Exercise 2.6: Edgelands.

Edgelands.

Comments on the essays Wire and Power from Edgelands, Journeys into England's True Wilderness.

Thoughts on Wire.

• Close to where I live in Deal is the Cinque Ports Golf Club.  It is a typical links course with the sea running down one side and open country on the other.  On the sea side runs the Saxon Shore Way footpath and on the other a public road which, this being a very rural area, is used almost exclusively by drivers and cyclists.  For part of its road side boundary the course is delineated by a water filled ditch  and a newly erected fence.  On the footpath side there is no barrier or fence of any kind and walkers are, should they wish, free to walk onto the greens and fairways.  The thought seems to be cars ‘bad’ and must be fenced off, even it there is no chance that they will or would ever trespass on the course, but at the same time walkers ‘good’ and can be trusted not to trespass.  

• Some fences are known to those to whom they are important: a post code to an inner city gang, a stretch of street for a prostitute or working patch for a beggar.  To the outside they are totally invisible but to insiders to trespass can bring on pain or death.

• I thought the radar domes at Fylingdales were the USSR’s primary target but lets not spoil a good story.  The presence of Greenham Common, and many other bases, broke the USSR, and that means I am not speaking Russian and am free to read and think pretty much what I wish.  Despite the distraction of the peace camps and their attacks on the fence this base, and others, stayed long enough to see the threat from the USSR collapse.  The demolition of many walls and the tearing up of miles of razor wire in Easter Europe was as a result of these fences remaining firm and the people behind them doing their work.

• It is not only disused military areas that contain a wide variety of wild life.   The  mlitary training areas at Bagshot Common and Salisbury Plain are a haven to many species that are left undisturbed and happily live with the army.  The fact that the public is excluded is a godsend. 

• In Cologne the chain link fence across the rail/pedestrian bridge over the Rhine is adorned with so many love tokens in the shape of engraved padlocks that the structure of the fence is hardly visible.  Even fences with the most mundane uses can have a fun and romantic use.

Thoughts on Power.

• I was working in Croydon in the 1980s and 90s and watched the closing, and final demolition, of Croydon B Power Station.  The removal of the furnaces, boilers and turbines left a debris filled space that became variously a film set, a place to burn out stolen cars and a vast perilous playground.  The dropping of the cooling towers was left till last and I was on hand to record it.  After the charges went off there was a pause before they started to fold in on themselves, toppling like giant beasts.  There was no cheering or shouting as the towers came down, just a feeling of loss.  There had been moves to try and preserve them but once not in use they started to deteriorate and would eventually have become dangerous and fallen on their own.  The two chimneys stand to this day and mark the site of IKEA.   

• I moved to Deal just over two years ago, just in time to see the chimney and cooling towers of the Richborough Power Station dropped.  Again there was a movement to save them.  It failed and the sound of the explosion that destroyed them could be heard over 10 miles away.  Although most people realised that this had to happen there was still a feeling of loss.  Strange how something as utilitarian as a cooling tower can bring on such feelings.

• I recently visited the Kempton Steam Museum west of London.   Up until 1980 the pumping of London’s water was entrusted to two triple expansion Worthington and Simpson steam engines that had been installed in 1928 and had run continuously throughout that time.  You could put your ear to any mains pressure water pipe in London and hear the beat of these mighty 62 ft tall engines.   After their decommission a preservation group was formed with the intention of having at least one of these engines running again.  In 2002 the first one was up and running, albeit not under load.  The main control valve for all this might and power is a hand wheel no bigger than  a saucer.  The gauges, valves and general appearance would not look wrong as a set for a remake of Brave New World.  As with the power workers in the Power essay the operators of these engines were alert to changes in pressure that would signal a burst main or sudden increase in demand.   

• How strange it is that men object to the new and unknown: railways, power stations, road, wind farms and airports but at the same time attempt to preserve the old and now cherished: steam locos and once closed lines, stationary engines and chimneys, ancient highways, windmills and vintage aircraft along with the WII airfields from which they fly.

• So where are the Edgelands?  There are certainly not where I once remember them.  They move with the ideas of acceptance and use, from new and unloved to old and cherished.