Calling From the Deep
30 April
ALL SAINTS, DUNWICH
The last church to be lost at Dunwich was All Saints, finally lost to the sea entirely in the early 1900s. There is one grave left not yet lost to the crumbling cliffs, called ‘The Last Grave’. Nestled inside green woodland, with the sound of the waves so close behind it, it is a curious and haunting thing to encounter. Behind the Last Grave are the ruins of Greyfriars Monastery. The shapes of the stones and flints and the remaining shapes of windows through which the sky can be seen had an elegiac feel, against the peace of grazing horses and the song of meadow birds.
“I am walking with ghosts on Dunwich Shore” - poet JW Gosling
30 April
DUNWICH, SUFFOLK
Dunwich, once the sixth largest settlement in England, now has a population of around 100 people.
The small but excellent Dunwich Museum tells the story of how Dunwich was mostly lost to the sea.
The collection has many items found in the area. One area interested me in particular - the section about ‘ampullae’, lead bottles used by pilgrims to collect holy water from sites of pilgrimage. The ampulla at the museum has a ‘W’ meaning, they believe, ‘Walsingham’, another site of pilgrimage. I found the idea of people carrying water from place to place and the loss of water from one place into the earth at another, intriguing. I collected water from Kenfig Pool on my visit there, as an artefact that I could integrate into my eventual installation. Is there something about water and its character of movement that makes us want to capture and (de)still it?
Dunwich had at least eight churches and two monasteries - the churches were lost to the sea (St Bartholomew’s, St Leonard’s, St Martin’s, St Nicholas’, St Peter’s, St John’s, St James’, All Saints, St Francis’ chapel, St Katherine’s chapel and St Anthony’s chapel). The folklore here, as with other ‘Drowned Towns’, is that the church bells can still be heard on stormy nights.
30 April
WALBERSWICK, SUFFOLK
The Walberswick Ferry pier
The Walberswick ferry is a pedestrian ferry across the estuary from Walberswick to Southwold. As she rowed, the ferrywoman said to me that the ferry used to go to Dunwich and that the ferry had been operating since the 1100s. The curious collection of boat chandlery and mismatched fishing huts on the Southwold side drew me in. I’ve been recently working with charcoal and the textures of the huts and the hulls whose hulls showed signs of having been breached and in the process of repair meant a lot of looking and thinking about different ways to render those texture in charcoal.
I was struck by the idea of a ferryman as archetype, the one that takes us from one place, or state, to the other. I thought of the idea of a ferryman who takes their passengers between life and afterlife, the means of a necessary transition.
Visiting Walberswick was a first stage in a day dedicated to research at Dunwich, a well known ‘Drowned Town’….
30 March
KENFIG POOL , WALES
On Easter Saturday, I found my way to Kenfig Pool in South Wales. The water was incredibly still and trees were growing in the water. There weren’t many people around and the quiet made the place feel magical.
The legend says that hundreds of years ago there was a town here. A poor man wanted to marry a rich man’s daughter; to gain enough money to do this, he murdered a rent collector and stole his money. Because of this, a curse was put on Kenfig. After nine generations, there was a terrible storm and the whole town was flooded. On stormy nights, it is said, you can still hear the church bells toll.
I decided to collect some water from the pool, as well as some stones and dried ferns. Having these in the studio makes me feel connected to the experience and I may use these ephemera in my installation in Aldeburgh in October.
4 March
INTRODUCTION TO CALLING FROM THE DEEP
From under the sea, bells toll.
In the surviving places near Drowned Towns (Dunwich, Cantre’r Gwaelod), bells continue to be heard. Inland, bell towers overcome by reservoirs reemerge under drought conditions (Derwent, Llanwddyn).
WG Sebald writes of Dunwich as a place where past and present overlap, a theme that I’ve been drawn to for many years. Bells summon, they celebrate, they lament and they warn.
Bells tolling under water seem like a place’s past calling to its present, the voice of the bell an avatar for human voices fallen silent. The sea is beguiling with danger and longing; we are an island nation and our sea is slowly rising.
This theme is something I became interested in several years ago. A friend last year suggested that I get in touch with Caroline Wiseman at Aldeburgh Beach Lookout to suggest it as a theme for a residency. I’ve long been a fan of the work shown at Aldeburgh Beach Lookout, so I was really pleased that Caroline was as enthused about the project as I am.
My residency will be 14 - 20 October 2024.