Site of Special Scientific Interest

(Rye Harbour, Romney Marsh & Dungeness)

___________________________________________________________________________________

​

- an ongoing project, halted temporaily due to Covid 19 

_________________________________________________________

​

I have always felt drawn to the Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay area. A nationally important site with a diverse coastal landscape comprising several habitats which appear to be unrelated to each other, they exist today because coastal processes have formed and continue to shape a barrier of extensive shingle beaches and sand dunes across an area of intertidal mud and sand flats.

​

There are several man-made constructions that lure me: the Power Station at Dungeness and Prospect Cottage, on the beach there, where the film maker Derek Jarman lived until his death in 1994. At Rye Harbour there is the iconic red roofed fisherman’s hut and nearby a concrete machine gun post from WWII. Romney Marsh, a sprawling wetland covering 100 sq miles has several ruined churches to be found, relics of stone appearing as a high arch or a jagged pinnacle.

​

The entire area is undeniably strange, eerie at times. The aura is like nowhere else. Conveying it will prove difficult as my perceptions change each time I visit. And after such an enforced absence, my work has evolved considerably, so I am quite excited to get back to the place....