Zemni Images

Category: ShingleStreet_Suffolk

  • Suffolk Coast Notes

    The Suffolk Coast and Heaths on the edge of the North Sea are an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

    The county flower is the oxlip.

    Despite its beauty, the area and local people face a number of key issues:

    • Coastal erosion see geology and environment
    • Unemployment, unequal land ownership and low incomes in fishing industry and agiculture
    • Tourism, right to roam and housing
    • Education

    Conservative Party and Brexit

    Geology and environment

    george monbiot article
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/15/tresspass-trap-law-land-travelling-people-rights?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    See also Geology of Suffolk

    Suffolk has borders with Norfolk  with the wetlands of the Broads to the north, Cambridgeshire and some hills to the west and Essex to the south.

    Much of Suffolk is low-lying, founded on Pleistocene sand and clays. These rocks are relatively unresistant and the coast is eroding rapidly. Coastal defences have been used to protect several towns, but several cliff-top houses have been lost to coastal erosion and others are under threat. The continuing protection of the coastline and the estuaries, including the Blyth, Alde and Deben, has been, and remains, a matter of considerable discussion.

    The coastal strip to the East contains an area of heathland known as “The Sandlings” which runs almost the full length of the coastline. Suffolk is also home to nature reserves, such as the RSPB site at Minsmere, and Trimley Marshes, a wetland under the protection of Suffolk Wildlife Trust.

    https://www.facebook.com/Norfolk-and-Suffolk-Against-Live-Quarry-Hunting-598502766978896/

    Suffolk Coast tourist travelogues

    http://thelostbyway.com/

    http://thelostbyway.com/tag/southwold

    The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald,

    http://thelostbyway.com/2015/08/from-the-crumbling-coastline-to-the-suffolk-death-road.html

    http://thelostbyway.com/2015/01/george-orwell-walberswick-ghost.html

    History

    Growing Up Wild. Memories of growing up in Suffolk from the 1930s.

    See Wikipedia: History of Suffolk

    West Suffolk, like nearby East Cambridgeshire, is renowned for archaeological finds from the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

    By the fifth century, the Angles (after whom East Anglia and England are named) had established control of the region.  Sutton Hoo, the site of one of England’s most significant Anglo-Saxon archaeological finds, a ship burial containing a collection of treasures including a Sword of State, gold and silver bowls, and jewellery and a lyre.

    The Angles later became the “north folk” and the “south folk”, from which developed the names “Norfolk” and “Suffolk”.Suffolk and several adjacent areas became the kingdom of East Anglia, which later merged with Mercia and then Wessex.

    From 1860 Suffolk was divided into the eastern division administered from Ipswich and the western from Bury St Edmunds. Under the Local Government Act 1972, East Suffolk, West Suffolk, and Ipswich were merged to form the unified county of Suffolk divided into several local government districts including two coastal districts of Suffolk Coastal, and Waveney. After a decade of discussion, in 2018 it was decided that Waveney and Suffolk Coastal would form a new East Suffolk district and these changes took effect on 1 April 2019.

    Economy

    Historically, the population of Suffolk as a whole has mostly been employed as agricultural workers. An 1835 survey recorded the total population of the county at 296,304. It showed Suffolk to have 4,526 occupiers of land employing labourers, 1,121 occupiers not employing labourers, 33,040 labourers employed in agriculture, 676 employed in manufacture, 18,167 employed in retail trade or handicraft, 2,228 ‘capitalists, bankers etc.’, 5,336 labourers (non-agricultural), 4,940 other males aged over 20, 2,032 male servants and 11,483 female servants.

    !!Fishing???

    The economy of Suffolk is dominated by service industries that have grown significantly in recent years.

    YearRegional gross value added[fn 1]Agriculture[fn 2]Industry[fn 3]Services[fn 4]
    19957,1133912,4494,273
    20008,0962592,5895,248
    20039,4562702,6026,583

    Source Office for National Statistics figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling. See also: Companies based in Suffolk

    The county town is Ipswich ( population 133,384 in 2011). Important coastal towns include:

    Just inland from the coast:

    •  Bernard Matthews Farms have some processing units in the county, specifically. Issues of avian flu.
    • BT has its main research and development facility at Martlesham Heath.
    • Army bases and defence industry

    See also: List of settlements in Suffolk by population 

    The majority of agriculture in Suffolk is either arable or mixed. Farm sizes vary from anything around 80 acres (32 hectares) to over 8,000. Soil types vary from heavy clays to light sands. Crops grown include winter wheat, winter barley, sugar beet, oilseed rape, winter and spring beans and linseed, although smaller areas of rye and oats can be found growing in areas with lighter soils along with a variety of vegetables. The continuing importance of agriculture in the county is reflected in the Suffolk Show, which is held annually in May at Ipswich. Although latterly somewhat changed in nature, this remains primarily an agricultural show.

    East anglia fishing

    People

    For a full list of settlements see the list of places in Suffolk

    According to estimates by the Office for National Statistics, the population of Suffolk in 2014 was 738,512, split almost evenly between males and females. Roughly 22% of the population was aged 65 or older, and 90.84% were “White British”.

    The traditional nickname for people from Suffolk is ‘Suffolk Fair-Maids’, or ‘Silly Suffolk’, referring respectively to the supposed beauty of its female inhabitants in the Middle Ages, and to the long history of Christianity in the county and its many fine churches (from Anglo-Saxon selige, originally meaning holy).

    Witch-finder General Matthew Hopkins;

    The Suffolk dialect is very distinctive. Epenthesis and yod-dropping is common, along with non-conjugation of verbs.

    Education

    Suffolk has a comprehensive education system with fourteen independent schools. In 2013, a letter said that “…nearly a fifth of the schools inspected were judged inadequate. This is unacceptable and now means that Suffolk has a higher proportion of pupils educated in inadequate schools than both the regional and national averages.”

    See also: List of schools in Suffolk

    The Royal Hospital School at Holbrook is the largest independent boarding school in Suffolk. Other boarding schools within Suffolk include Culford School, Framlingham College, Barnardiston Hall Preparatory School, Saint Felix School and Finborough School.

    Sixth form colleges in the county include Lowestoft Sixth Form College and One in Ipswich. Suffolk is home to four further education colleges: Lowestoft College, Easton & Otley College, Suffolk New College (Ipswich) and West Suffolk College (Bury St Edmunds).

    University of Suffolk accepted its first students in 2007. Until then Suffolk was one of only four counties in England which did not have a University campus. It became independent in 2016. The University operates at five sites with its central hub in Ipswich. Others include Lowestoft, Bury St. Edmunds, and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. The University operates two academic faculties and in 2016/17 had 5,080 students. Some 30% of the student body are classed as mature students and 68% of University students are female.

    Football

    The county’s sole professional football club is Ipswich Town. Formed in 1878, the club were Football League champions in 1961–62, FA Cup winners in 1977–78 and UEFA Cup winners in 1980–81.[53] Ipswich Town currently play in League One, the third tier of English football. The next highest ranked teams in Suffolk are Leiston, Lowestoft Town and Needham Market, who all participate in the Southern League Premier Division Central, the seventh tier of English football.

    Famous people:

    See also: People from Suffolk

    Culture

    Painting and sculpture
    Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews (1748–49), housed at the National Gallery in London, depicts the Suffolk landscape of his time.
    Music
    Graphic art

    Carl Giles (a bronze statue of his character “Grandma” to commemorate this is located in Ipswich town centre)

    Poetry and literature

    Novels set in Suffolk include:

    Festivals
    • Aldeburgh Festival founded in 1948 by Benjamin Britten, is one of the UK’s major classical music festivals. Originating in Aldeburgh, it has been held at the nearby Snape Maltings since 1967.
    • Since 2006, Henham Park, has been home to the annual Latitude Festival. This mainly open-air festival, which has grown considerably in size and scope, includes popular music, comedy, poetry and literary events.
    • The FolkEast festival is held at Glemham Hall in August and attracts international acoustic, folk and roots musicians whilst also championing local businesses, heritage and crafts. In 2015 it was also home to the first instrumental festival of musical instruments and makers.
    • LeeStock Music Festival has been held in Sudbury.
    • A celebration of the county, “Suffolk Day”, was instigated in 2017.

    The Rendlesham Forest Incident is one of the most famous UFO events in England and is sometimes referred to as “Britain’s Roswell“.

    TV and film

    See also

  • Shingle Street Back Notes

    Shingle Street is a small coastal hamlet in Suffolk, England, at the mouth of Orford Ness, situated between Orford and Bawdsey. Part of the coast is also known as Hollesley Bay.

    Fishing

    A community of fishing families and river pilots for the River Ore was established in the early 19th Century.

    Defence

    The four Martello towers south of Shingle Street were built in 1808-1809. Coastguard cottages at the North end of the beach housed coastguards who worked as pilots, lifeboatmen and excise men to control the smuggling.

    Several buildings were destroyed during World War II, including the Lifeboat Inn, the hamlet’s only pub.

    Environment

    The beach is a designated SSI because of its rare vegetated shingle, little terns, saline lagoons and geology.

    A report from October 2004 suggests that Shingle Street is at risk from the sea and could disappear within 20 years if sea defences are not erected.

    North Sea windfarms can be seen in the distance on a fine days.

    Tourism

    Was an important place for tourism in 1930s.

    But destroyed in World War II.

    Now a desirable elite hideaway.

    Shell line

    Line fishing by kayak in the saline lagoons
    Melancholy summer oboe and piano meandering across the shingle far from Shingle Street itself until the end. Then some of the back footpaths through fields and allotments.

    Drone Photography
    January walk. 2013. Sunny. Lots of warning sounds. Electronic music. Shows steep shingle banks. Kayaking. Some quite interesting angles. End is misty.

    For copies of the local news magazine Village Voices see: http://villagevoices.org.uk/index.htm

    Fishing

    fishing

    Defence

    Martello Towers

    Originally 103 towers were built between 1805 and 1812 to resist a potential invasion by Napoleon. 29 were built between Aldeburgh and St Osyth Stone between 1808 and 1812 to protect Essex and Suffolk, the rest having been built a few years earlier across the Kent and Sussex coasts.

    The four Martello towers south of Shingle Street were built in 1808-1809. Coastguard cottages at the North end of the beach housed coastguards who worked as pilots, lifeboatmen and excise men to control the smuggling.

    Many are now for sale at over 1 million pounds or holiday lets:
    Shingle Street holiday let: https://www.visitengland.com/experience/stay-200-year-old-tower
    Bawdsey for sale : https://www.themodernhouse.com/sales-list/martello-tower-y/

    World War II

    Several buildings were destroyed during World War II, including the Lifeboat Inn, the hamlet’s only pub.

    See also: Petroleum Warfare Department: Burning seas

    After World War II many strange happenings were reported to have taken place at Shingle Street, including a failed German invasion.Since the civilian population had been evacuated in May 1940, there were no eyewitness reports, although official documents remained classified until questions in the House of Commons led to their early release in 1993. These papers disclosed no German landing. In fact rumours of a failed invasion on the South and East Coasts were commonplace in September 1940 and helped to boost morale. Author James Hayward has proposed that these rumours, which were widely reported in the American press, were a successful example of black propaganda with an aim of ensuring American co-operation and securing lend lease resources by showing that the United Kingdom was capable of successfully resisting the German Army.

    Short amateur video about a boy finding a German army badge. But civilians had been evacuated….

    Environment

    The beach is a designated SSI because of its rare vegetated shingle, little terns, saline lagoons and geology.

    Sea Kale

    Crambe maritima (sea kale, sea cole, seakale, sea colewort or crambe) is a brassica, related to the cabbage. Local people heaped loose shingle around the naturally occurring root crowns in springtime, thus blanching the emerging shoots. By the early eighteenth century, it had become established as a garden vegetable. The shoots are served like asparagus: steamed, with either a béchamel sauce or melted butter, salt and pepper.

    Sea pea

    Lathyrus maritimus (sea pea, beach pea, circumpolar pea, sea vetchling). The species’ pods and seeds are larger than many of its relatives’, and they have been used in years of crop failure as human food. Non-toxic, cultivated stands are the result of careful cross-breeding, and the seeds of wild pea plants should not be eaten: unprocessed sea pea seeds are poisonous.

    Yellow horned poppy

    The Yellow horned-poppy is a coastal plant that grows on shingle beaches, cliffs and sand dunes. The golden-yellow flowers appear in June and are followed by the ‘horns’ – curling seedpods that can be up to 30cm long. When it is broken, the plant exudes a yellow sap which is poisonous. The seeds of the Yellow horned-poppy are often eaten by small birds, such as Twite and Snow bunting.

    Seals

    Birds

    little terns

    Shingle Street survey website

    Shingle Street Survey 2016

    Shingle Street Ecology Report 2018

    Touching the Tide project

    A report from October 2004 suggests that Shingle Street is at risk from the sea and could disappear within 20 years if sea defences are not erected.

    On fine days North Sea windfarms can be seen in the distance: Greater Gabbard windfarm 23km NE and London Array Windfarms to the South.

    Hollesley Bay Colony

    Hollesley Bay began in 1887 as a colonial college training those intending to emigrate. The land was originally purchased by Joseph Fels, an American soap-manufacturing millionaire and friend of George Lansbury, the prominent Christian Socialist who was also a leading member of the Poplar Board of Guardians.

    The prison had housed a labour colony for the London unemployed. The aim was to train unemployed people for work, with a view to helping them escape pauperism. Hollesley Bay was typical in that it mainly involved exposing its inmates to a period of work either on agricultural tasks or in the kitchens and other relatively unskilled activities. Hollesley Bay had the largest prison farm in the British prison system, along with the oldest established stud for the Suffolk Punch Horse in the world.

    Hollesley Bay opened on this site as a Borstal in 1938.  From that year and until 2006, the prison managed a 1800 acre farm on which the care of both crops and livestock, delivered employment for the prisoners.

    There was a short-lived strike among the inmates in May 1922, partly sparked by dissatisfaction over the inmates’ levels of pay. It was said to hold around 280 men in 1923, rising to 366 in the late 1920s, and falling to around 200 in 1934. London County Council decided to dispose of the site in 1938.

    In 1938 the Prison Commission purchased the site for use as a Borstal and Detention centre. The Irish writer Brendan Behan, arrested for IRA activities in 1939, was sent there, and subsequently described his experiences in Borstal Boy. Jeffrey Archer was also sent there. A major expansion took place in 1982 with the opening of Warren Hill Prison a 285 place secure unit.

    In 1983 Hollesley Bay became a Youth Custody Centre this replaced the borstal system. This in turn was replaced by Young Offenders Institution in 1988. In 2002, the old borstal site became mainly for the use of minimum security adult offenders. The prison has been repeatedly criticised for the apparently large number of escapes, which has led to the nickname Holiday Bay.

    The prison today

    Today the establishment is an outward looking modern institution which holds sentenced adult males from 18 years and upwards without limit. The farm has gone, and a focus on resettlement and reducing re-offending is at the heart of our agenda. The establishment has developed a strong reputation in successfully preparing life sentenced prisoners for their final release. There are more than a hundred prisoners working in the community on a daily basis, and many partnership agencies work alongside prison staff, to deliver a most effective open establishment. The regime is demanding of its participants. A calm ethos of mutual co-operation, with total delivery of the sentence plan, and a commitment to the working week, are the essentials to continued occupancy at Hollesley Bay, in full preparation for release back to the community

    2018 HMP Report

    Tourism

    Waking up to views of the sea – what could be better? The magical setting of Shingle Street provides a wonderful backdrop for this Victorian seaside cottage, situated in an unrivalled spot. Simply wonderful.

    The Shingle Street Shell Line

    In 2005 stonecutter Lida Cardozo Kindersley and her childhood friend Els Bottema started to arrange a line of shells on the beach, beginning as a way of coping with their shared experience of cancer treatment. After regular visits to add to the line by 2018 it stretched for more than 275m and was made up of 20,000 individual whelk shells. 

    A short documentary film about the work, entitled ‘C Shells’, was released in 2017, followed by a book ‘The Shingle Street Shell Line’ by Bottema and Kindersley in 2018

    In 2005 two childhood friends, Els and Lida, spent a week in Suffolk after each had been through a year of cancer. On their first long walk along the beach, they picked up some white shells and, sitting down to rest, arranged them around a plant. From that day on, every walk added more shells to a growing line, symbolic of their slow day by day, shell by shell recovery. Twice a year they spend a week repairing and relaying the line and find that many people have added to it. Frail and transitory, like us and those who come and wonder at it, the line is a signal of courage and survival.

    Music

    Cloudburst at Shingle Street

    Shingle Street was the inspiration of the Thomas Dolby song , from the album The Golden Age of Wireless.

    Poetry

    The Ballad of Shingle Street

    On Shingle Street
    The summer’s sweet,
    The stones are flat,
    The pebbles neat
    And there’s less rip
    When tides are neap.
    It’s fine to swim, or fine to try
    But when the sea runs fast and high
    And skies turn black and cormorants weep
    Best watch your step on Shingle Street.

    On Shingle Street
    The shelving’s steep
    With stones to skim
    As if they’d feet
    To hop and skip
    Across the deep,
    To pitter-pat and aquaplane,
    Again again again again,
    Not flip and flop, and splash and drop,
    The opened trap, the hangman’s rope,
    The cairns that mark where life gave out,
    The muddy dark off Shingle Street.

    From Shingle Street
    To Bawdsey Bay
    The sea-mews shriek
    Above the spray,
    The rolling seals
    Are charcoal grey
    As though burnt out or singed by grief.
    Like ash-streaked mourners, half-possessed,
    They duck and bob and stare to land
    In hope that we might understand.
    But nothing helps, we fail the test,
    They hang and gaze without relief
    Beyond the reach of Shingle Street.

    For Shingle Street’s a single street,
    A row of shacks in stone and wood,
    The sea out front, the marsh out back,
    Just one road in and one road out,
    With no way north except the spit,
    And no way south except on foot,
    A cul-de-sac, a dead-end track,
    A sandbanked strand to sink a fleet,
    A bay, a bar, a strip, a trap,
    A wrecking ground, that’s Shingle Street.

    On Shingle Street
    As sunset seeps
    Across the marsh
    The flocks of kale
    Are grazing sheep,
    A soft pink light
    Sneaks up the beach
    As if each stone were ringed with fire,
    As if each pebble held the heat
    Of past disasters, past defeats.
    And in the dusk they tell a tale
    Of burning boats and blistered flesh,
    And you can’t help but watch and hear
    And smell the oil and taste the fear
    And feel your skin scorch in the heat:
    You won’t sleep sound on Shingle Street.

    On Shingle Street
    The stones are neat
    And warm as stoves
    Beneath your feet
    Like aga-lids
    That store the heat.
    But just an inch or two below
    It’s sloppy-wet and cold as snow.
    The lips are dry but not the mouth.
    The tide’s come in though it’s still out,
    The icy north’s migrated south.
    The oven tops are just a cheat.
    Beware the tricks of Shingle Street.

    For Shingle Street’s a sneaky street,
    That smiles and mangles, lures and wrecks,
    Where water strips and wind dissects,
    Where sea-kale bows its green-grey head
    As waves wash up the new-made dead,
    A bolt-hole built with ghost-white stones,
    A charnel house for ancient bones,
    A beach, a bitch, a crypt, a con,
    A bight, a morgue, a scam, a tomb,
    A sun-trap strand, a catacomb,
    An angel with a nasty streak,
    A seabird with a razor beak,
    A double bluff, that’s Shingle Street.

    From Shingle Street
    To Orford Ness
    The waves maraud,
    The winds oppress,
    The earth can’t help
    But acquiesce
    For this is east, and east means loss,
    A lessening shore, receding ground
    Where land runs out and nothing’s sound,
    Just inches last year, this year feet –
    Nothing lasts long on Shingle Street.

    On Shingle Street
    The grind goes on,
    A churning bowl
    Of sand and stone,
    A watery mix that unbuilds homes,
    Unearthing earth, unlaying land,
    Tall waves that flash like silver spades,
    And bulldozed buffs and quarried bays,
    Not give-and-take but take-and-keep,
    Just shingle left on Shingle Street.

    For Shingle Street’s a sinking street,
    The worn-out coast’s in slow retreat
    With lopped-off bluffs and crumbling cliffs,
    And empty air where churches stood,
    And houses perched, and fields and woods,
    And no known means to stop the rot.
    A breakers’ yard of rusted hulls,
    Where combers come and herring gulls,
    A holding bay for washed-up trash,
    A rest home for the obsolete,
    A hole, a heap, a wreck, a wrack,
    A nomad’s land, that’s Shingle Street.

    On Shingle Street
    The sea repeats
    Its tired old tricks,
    Its one-man show,
    The drumrolled waves along the strand,
    The bass-line thud and cymbal-clash
    As stones are stoned and pebbles dashed.
    Again again again again
    The waves collapse, the flints resound,
    The tide runs in and takes the ground,
    The tide runs out, the ground slips back.
    Variety is not the name
    But that’s the point – the sea’s the same,
    Unchanging grey, the one sure thing,
    A flooded plain in plain disguise,
    A level field that hides its rise
    Through constant ebb and constant flow,
    Unlike the earth, which shifts and shrinks,
    Unlike ourselves, who have to go.

  • Stanley Donwood inspiration

  • Daido Moriyama

  • Louise Bourgeois

    Google images for Louise Bourgeois drypoints

    See MoMA catalogue of Bourgeois drypoints

    Google images for Louise Bourgeois self-portraits

    Louise Bourgeois was the main source of inspiration for my series of abstract self-portraits: Assignment 4:  Life in Red White Black

    Life and sources of inspiration

    Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. Her parents  ran a tapestry restoration business where she  helped out by drawing missing elements in the scenes depicted on the tapestries.

    Bourgeois’s work is based, more or less overtly, on memory. Much of her work probes  themes of loneliness, jealousy, anger, and fear. Many of these emotions originate in her vivid memories and sense of betrayal by her father who carried on an affair with Sadie Gordon Richmond, the English tutor who lived in the family house. This led her to seek psychoanalysis – a subject she wrote about a lot in her diaries. Through her work she is able to access and analyse hidden (but uncomfortable) feelings, resulting in cathartic release from them. She has said:

    Some of us are so obsessed with the past that we die of it. It is the attitude of the poet who never finds the lost heaven and it is really the situation of artists who work for a reason that nobody can quite grasp. They might want to reconstruct something of the past to exorcise it. It is that the past for certain people has such a hold and such a beauty … Everything I do was inspired by my early life.
    (Destruction of the Father, p.133.)

    Bourgeois started printmaking in 1938, the year she moved to New York with her husband Robert Goldwater (1907-73). She experimented widely with techniques and effects, producing an important portfolio of etchings titled He Disappeared into Complete Silence (The Museum of Modern Art, New York) in the 1940s.

    She used drypoint more frequently than any other technique. She produced around 1,500 prints that use only drypoint, or in combination with other intaglio techniques. She liked the fact that the drypoint needle was easy to manipulate and that no acid or special equipment was required. She referred to the scratching as an “endearing” gesture, a kind of “stroking.” While it could not “convert antagonism,” something she admired in engraving, she liked the immediacy of drypoint’s effects, with its soft, irregular line and tentative qualities. She used drypoint in some her most iconic print projects, such as the Sainte Sébastienne series,  the portfolio Anatomy, and the illustrated book Ode à Ma Mère, which presents a range of her celebrated spider imagery.(https://www.moma.org/explore/collection/lb/techniques/drypoint)

    Bibliography

    Malbert, R., (2016) Louise Bourgeois: Autobiographical prints, London: Hayward Publishing.

    Muller-Westermann, I. (ed.) (2015) Louise Bourgeois: I Have Been to Hell and Back, Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag.

    Wye, D., (2017) Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait, New York: MoMA.

    See MoMA Catalogue for Louise Bourgeois work

    See Tate catalogue of works by Bourgeois

    Videos and interviews on her life and work

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=107VHAIQFRQ