Assignment Three. Spaces to places. (Abandoned).

Assignment Three. Spaces to places.(Abandoned)

My first thought for this assignment was to trace the route and remains of the defunct East Kent Light Railway that served the mines and mining communities of the area for about eighty years.  

I traced the route of the various branches using maps of the period, Google Earth, and books written about the mines and railways.  This seemed to be a subject that would lead to some interesting photographs.  Starting at Shepherds Well, where there is two miles of preserved track, I set off the find the track.  In stead of spaces to places it became an exercise in recording places to spaces as almost every trace of a railway has been expunged.

The halts and bridges have been removed, the track bed has been either ploughed out or built on.  The only remains are a number of embankments plus hedge and tree line.  

In other places closed lines became footpaths or cycle tracks with plenty of reference made to its former use. The Havant to Hayling Island line in Hampshire or the Cuckoo Line near Eastbourne are two fine examples of this.  Every attempt seems to have been made to erase the EKLR from the memory.  Even the Miners Walk that winds round East Kent through the various colliery sites avoids the old track route.

The exercise was interesting but ultimately fruitless.  Below are a few of the pictures that I took.

I have a fall back that I will be exploring over the next week or so.

Exercise 3.6: The Memory of Photography.

The Memory of Photography.

• What changes have taken place in the nature of a photograph, and its use as a memory now that the end product is a file within an archive rather than a viewable print?  

• As human remembrance of events can be fragile, a note taken at the time can act as a catalyst to aid the retention of that memory of the.  Such aids are based on our based on two of senses; sight and sound.  First came writing then came the photograph.

• The use of such memory aids meant that it was no longer necessary to carry as many memories in ones head.  A reference to a sight or sound could act as a trigger to bring about a remembrance.

• The method of recording images can effect their impact on future viewers.  Memories can by manipulated by creating a public memory of an event that may differ from individuals recollections of the same event.  The archive of the French Revolution edited out the unsavoury business of the “Terror.”  The victor writes the history.

• Many methods are employed to keeps public events in the memory, statues, coins and medals, street names, and plaques.  More personal and democratic is the family album with its record of family history.  Turned to again and again to bring back thoughts and memories of personal events.  These represent a bottom-up history rather than the official top-down history of coins and street names.

• Many other specialised archives exist and are made and kept by the likes of the state and its many branches, the media, the arts, and a myriad of independent social groups.  Each of these my record events differently and show differing truths that over time will vie for ultimate veracity.

• The photographs gift is its ability to record the fact of an objects presence, even after its passing.  It is a history of both what is and what has been.  Fox Talbot’s image of the building of Trafalgar Square is both proof of its construction and the lateness of the event  after Nelson’s death.  

• There has long been an argument that popular memory is manipulated by modern culture by its ability to impose a false memory.  Thus people are fooled to believe in a past that did not exist.  This is still possible in the digital age.  The current argument is that the presence of these digital images suppresses human memory.  

• Can we now trust our own memories?  Are we remembering events that we did not witness?  In stead of using images to aid our memories are we now using these images as our memories?  

The piece by Freud nicely explains one of the unpleasant side effects of Alzheimer’s Syndrome where a sufferer may forget an argument but retain the bad feeling that it brought on.  

As explained in the article the two features of the event are recorded separately in the brain, one a conscious memory and the other a feeling about that memory.  Let’s say the event was a row with a relative.  The event itself is recorded as both a memory of the event and the feelings about the event.  As time passes, maybe only a few minutes, the memory of the event fades leaving no trace, but the feeling about what had occurred lives on leaving a disconnected bad feeling towards the relative.  These can now not be resolved as the original reason for the bad feeling has gone.  

The normal brain retains both the real memory and the feelings raised by it and can use them them in conjunction.

Exercise 3.5: Local history.

Exercise 3.5: Local History.

Coal mining in Kent. 1896-1989.

According to Bygone Kent mining was born in 1896 by a local entrepreneur named Arthur Burr who set up the Kent Coal Syndicate.  There was already a belief that the geology in the area of East Kent was a good area to look for deep coal deposits.  The many test bores proved that there was indeed coal in mineable quantities deep down and in places running out under the sea.  

There were many false starts and abandoned pits before the coal was extracted in commercial quantities.  The first mine was on the Shakespeare Colliery on beach at Shakespeare Cliff near Dover, an area that later became the spot where the Chunnel spoil was deposited and is now the wildlife park Samphire Hoe. The mine suffered badly with flooding and was closed in 1921.  It produced only 1000 tons of coal and never made a profit.

During the 1920s the four main collieries at Betteshanger, Snowdown, Tilmanstone, and Chislet opened and for many years supplied usable quantities of coal, much of it going to the newly opened Richborough Power Station that was commissioned to use this ready supply.  

As a by-product of this activity and the need to transport the coal to Dover Docks,  Richborough Power Station and a coal fired brick works at Hammill the East Kent Light Railway was built.  It ran a limited passenger service, mainly for the miners, as well as its main task of transporting coal.

One of the areas main problems was industrial relations which, while never good, came to a head in the 1980s when the miner’s leader, Arthur Scargill, picked an  unwinnable  battle with the then Conservative Government. A Sun cartoon of the time  summed up the lack of popular support for the miners and their backers.

  

By 1989 all the pits had closed, the railway had gone, and although the power station and the brickworks limped on for a few more years these too were eventually forced to shut down.  

Visit the area now and there is a distinct lack of evidence of mining and its politicised past.  In its community archive in Dover The Coalfield Heritage Initiative Kent “Made a conscious decision at the outset not to concentrate on the industrial disputes - feeling that this area had already been to some degree over emphasised.” (CHIK, 2006)

The mining and power industries are not yet done with East Kent as the site of the Richborough Power Station is to used as the UK end of a continental electricity cable and a large solar energy plant.  The whole of the area is also marked up as an area suitable for gas abstraction.  

Kent my be The Garden of England but it is also at the heart of the UK's energy future.

The archives for this project were all found on-line.  

Bettshanger Pit: Sixty Years of Struggle.

Life at the Coalface. Jean Hollingsworth.

Kent's Mining Heritage.  Kent County Society.  The Association of the Men of Kent and Kentish Men.

Wikipedia.  Kent Coalfield.