Dungeness

This blog was first published in September 2005. Dated but one of my favourites.

At first sight, Dungeness, tagged on to the south Kent coast and one of the world's largest expanses of shingle, seems a pretty inhospitable place compared to the rolling charms of the Downs and the Weald. In reality though, this is a fascinating and fragile landscape, with an eclectic but thriving community of fishermen, artists and city escapees, a haven for wildlife and a great destination for a day out, with two pubs (great fish 'n chips), a gallery, a lighthouse to look round and the little Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway to take a ride on.

In fact 'The Dunge' has two lighthouses for good measure and two rather hard to ignore nuclear power stations, an old 1965 Magnox plant and a newer Advanced Gas Cooled (AGR) 1987 model, right by the sea and sitting on one of the most unstable and shifting stretches of coastline in the UK. So why put them here?

The old and new lighthouses with the old and new Dungeness A and B reactors in the background

If we had to build nuclear power plants, and back in the sixties we thought we did, Dungeness was probably chosen as a good site because it's a) remote ie. not many people live around here to kick up a political stink, b) the land is cheap ie. you can't farm shingle and not so many people want to live on it (though lots do) and c) although it's remote, it's not so remote that you have to pump electricity hundreds of miles to where it's needed in big cities like London.

Dungeness A's twin reactor houses.

Derek Jarman's Garden and Found Art.

One of Dungeness's most famous residents was film director, artist and gardener, Derek Jarman, who lived in the charming Prospect Cottage (below). He created his witty and wonderful 'Atomic Garden' out of a bewildering variety of sculptural objects found on the beach along with plants that tolerate the salt laden winds and drought conditions found on this seaside shingle. His inspiration was the Dungeness landscape itself, for you don't have to look far to find aesthetic associations between native plants and the flints and shells, flotsam and junk that strew the peninsula. Derek died in 1994 but his garden is lovingly maintained and is not so much open to the public as, like most of the houses in Dungeness, completely open plan.

Prospect Cottage and the approach to Derek Jarman's garden.

 Three views of Derek Jarman's garden in April

I don't know whether DJ started a fashion for 'objets trouvees' or 'found art' around these parts but many of the cottages have flotsam and jetsam sculptures adorning their gardens and there are quite a few humorous examples dotted around the shingle banks. For instance, this highly functional 'double wind vane and old boots'. The 'arms' are aligned east to west and the boots point south, so a westerley blowing today.

Double wind vane and old boots.

Iron Bru anyone?'

Or this gruesome dead hand, straight from Davey Jones' locker and still grasping it's last drink (Coke presumably).

The most elaborate sculpture I saw on my last visit in September was this figure with a feathered hat, complemented nicely by a backdrop of nuclear reactor buildings.

Standing figure with AGRs.

Some Flora and Fauna.

Much of the Dungeness dunes make up a National Nature Reserve and there is an RSPB bird reserve centred around flooded gravel pits in the middle of the spit. The shingle supports a surprising variety of plant life, with good growths of Burnet Rose, bearing scented flowers of the palest lemon in May and June. This beautiful shingle hugging shrub has a lethal array of thorns but when the petals drop, they reveal a crimson ovary arrayed with the soft gold of the withered stigma and stamens on a 'starfish' of sepals.

Burnet Rose flower, Dungeness

Vegetation tends to grow in isolated islands surrounded by expanses of bare shingle. These island pockets become richer in nutrients as plants die off and produce water retentive humous, encouraging a wider variety of species colonisation. Gorse and red valerian are quite common and look very attractive against the shingle in June. Shingle gardens have become quite fashionable in recent times and find their inspiration in landscapes like Dungeness.

Red Valerian and shingle.

One of the first forms of plant life to colonise the shingle as with many other inhospitable environments are lichens and many quite large areas of shingle are cloaked with soft grey Cladonia species of lichen, possibly C. portentosa. Amongst these grow rue whose rust red flower spikes make a pleasing contrast amonst the grey. These two plants probably form the basis of the more species rich islands of vegetation.

Rue and Cladonia lichens

The tiny Zebra Jumping Spider on the shingle

The Lighthouses.

Old lighthouse, round house and coast guard cottages.

The new lighthouse is apparently the latest in a succession of six, built to replace earlier lights left landlocked by the growing shingle spit.

Next to the old lighthouse, which is built in traditional style and is open to the public, is the round house, which is the base structure of an earlier light.

Tough shingle coloniser; the Sea Kale.

Sea Kale seedling sprouting through fisherman's plastic matting.

The shingle banks closest to the sea are a hostile environment for most plants and few are able to survive here. One that flourishes however is Sea Kale, a relative of the cabbage and a huge plant over a metre across when fully grown, with wavy edged blue-green leaves, sending up large flower spikes crowned with masses of white flowers.

Sea Kale and the man made artifacts of Dungeness point

A few hundred years ago, the whole of Dungeness point was under the sea and although it has an air of permanance now, it is constantly being reshaped by coastal drift. Because of this, there is a continuous stream of heavy lorries collecting shingle from the east coast of the spit and recycling it on the west coast to help maintain the structure. Worthwhile when there are a total of four nuclear reactors to safeguard and with global warming a reality and a rise in sea levels on the cards, those lorries are going to be kept pretty busy.

At Dungeness you can't help thinking that in a few more hundred years this will all be under the sea again and all its history and industry will disappear along with its wildlife. Let's hope that those reactors are cleaned up in time.