Orford’s mysteries: littoral drift meets literary drift

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.

 

Pagoda at Orford Ness

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).

 

Orford Ness: both a natural and military landscape

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.

 

Bringing the property to life, MOD-style

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.

 

Orford Ness: access now permitted thanks to National Trust

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.

 

Benjamin Britten, autograph-signing for panda, fox and bear (Orford, 1958)

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.)