Suffolk is currently
marketing itself as ‘The
Curious County’ – quite right too, for the place is full of the most
mysterious corners. Orford is one of these: a delightful coastal village where
nothing is quite as it seems.
This year sees the twentieth anniversary of the National
Trust taking on responsibility for Orford Ness (in 1993),
and the centenary of its being taken over by the War Office (in 1913). The
6-mile shingle spit – known as an island to locals, and not without some
measure of accuracy – runs from just below Aldeburgh in the north to a position
level with the hamlet of Shingle
Street in the south (itself the location of various reported wartime
mysteries).
The Ness
is a geological marvel that rivals
anything elsewhere in the UK.
It is separated from the mainland by the river Alde, and is a unique example of the
effects of longshore or littoral drift. The distinctive ridge-and-furrow patterning on the spit is one of the
consequences of this natural phenomenon, formed by the interaction between
tidal patterns and the fine-grained shingle.
...which means the lighthouse's days are now numbered |
An ever-changing coastline at Orford Ness... |
But while its natural history alone makes Orford Ness a site
of immense fascination, its military uses from 1913 onwards have added more
recent layers of intrigue. In World War
One Orford Ness was used as an airbase by the
Royal Flying Corps. In the 1920s and 30s it was deployed for experiments in
radio communications and the development of radar. After the Second World War,
it was used as an atomic weapons testing facility, specifically to test the
performance of different elements of weapons systems in a variety of environmental
conditions. It also continued to be used for radio communications, through the
installation of Cobra Mist.
There is so much to uncover about Orford Ness that a single
visit is not enough. Give yourself a day, and book yourself onto a tour
by one of the National Trust rangers there. The stories you will hear will be
scarcely believable, and you may find yourself, like me, acquiring a copy of
Paddy Heazell’s Most
Secret: The Hidden History of Orford Ness to find out more.
I made another discovery on a recent visit to Orford. Out of
curiosity I popped into the parish church, and found a nice little exhibition
about the premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde there in
1958. Noye’s Fludde is a musical setting of a medieval mystery play based on
the story of Noah’s ark. Britten wrote the piece specifically for young voices
and for performance in a community setting like a church. He filled the score
with strange percussion effects (to bring to life the sounds of shipbuilding,
and the flood) and the performance involved children dressed as animals and the
construction of the ark itself.
The premiere was a ‘curiously moving spiritual and musical
experience’ wrote the Sunday Times’ reviewer
in 1958, disturbing the ‘sleepy village
of Orford near the Suffolk coast’. It’s a nice juxtaposition, in
Britten’s centenary year,
therefore to contrast his experimentation with medieval mystery plays in the
Church with the secret atomic experiments taking place just a short distance
(and ferry ride) away. A case of littoral drift meets literary drift? (If you catch my drift.)
A fascinating post about a fascinating place. Another local literary drifter was the great German (but British-resident) writer W G Sebald, who traversed this part of the world in his resonant book The Rings of Saturn.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Ah yes, W G Sebald - a great writer. 'Literary drifter' is just the right phrase for him. I must dig out my copy of 'Rings of Saturn' for a re-read
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