towards Snape on the first day. We walk and talk about the changing landscape, the light and use our digital cameras and my sound recorder to create an aide-memoire of the walk.

The horizon of the Ness is punctuated only by redundant man-made structures left over from a history of maritime navigation, military defence and innovation.

The buildings such as the Black Beacon, Laboratory 1, 2, 3 and Vibration Test Building (known as the ‘Pagodas’ for their architectural form) have a striking and menacing presence that catalogue experimentation in radio, radar, bomb ballistics and atomic test cells in the C20th.

The National Trust’s approach to conservation of buildings is different here to what they are renowned for in the rest of the UK. On the Ness, the buildings are largely left in the state that they were found when the Trust took over they land from the Ministry of Defence in 1993. There is little attempt to preserve the buildings from the on-going coastal erosion that is rife on this stretch of land. Gradually they are being taken back by nature. Since my visit in 2013 for East to East, one of the spindly lookout structures on the shoreline has vanished. Slowly the horizon is changing. The most endangered building is the decommissioned Lighthouse which is now owned by the Orfordness Lighthouse Trust. It stands tall and straight on the horizon but is threatened by erosion on a daily basis. It draws my gaze each time I scan the horizon, I want to see it close up.

In the meantime, we press on northward towards Cobra Mist, a menacing looking building that house the Anglo-American over the horizon radar experimental research in the 1960s and 70s. Later it became a transmitting station and was used by the UK Foreign Office and the BBC World Service until 2011.

I am fascinated by the existence of man and nature on the Ness. Each striving for survival. It is a harsh but fascinating environment that feels otherworldly.