4. Seaton Jurassic Interpretation Plan – Part 1 (Narrative)

Interpretation Design: Helen Shackleton

Report Author: Stephen Hussey, Devon Wildlife Enterprises

Version: February 2014 1

Seaton Jurassic Interpretation Plan – Part 1 (Narrative)

CONTENTS

1. Introduction 1

2. Overview 1

3. Audience Experience 2

4. Guiding Interpretive Principles 3

5. Stories and Themes 5

6. Interpretation Summary 10

7. A Walk Through Seaton Jurassic 13

Appendices

1. Seaton’s Key Species 41

2. The Four Seaton Jurassic Hotspots 44

HG-12-09939 Seaton Jurassic

INTERPRETATION PLAN – Part 1 (Narrative)

1. INTRODUCTION

The Seaton Jurassic Interpretation Plan has two parts:

• A Narrative: explaining key interpretation concepts and approaches, and describing project interpretation via a detailed narrative walk through of the Centre.

• A Visual Document: supporting the narrative with designs and illustrations.

Both documents should be read alongside one another and each section of this narrative plan includes a clear reference to the relevant part of the visual plan.

2. OVERVIEW

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2.1 Seaton Jurassic takes the unique natural heritage of Seaton and reveals it through compelling narratives that are told through a range of exhibits and approaches that use high levels of immersion and interactivity to promote surprise, wonder and curiosity and that will engage a wide range of audiences.

2.2 The offer includes directed and self-directed activities of varying depth and focus as well as learning approaches and styles to suit a broad range of interests and abilities. Interpretation includes:

• Stories – strong narratives linked to the natural heritage and local history of Seaton and the Jurassic Coast. Key themes include:

o Geology and geological time

o Marine wildlife and habitats

o Terrestrial wildlife and habitats

o Human interactions with and impacts on the natural world

o Social and scientific history

o Change over time – a world shaped by past cataclysms and continuous processes

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• Exhibits – that are surprising, tactile, immersive and interactive

• Hot spots and other links to encourage exploration of the wider area and to allow visitors to experience heritage within its natural context

• Guides/experts – to enhance depth and range of interpretation and bring it to life, and to bring specialist knowledge and credibility to learning activities

• Formal and informal learning activities and events – providing depth of knowledge and understanding that caters to a range of interests and skills, and which utilises the unique qualities of the Centre

• Links with wider community events and projects – to make best use of partner assets and skills, enhancing the variety and flexibility of the project offer and broadening market reach.

2.3 Project interpretation will encourage curiosity, exploration, direct and indirect experience of Seaton’s unique natural assets and will improve and broaden physical, emotional and intellectual access to the natural world.

3. AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE

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3.1 A key aim of Seaton Jurassic it to engage a wide range of visitors with Seaton’s natural heritage so that they experience: • Curiosity/questioning • Excitement • Wonder/awe • Surprise

Leading to

• Valuing and appreciation of the natural heritage/environment

Leading to

• Desire to change

2 HG-12-09939 Practical Curiosity, actions and Engage with excitment, Value natural decision natural wonder, heritage making hertitage suprise about environment

3.1 Audience and market research tells us 1 that to achieve this, we need to offer the following type of experience:

• Immersion – getting inside the Jurassic story, entering another world • Exploration and discovery – going on a journey through time and space • Interactivity – choosing your own path and making choices along the way • Layers – experiencing the Centre’s stories at a depth that suits and is appropriate to the individual • Inside and outside experiences – heritage translated and revealed, and also experienced within context

3.2 This plan focusses on the physical elements of project interpretation – the exhibits and the hotspots. Details of the project’s learning and other activities can be found in the Seaton Jurassic Learning Plan .

4. GUIDING INTERPRETIVE PRINCIPLES

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Immersion: Engagement, wonder and awe

The Jurassic Coast is an extraordinarily important and wonderful place to understand the story of our planet, the relationship of the geology and the ecology in the area and people’s place in it.

1 For full details of project audiences, what drives them and how we know this, please see the Seaton Jurassic Audience and Market Research paper and Marketing Strategy . Interpretation themes and approaches have also been shaped by input from expert advisors, but marketing and interpretation strategies linked to the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. See the project Activity Plan and Evidence Log for full details. 3 HG-12-09939

The design and execution of the Centre will inspire visitors and take them on a journey in which they are decision makers and explorers. Visitors will become time travellers, moving through geological space and time, making decisions that will guide their journeys and decide their fates.

Authenticity: A story with depth and breadth

Within Seaton the whole story of life on earth is exposed and accessible due to natural features and processes. People have interacted with and adapted to their natural environment over millennia – shaping the local economy, culture and custom. In turn local economy, culture and custom have shaped Seaton’s natural environment.

The interpretation journey is transportative; it can take you forwards or backwards in time and transform an individual’s scale in relationship to their environment. The Centre’s narratives are rooted within the local landscape and heritage and structured by scientific discovery. Each narrative allows for varying levels of immersion and engagement.

Participation: Curiosity, interaction and exploration

Seaton is a gateway to the Jurassic Coast and allows close physical access to the geological past and to unique marine and terrestrial environments and their wildlife. It comprises stunning landscapes that encourage physical exploration and is a place where active processes continue to shape its composition.

Project interpretation stimulates active learning. It is highly interactive; exhibits involve the visitor and demand their engagement. The Centre provides people with the tools, confidence and curiosity to explore the wider landscape and discover Seaton’s natural assets at first hand. Formal and informal learning activities employ a variety of learning styles to provoke deeper understanding and a desire to understand and protect one’s own heritage.

Entertainment: Surprise, excitement and variety

Seaside towns like Seaton evolved as centers of entertainment. This traditional entertainment purpose has been challenged as visitor interests have changed over the last 60 years. Seaton’s natural assets remain its key draw for visitors, but much of its appeal remains hidden, poorly explained and understood.

The aim of project interpretation is to re-imagine Seaton’s natural environment, making the most of its obvious attractions whilst revealing elements of its natural heritage that have been, up to now, hidden, obscure or inaccessible. The central story of Seaton’s Jurassic heritage will be told through concepts of time travel, shape and scale shifting, exhibits that surprise and stimulate and that take you where you cannot normally go. In this way, Seaton’s vast and awe inspiring heritage will be easy to conceptualise and to explore in ways which offer fun and variety.

4 HG-12-09939 5 STORIES AND THEMES

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5.1 The ‘organiser’ – The Central Story

• The Greatest Story on Earth The story of Seaton’s natural heritage is the story of life; vast in terms of time, scope and scale. It has been governed by processes that are incremental and continual. The central story of Seaton Jurassic interpretation is rooted in its unique location and is about change and evolution - about how the natural world is shaped by natural processes, including human impacts on the environment.

This place is formed and ruled by the interconnected play of time, rock and water... all life we see, is governed by this interplay, including ourselves.

This central story – Time and Tide - informs all elements of project interpretation. It’s a dramatic story of change and survival, of how our world was created and shaped - one could argue that it is the greatest story on earth.

• A Unique Place The central story reflects the unique nature of Seaton and its natural assets – its coastal and marine heritage and the town’s position as a gateway to the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.

Seaton is the only place in the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site where visitors can easily see rocks from three geological eras - the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous spanning 185 million years of the earth's history, from 250 million years ago to 65 million years ago. World Heritage status was achieved because of the site's unique insight into the Earth Sciences, as it clearly depicts a 'geological walk through time’ spanning the Mesozoic Era. This is because the rocks exposed in the cliffs along the coast dip gently from the west to the east, so broadly speaking the oldest rocks are in the west and the youngest are in the east.

Seaton nestles between one end of the famous Axmouth to Lyme Regis Undercliff National Nature Reserve – Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Special Area of Conservation (SAC), arguably the finest 'wilderness' area in Great Britain and one of the largest active coastal landslide systems in Western Europe – and the majestic white cliffs of Beer (SSSI and also part of the Sidmouth to West Bay SAC). It is surrounded by the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

To the north the extensive Axe Estuary Wetlands expand out from the edge of Seaton to create one huge wetland nature reserve stretching 1.5 miles to Colyford. The Axe Estuary was also recently nominated as a proposed Marine Protected Area because of the importance of its saltmarsh and mudflats. The River Axe is also an SSSI and SAC. 5 HG-12-09939 At Seaton Hole a major fault line shows where the dramatic red Triassic mudstones meet the much paler Upper Greensand and Chalk cliffs of the Cretaceous era. At low tide the crystal clear rock pools and reefs at Seaton Hole provide tantalising clues to the mysteries of the deeper waters off shore, revealing organisms that have not changed for millennia.

Further offshore are the internationally important marine habitats of Lyme Bay, another candidate SAC and home to a wealth of marine life, notably fantastic cold-water corals such as the pink sea fan.

• Broad Appeal As well as being a compelling story that reflects the unique nature of Seaton and its environment, as the ‘organiser’ for the Centre’s interpretation, Time and Tide is flexible - able to embrace a range of themes and concepts and capable of appealing to a broad range of interests and audiences. History, natural history, science, nature and conservation – there is something for everyone.

• Our Legacy Time and Tide is a story of dramatic natural processes that reveals the majesty of our often hidden and undervalued marine and natural heritage. It allows us to explore the fragility of our environment in the face of human impacts, such as climate change. It enables us to explore our own place in this continually unfolding narrative.

5.2 Themes

5.2.1 The approach to Seaton Jurassic interpretation uses a three Theme framework. Each Theme is then layered into three Sub-Themes and then further developed as Topics. The three Themes for the interpretation are:

• Journeys through time : looking at things through the deep time lens; the big movements of continents and of life through geological time... we are time travellers looking at the growth of the Tree of Life!

• Survivors : looking at things through the naturalist’s eye and unravelling the myriad connections in the Web of Life; the wonders of the natural world are revealed right here, right now!

• Ancestors to inheritors : all our stories are here too – we are not divorced from nature, but very much part of it – we impact upon it in lots of ways and we can shape the future!

6 HG-12-09939 5.2.2 Theme 1 - Journeys through time

The storyline...

Divided into three sub-themes; the first two look at the sweep of geological time from the point of view of the movements of the Earth’s crust (Shifting Worlds) and the response of living things to this movement and the vast amounts of time through which evolution works through natural selection (Shifting Life); the third theme highlights the great accidental events that have caused great extinctions and, subsequently, changes in the direction of the evolutionary ‘tree of life’ (Punctuation Marks).

The link between life’s abundance and the very rock we stand upon is part of this narrative – a walk along large parts of the Jurassic Coast being a walk on the crushed remains of life from eons past laid down in both deep and shallow seas (the shells and bodies of countless trillions of microscopic and higher life forms that formed the limestones and chalk).

These are vast happenings – but can be understood through quite simple stories and pictures.

Another important part of the narrative in this theme is that the story is still being told... indeed it is a story without end. We now hear almost instantly of the tensions between the great plates of the Earth in the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis that sometimes follow. The Earth, simply, does move. The Great Landslip of 1839 on the Undercliff is mirrored in the most recent collapse of the Old Beer Road near Seaton Hole. This links to the constant movement of coasts explored in Theme 3.

The worrying story of the 6 th Great Extinction event in the 3 billion year history of life on Earth needs to be told... it’s a challenging story to tell, but is the backdrop to the positive news that we can rise to this challenge.

7 HG-12-09939 Other interesting subsidiary stories to be explored in this Theme: • The fossils of tomorrow – what’s stuck in the mud now? What messages do we leave for future palaeontologists? • Stone the town: the geology and natural history over the eons played out in the buildings we see around us – what clues to this long past can we see through the town? (geology trail and quiz potential) • Seaton is the only place on the World Heritage S where you can walk all three eras of the Mesozoic; the nature of unconformity – why isn’t geology simple?

5.2.3 Theme 2 - Survival

This Theme explores the fascinating and complex web of relationships in nature – again, through three sub-themes.

The storyline...

The first sub-theme – the Variety of Life – links directly to the Shifting Life sub-theme of Theme 1 and continues the narrative; despite the great changes in environment, nature and evolution have come up with distinct and spectacularly successful (in survival terms) body patterns and ways of life. In this sub-theme we will explore how the major groups of animals and plants have evolved and survived – it is amazing to think that someone, if they had the time-travelling means, would find remarkably similar species inhabiting the rock pools and wetlands of the deep past as of today – well invertebrates, at the least! But we’ve also lost major groups – so where did the trilobites and ammonites go? And who are the star survivors and their supporting cast?

The second sub-theme – the Variety of Habitat – will explore the varying and special conditions for life in the range of natural habitats found in and around Seaton. The dynamic nature of these habitats will also be explored – from the changing seasons, the movement of the tides and the

8 HG-12-09939 longer term changes brought about through the process of ecological succession. All these changes are pressures that drive and determine the variety of life forms able to survive in these unique places. How would we do, confronted by these pressures?

Seaton is a wonderful place – rich in habitat and rich in the species that live in each. There’s so much to explore of our natural heritage in such a small area – if you have eyes and ears attuned, we can learn all the secrets of life on Earth right here, right now. In the third sub-theme we will provide the tools to help you do just that.

Other interesting subsidiary stories to be explored in this Theme: • Cycles and flows.... the great cycles of life and time: energy and matter – life and death... the flow of the tide, river and life. We are a speck.... • Rock pools through time – what’s actually changed here? • I wonder what’s it like to be a ....?

5.2.4 Theme 3 – Ancestors to Inheritors

The storyline…

This Theme brings us to the here and now, through historical rather than geological time; it examines our past, present and future use of this part of England through three set of eyes – the mariner, the scientist and the land manager.

The sub-theme Living on the edge explores the rich heritage of this coastal town from Roman times through to the present day - To the Ends of the Earth: The Port on the Fosse through the history of the saltings and gradual silting of the harbour mouth and the changes this wrought

9 HG-12-09939 within the town. The way in which the marine resources of Lyme Bay have been exploited, the problems this causes to the natural heritage of the region and the need for environmental/social/economic sustainable solutions to be found – this is a challenging issue in natural heritage engagement.

The second sub-theme looks at how the unique geology of the Seaton area helped in the unravelling of the mysteries of geology. Whilst Mary Anning’s discoveries and the geologists (attracted by the rich fossil heritage of Lyme and Charmouth) helped people understand the march of life through geological time, the likes of William Conybeare and his friend William Buckland theorised on the nature of the Earth’s movements. Understanding the geomorphological processes associated with sea levels links directly to our understandings of coastal erosion. Here we will look to the likely consequences of climate change on this local coastline – and for the whole Jurassic Coast. The ongoing discussion of how coastal communities react and adapt will be had here. Do we allow natural processes to run their course? Do we protect or abandon homes and farmland?

Lastly, the third sub-theme looks inland to the traditional ways in which land has been managed and farmed in this part of Devon, linking directly to the conservation efforts of current landowners – the East Devon District Council’s Countryside Service, National Trust and others. The nature of designations and their effectiveness - World Heritage Site status and other designations (SSSI, NNR, AONB, SAC) – what do they all mean? We tell the story of the restoration and expansion/management of the Axe Valley Wetlands.

Other interesting subsidiary stories to be explored in this Theme: • The Stop Line/Wessex cycleway: defence line to bike-line • The Seaton Tramway: what a way to see the world of the Axe • The Seaton Future Town challenge: can this town become the greenest ever? • The Axmouth ship: the recent archaeological investigations of a middle ages wreck in the harbor

6. INTERPRETATION SUMMARY

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6.1 When the visitor enters the Seaton Jurassic Centre, they are taken on a journey through time and place. Here they are encouraged to change their perspective and are able to enjoy places and experiences that are not normally accessible. Key interpretive themes and narratives are delivered in two interlinked Exhibition Halls, a covered outdoor space with infinity pool and water wall, and four hotspots situated at unique landscape features in the wider area. Interpretation narratives are told through a range of exhibits and displays that are highly tactile, interactive, that tell stories with varying depth and complexity and which are designed to create the sense of entering another world.

10 HG-12-09939 6.2 Exhibition Hall 1: Journey to the Jurassic - Conybeare’s Study and Time Machine

In Conybeare’s Study you will experience first-hand where the foundations of geological thought were laid, sharing in the process of discovery and gaining knowledge that will help you to understand and appreciate the processes that have shaped life on earth. Dressed in meticulous detail as a Victorian study, with expert guides on hand, it is a place of learning and a place of experiment and discovery. Exhibits are tactile, authentic and interactive, helping visitors to understand the full scale of geological time, the cataclysmic events that have shaped the world and the impact these events have had on life on earth.

Visitors are then invited to experience these events first-hand through time travel back to the Mesozoic Era, to the time where the geological history of the Jurassic Coast was laid. The journey to take them back in time will be on board an airship time machine – blending Victorian aesthetics with scientific hardware - complete with multi-sensory effects. Visitors will operate the airship, pulling levers and pushing buttons to control its course, changing its speed and altitude, as images of the changing Mesozoic worlds fly past the ship’s portholes.

Before visitors can board the ship, they need to prepare for their journey using the lessons in survival they have taken from Conybeare’s Study. Visitors can choose from a range of props and tools that allow them to mimic evolutionary features or adaptions that have allowed our own and other species to survive. For example, snorkel, diving helmet or waders to survive the rising sea levels of the Cretaceous period or thermal blankets for the Ice Age.

In this space, the visitor has been encouraged to take on the mind-set of an explorer and a scientist and is transformed into a time traveller. When visitors disembark, they now undertake the next transformation in their journey, not in time, but in size, scale and environment.

6.3 Exhibition Hall 2: Journey into a Rock Pool World

In this next space and next transformation, the visitor enters an underwater rock pool world that has increased in scale so that they are now a small creature in a large and potentially hostile environment. This will be a realistic Seaton rock pool re-created using scenery, sculpture, 3-D models, floor and ceiling film projections, ambient lighting and live sound recordings.

The space is subdivided into a series of crevices, caves and hideaways, each providing a discrete area which visitors can explore. Each one of these areas has a different purpose. The ‘time and tide’ area uses clocks and water filled tubes to illustrate the principal survival challenge for rock pool creatures – the movement of the tides. A rock pool amphitheatre space provides room for visitors and school groups to rest, reflect and enjoy talks or demonstrations. In the rock pool changing area, visitors are asked to dress up and adapt to the ever-changing rock pool environment.

A series of lift-the-flap exhibits in the walls of the rock pool form a ‘guess who’ gallery of rock pool survivors, each with their own unique adaptation. Distributed throughout this exhibition hall

11 HG-12-09939 will be a series of set-piece interactive and tactile displays that illustrate the features needed to survive in a rock pool environment.

In the Centre of the rock pool, visitors will find a diving bell they can enter, with a working periscope showing a view out of the rock pool to the Seaton Jurassic hotspots.

6.4 External Spaces: Into the Outside

The visitor emerges from the rock pool into the open air with a view across water – an infinity pool which forms the roof and one wall of a covered outdoor space. They descend under the water to the covered outdoor space, which is dressed to look like the sea bed of nearby Lyme Bay. Against a shimmering back drop of moving water, this space will contain minimal exhibits so that its use can be flexible and adapted to different events, activities and audiences.

Surrounding this space will be a wildlife garden complete with bird boxes, bee nests and insect homes, ponds, bog gardens – a range of habitats and features to help today’s natural survivors. Visitors will return through these gardens to the Centre’s café and retail area, picking up lessons on providing for wildlife in their own gardens on the way.

6.5 Exploring Seaton Jurassic’s Hotspots

Seaton Jurassic’s hotspots will be crucial extensions to the offer of the Centre. The hotspots will be situated at key and prominent points around the town – at the Axe Valley Wetlands, on the seafront, at Seaton Hole and overlooking its harbour and Undercliff.

Each hotspot provides a place people will naturally gravitate to. All provide stunning views and have flat, easy access. The hotspots have also been chosen because they represent wonderful illustrations of the themes of Seaton Jurassic’s story. At each visitors will discover places where they can experience living examples of the stories of ‘Journeys Through Time’, ‘Ancestors and Inheritors’ and ‘Survivors’.

For some visitors a hotspot will be their first contact point with Seaton Jurassic. The hotspots will tell the beginnings of its story, a first taste of the greatest story on Earth. For others the hotspots will provide the next step in understanding this story; a natural extension to their visit begun at the Seaton Jurassic Centre.

For all visitors the hotspots will provide the motivation to seek out more and begin a journey of discovery using Seaton as their ‘learning tool-kit’. Each hotspot will signpost visitors to the others, forming a hotspot trail. Each too will signpost visitors to the Seaton Jurassic Centre.

Finally, the hotspots will be venue spaces. Each will be a meeting point for a regular programme of Seaton Jurassic walks, talks, events and activities. For example, the Seaton Hole hotspot will be the starting point for a Jurassic rock pool ramble; for a ‘Meet the birds’ walk at Axminster Marshes; for children’s art and craft activity at the seafront; and a ‘Journey to the geology of the

12 HG-12-09939 Jurassic’ talk at the Undercliffs. Hotspots will be key in providing the initial and the next steps in people’s interaction with Seaton Jurassic.

7. A WALK THROUGH SEATON JURASSIC

7.1 This section is organised as follows:

a) Anticipation and preparation

b) Arrival & welcome a. Approaching Seaton Jurassic b. A Seaton Jurassic Colour Palette c. The Public Realm d. Entering Seaton Jurassic

c) Exhibition Hall 1 – Journey to the Jurassic a. Enter a Victorian Gentleman’s Study b. Punctuation Points c. Through the Time-Line Corridor d. The Time Machine Workshop e. Enter the Time Machine

d) Exhibition Hall 2 – Journey Inside a Rock Pool World a. Beneath the Surface of a Giant Rock Pool b. Changing and Adapting to Rock Pool Life c. Exploring Time and Tide d. Blending In e. Ancestors to Inheritors Gallery f. Underwater Amphitheatre g. Diving Bell

e) Into the Outside a. Journey Beneath the Sea: the Covered Outdoor Space b. Wildlife Gardens

f) Exploring Seaton’s Natural Hotspots a. Seaton Hole b. Seaton Harbour and Undercliffs

13 HG-12-09939 c. Seaton Seafront d. Axe Valley Wetlands

g) Approaches to Retail and Catering (the shop and café)

h) Take Homes and Continuing Engagement

i) Future Ambition: Developing additional interpretation space around the Seaton Jurassic Centre

7.2 a) ANTICIPATION AND PREPARATION

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The ambition for Seaton Jurassic would be for it to be recognised nationally and internationally as amongst the region’s top visitor destinations. The Centre should become the gateway for visitors wanting an introduction to the Jurassic Coast’s geological, human and natural histories.

7.3 b) ARRIVAL AND WELCOME

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7.3.1 Approaching Seaton Jurassic At the heart of Seaton will be the Seaton Jurassic Visitor Centre. This is a place to which local people and visitors will be drawn. It is here that they will be given the conceptual tools, information and imaginative spark with which they can go further and deeper into their exploration of Seaton, the four Seaton Jurassic hotspots and the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.

Many of the Centre’s visitors will first approach from the north. This is the direction from which walkers and cyclists using the Stop Line Way long distance, multi-user path 2 will arrive. It is also the way that most people arriving in the town using the B3172 (the principle arterial route through Seaton) will first encounter the Centre. Finally, it is the direction from which pedestrians will approach from the large East Devon District Council car park which lies immediately next to the Centre.

2 National Route 33 of the National Cycle Network starts in Bristol and crosses Somerset and Devon to reach the English Channel at Seaton via Clevedon, Weston-super-Mare, Bridgwater and Chard. The path combines off-road sections with quiet lanes. 14 HG-12-09939 From the north the architectural form of the Centre, its use of materials and the movement offered by its infinity pool and wall of water (see section 7.6.1 below) will all draw the attention of arriving visitors, suggesting its importance and offer. The Centre’s position next to a large supermarket and within the commercial district of Seaton means that the addition of prominent and clear signage is also a necessity. Seaton Jurassic must stand out from the crowd.

Clear signage in the approach to Seaton Jurassic will advertise, welcome and orientate . At the beginning of the path which will lead visitors from the car park’s edge to the Centre’s entrance will be strong main title signage. Formed by wooden sleepers and echoing the form of sea groynes will be a greeting: ‘Welcome to Seaton Jurassic’. The size and positioning will provide an obvious draw to new visitors.

Situated next to this will be wooden seating and a map laid flat at waist height. The map will provide orientation, showing the way to the entrance of Seaton Jurassic; showing how the Centre is positioned in relation to the wider townscape; where the four hotspots which go to make up the wider visitor experience are located; and finally, showing where Seaton sits within the context of the wider Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.

Together seating, orientation map and title signage will provide an obvious draw and meeting place for new arrivals. The use of large fonts, strong colour contrast and bold images will ensure wide accessibility and understanding.

Guiding the next steps towards the Centre’s entrance will be the task of waymarking signage, banner flags, a clear pathway and accompanying planted borders. Waymarking signage will play a key role in ensuring that visitors can easily locate its entrance, as well as a series of ancillary facilities including bike-park and public realm event space.

A series of large (750mm x 1500mm) post mounted projecting pvc banners will dress the approach and be visible from the road and across the car park. These banners will use few words beyond the Seaton Jurassic name, concentrating instead on strong images of key species in the telling of the ‘Seaton story’ inside and outside the Centre (see Appendix 1 for details of these key species).

The walkway approaching the Centre will be planted with a Jurassic theme, highlighting the plants types that have endured since the great extinction of 250 million years ago. This theme of survivors will be one which runs through the Centre’s whole interpretation. Three large beds will contain plants species from the three Mesozoic geological periods of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. As members of Seaton’s key species, horsetails and gingko biloba will feature heavily here.

The planted beds will provide a sensory experience for arriving visitors – a tactile and olfactory greeting and introduction to what is to come. Discrete accompanying 2D panel interpretation will also identify the plants and date their ancestry. For example: ‘Tropical forests of gingko once dominated the landscape here more than 200 million years ago. In a time before flowering plants existed, these primitive plants relied on spores rather seeds to reproduce and spread’.

The Centre’s approach path will be criss-crossed with coloured fault-lines with the accompanying text ‘Jurassic 140 to 200 million years ago’ . Visitors’ approaches to the Centre will become a walk through time, stepping through the geological periods and through the plants which characterized them.

15 HG-12-09939 Three curved external glass walls of Seaton Jurassic will provide a backdrop to the planted beds and walkway. These glass walls will carry large graphics (vinyl transfers) displaying montages of the four hotspot locations, past geological landscapes and key species. Each glass wall will focus upon one of the three Mesozoic periods. A walk to the discovery Centre’s entrance will therefore become a walk through time, through the Triassic, the Jurassic and the Cretaceous.

Together, planting, pathway interpretation and wall montages will present visitors with a strikingly dramatic approach to the Centre and an early introduction to the concepts of geological time and the changes to life that it has precipitated.

The final stage of the approach to the Centre will see visitors welcomed by bold signage suspended above the building’s entrance – ‘Welcome to Seaton Jurassic’ .

7.3.2 A Seaton Jurassic Colour Palette Seaton Jurassic will possess its own distinctive colour palette. Broadly based on the colours of its dominant local geological rock types, the palette will be composed of ochre (from the red rocks of Triassic), pale green/blues (from the rocks of the Jurassic) and yellow/whites/creams (from the rocks of the Cretaceous).

This colour palette will provide a constant reference point stretching across the interpretation of Seaton Jurassic. It will form a central part of the visual identity of Seaton Jurassic from the base colours used in its website right through to the backdrop of its café and retail areas.

The use of these colours will offer a subtle but easily understood layer of interpretation. Used on their own they will underpin interpretation which addresses a specific geological place in time. For example, a red background to accompany interpretation which explores the time 200 million years ago when Seaton lay at the arid heart of a huge, hot desert forming part of the massive super-continent called Pangaea.

Elsewhere the colours will be used in layers - red Triassic at the bottom, blue-green Jurassic in the middle and white-cream Cretaceous at the top – depicting the respective age and order in which they were formed. Where the interpretation addresses anomalies to this order – for example, the so-called ‘Great Unconformity’ at Branscombe (just to the west of Seaton) – the colour layers will be re-arranged to provide a simple reading of the complex geological changes which have taken place over the last 250 million years. 3

7.3.3 The Public Realm

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Visitors approaching Seaton Jurassic from the south (this includes those from Seaton Tramway, the town’s centre, and the seafront and Tesco supermarket) will first see the building’s café.

3 * The Great Unconformity: a time gap between rocks of different ages which runs right across the Jurassic World Heritage Site. The rocks were tilted east in the mid-Cretaceous (around 100 million years ago), and then eroded by seas and rivers. There was little erosion in the east of the Site but in the west, all the Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous rocks are missing and the Upper Cretaceous rocks lie directly on the eroded surface of the Triassic. 16 HG-12-09939 Clear signage on the building’s south facing wall will announce ‘Welcome to Seaton Jurassic’ . The building’s southern face will be framed by two large banner flags.

Laid out before the visitor will be the café’s busy outdoor seating area with steps and easy access ramp leading to them and to Seaton Jurassic’s main entrance. At the foot of the ramp and steps will stretch a large, circular, uncovered space (20 metres in diameter).

This will be Seaton Jurassic’s largest public realm space. Open and attractive, it will be hard- standing and bordered by a ribbon of stone seating forming a shallow amphitheatre. The colours and textures used in its surface and seating will be drawn from the Jurassic Seaton colour palette of ochre, creams and greens – the colours of the Jurassic rocks.

The amphitheatre will become an informal meeting and relaxation spot for visitors and local people. Set between the Centre and the nearby Seaton Tramway terminus, it will also provide a shared space linking the two visitor destinations, enhancing the pedestrian approach to both, and used by the visitors of both.

Visible from the town centre and Tesco supermarket approaches, the space will also offer an impressive approach to the Centre. The activities that are staged here and the people who will gather here will present a vibrant introduction to Seaton Jurassic.

This space will offer an unpaid part of the visitor experience, an extension of the Centre’s interpretation themes and spaces which lie behind the walls of the visitor Centre just metres away. Specifically it will be key in providing Seaton Jurassic with:

• Event and performance space – capable of providing a traffic-free area in which a calendar of Seaton Jurassic events will take place. It will become the hub to the established and popular annual Natural Seaton Festival (held each July) and a key meeting space in which the cultural life of Seaton can be expressed. The space will be a performance space, the perfect venue for outdoor theatre in which to stage productions by the local Heritage Players whose community play ‘Winifred’ – the story of a mother and daughter and the great landslip of 1839 – proved such a local success in 2011.

Flags placed around the perimeter of the amphitheatre will add colour and movement. These flags will be put out to signal that an event is taking place.

• Extended interpretation space - at busy times during the year the space would be a place for the Centre’s interpretation, education, staff and volunteers to ‘spill out’ from the Centre bringing its interpretation to the people. This will extend the reach of the Centre’s interpretation, bringing a better understanding of the Jurassic Coast’s natural heritage to wider audiences, ones that may have thought they were simply on a trip to the nearby Tesco!

• Gathering point – the space would be a natural gathering point, a place to begin and to end the Centre’s regular calendar of guided walks and visitor programme.

• A signpost to taking the next step – the space will provide visitors with a place to orientate themselves in the story and the geography of Seaton Jurassic. At the centre’s heart will be a mosaic. Built into the fabric of its ground covering will be a topographical map of Seaton showing the Seaton Jurassic Visitor Centre and its four hotspot locations. The map will illustrate routes to the hotspots (suitable for pedestrians, wheelchair-users and cycles). Each route will be

17 HG-12-09939 accompanied by three measurements, one showing distance, another travel time and the third geological time. The representation will be a playful introduction to the concept of geological time and local landscape features, combined with an invitation to take next steps and explore! So, for example:

→ Axe Undercliff – distance 1km. Travel back 180 years in 15 minutes to the day when the ground gave way

↑ Seaton Hole – distance 2km. Travel back 250 million years in 20 minutes to Devon’s own desert

Positioned at points around the amphitheatre’s perimeter will be dispensers containing leaflets. Providing an introduction to Seaton Jurassic, its visitor offer and its hotspots, these leaflets will ensure that information is available to visitors beyond the normal opening hours of the Centre.

7.3.4 Entering Seaton Jurassic

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Although it will be possible to enter the Centre through its café and retail area, most visitors will use its main entrance, walking into an entry lobby.

The walls of this lobby will be dressed from floor to ceiling in eye-catching and engaging graphic montages. Like those on the building’s exterior glass walls, these montages will focus upon the three Mesozoic periods. From left to right the landscapes, seascapes and species of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods will be laid out before the visitor. Words will be kept to a minimum here – this is not a place of explanation. Instead it is a place which will inspire exploration, a beginning to the visitor’s journey through Seaton Jurassic.

The entry lobby will be a peopled place. Its primary function will be to welcome and guide visitors . These dual responsibilities will be one of the primary tasks undertaken by the Centre’s staff and volunteers.

Staff and volunteers will not welcome visitors from behind a reception desk. Instead they will be active, free to move, to greet and to begin to show visitors the full range of pathways along which their visit can take.

Overseen by the Centre’s manager and expert in all things Seaton Jurassic, staff and volunteers will ensure the entry lobby becomes an information hub. They will be able to offer advice and information on what events/activities the Centre is currently staging, the time of the next guided trip to the Axe Valley Wetlands hotspot, latest wildlife sightings, seasonal menu choices available in the café and so on.

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Staff and volunteers will be the introduction to the Centre’s interpretation offer. They will provide information on times and ticketing, but also an initial taste of the style and content of what is to come. Staff and volunteers here, as elsewhere across the Centre, will become part of the interpretation, introducing its guiding themes (Journeys Through Time, Survivors, Ancestors and Inheritors, etc).

Also located in the Centre’s entry lobby will be Seaton’s Tourist Information Centre (TIC). This will provide a new home for a vital service for the town and its economy. The TIC will offer advice, information and a booking service for a range of local tourist attractions and accommodation providers. The location of this TIC will ensure that Seaton Jurassic becomes a destination for casual visitors and audiences not otherwise engaged with the Centre.

Visitors to Seaton Jurassic’s entry lobby will stand at a decision-making junction. Turning right will lead them into the retail zone, entering the Centre’s café through its shop. Turning left will lead them into Exhibition Hall 1.

The doors to Exhibition Hall 1 mark the entry into the paid zone of Seaton Jurassic. Entry will require them to buy a ticket.

With the purchase of a ticket visitors will be presented with a Seaton Jurassic ‘Access all eras’ passport. Aimed at families, this printed booklet will:

• act as a hand-held map, leading visitors through the Exhibition Halls of Seaton Jurassic, orientating them in relation to its facilities (toilets, café, shop, exits, etc)

• provide a further layer of engagement by asking visitors to seek out and spot a series of key species (see Appendix 1 for species list and description) on their journeys through Seaton Jurassic (including its indoor, outdoor, café and public realm spaces). Visitors have to locate the species and answer a question, solve a problem or complete a challenge contained in the accompanying interpretation. These tasks will be set in a provocative style: ‘Can you survive the Seaton Jurassic challenge?’ . Completion of their task will see visitors gain an ink stamp in their passport allowing them to proceed to the next room/exhibit.

• provide a link to the Seaton Jurassic’s four hotspot locations, providing visitor access information and a brief description of how they each tell part of the Seaton Jurassic story

• provide information on further exploration – web links, signposts to other Jurassic Coast visitor attractions

• provide up to date information on latest offers ( ‘Show your Access all eras passport and get a half-price hot drink at the Seaton Jurassic café’ ) and latest events ( ‘Don’t forget to join us on the Jurassic Rock Pool Ramble – Meet at the Seaton Hole hotspot Saturday mornings at 10am’ )

19 HG-12-09939 7.4 c) EXHIBITION HALL 1: JOURNEY TO THE JURASSIC

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On purchasing a ticket and receiving their passport, visitors will enter the paid zone, going through doors into Exhibition Hall 1. This hall will be sub-divided. The first of these spaces will be dressed to give the sensation of walking into the realm of a nineteenth century ‘below stairs’ servant’s room. A trompe l’oeil mural will situate visitors in a Victorian country house – a vision made instantly recognisable from past visits to National Trust properties and the success of TV costume dramas such as Downton Abbey.

Against this backdrop visitors will be met by a Centre volunteer dressed as and playing the character of a Victorian house servant. It will be the job of this actor to welcome them to the 1840s and to the home of the Reverend William Conybeare, vicar of nearby Axmouth. Conybeare is a renowned geologist who, with others, is trying to understand the physical forces that have shaped the world and its surviving species.

This actor will provide visitors with the ‘mission’ which will frame their whole visit. It will be a simple mission: to travel back through time to witness and begin to understand at first hand the dramatic life and death which has shaped the Seaton of today and tomorrow. For the journey they have to undertake, they need imagination and a sense of exploration to reach the end, but that now it’s time for their journey to begin.

Along one wall of the servant ante-room a row of bells are labelled with the names of the house’s rooms – Dining Room, Master’s Bedroom, etc. The one labelled ‘Master’s Study’ is different. In place of a bell is an ammonite shell, and it is this ammonite shell which is ‘ringing’. Visitors are being called.

Elsewhere in the room a 2-D wall mural of ‘House Rules’ will repeat the address made by Victorian servant as a series of instructions. In the absence of the actor in character these rules will play the same scene setting role.

7.4.1 Enter a Victorian Gentleman’s Study

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Visitors are transported back just 170 years to the Victorian gentleman’s study of the clergyman and eminent geologist, palaeontologist and Jurassic explorer, the Reverend William Daniel Conybeare (1787-1857). This time travel is but a blink of the eye in terms of the geological story of Seaton, yet it will take visitors to a place in which its secrets first began to be uncovered. This time was one of exploration, discovery and explanation, and Conybeare’s study was one of the places where discoveries were made and discussions were had. The message

20 HG-12-09939 to visitors will be that spending time here will help you on your exploration of Seaton Jurassic. Using the stories told here and the resources it holds means you can share in a sense of pioneering discovery and begin piecing together the story of life.

Why Reverend Conybeare? Conybeare’s place in history is much less well-known than his Jurassic Coast contemporaries, notably Mary Anning (1799-1847) and Dr William Smith (1769-1839). Yet it was Conybeare whose career and interest in geology have most relevance to Seaton.

Between 1836-44 Conybeare was vicar of neighbouring Axmouth. By that time he had established a reputation as one of the period’s most eminent geologists and paleontologists. The 1820s had seen him publish ground-breaking scientific papers on Jurassic marine animals including ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.

However, it was on Christmas Eve 1839 that Conybeare’s work and Seaton’s story really came together. The Bindon Landslide of that date was the largest of any recorded along the Jurassic Coast. Its fame spread quickly, aided by the new media of newsprint. It attracted national publicity and thousands of visitors. A piece of music, the Landslide Quadrille, was even written for it.

The Bindon Landslide was not only important for its scale but because it was the first landslide to undergo detailed scientific recording and description. This pioneering work was undertaken by the Reverend Conybeare. Together with William Buckland, professor of Geology at Oxford University, Conybeare set about drawing, detailing and explaining the dramatic change to the coastline. Their work is thought to be the earliest scientific description of a landslide and it is still used by geological researchers today.

Conybeare’s position as an eminent local scientist at a time when debates concerning geology, the fossil record and the biblical history of the world were at their height, make him a wonderful focal point for the interpretation theme of Seaton Jurassic.

Visitors will be led by their volunteer guide from the servant’s ante-room into Conybeare’s study. At first, visitors will appear to be alone. Are they trespassers in a private space? The study’s book-lined wall, portraits, chests of object drawers, desk and papers, globes, chaise longue – all look intriguing, but can they touch and explore?

To overcome this uncertainty a figure appears. She is a time traveler who is posing as William Conybeare’s servant to gain access to his study. She will appear as a Pepper’s ghost– a moving 3-D projection with accompanying audio track. ∗

As the figure speaks to her audience a backdrop projection shows the break-up of the super- continent Pangaea through the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Marked clearly will be Seaton and its geological journey northwards from close to where Pangaea is bisected by

∗ Pepper's ghost exhibits are beginning to be more widely used in museums, as they attempt to create livelier attractions that will appeal to visitors. Examples of Pepper's ghost effects can be found in various museums in the United Kingdom and Europe including the ghost of Annie McLeod at the New Lanark World Heritage Site, the ghost of John McEnroe at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, and also the ghost of the Eighth Duke at Blenheim Palace.

21 HG-12-09939 the equator to a position amongst continents that are broadly recognisable as today’s. Seaton really has come a long way!

The figure will explain the journey that visitors are about to undertake (backwards in time) and about the challenges they will face (shifts in scale, shifts in climate and temperature, above the sea and below the sea). She will begin to explain her own explorations into Seaton Jurassic have shown her the need to prepare, arming herself with the knowledge of the past which has allowed her to be a survivor. Finally, the figure will set the visitors a challenge; to use Conybeare’s study to equip themselves for the journey of discovery which is to come.

Visitors will then explore Conybeare’s study finding it to be not merely a backdrop or stage set. Instead it begins to reveal itself as a giant resource box, a mix of high-tech and low-tech interactive objects, all providing information and context to the next parts of their journey.

Full of surprises, large and small, Conybeare’s study will contain detail at every turn. Features will include:

• Wall-mounted clocks on the study wall displaying different reference points. One will show today’s time and date. A second will display geological time, calibrated to show its beginnings 4,500 million years ago to the present. Highlighted on its face will be the Mesozoic period with the hands pointing to the mid Jurassic.

• A touchscreen AV unit dressed as a landscape painting depicting the Jurassic coast (gilded frame with home screen showing a nineteenth century oil painting). Title plate on frame to read ‘Touch me and I come alive’. This touchscreen will show the contents of the existing Jurassic Coast app allowing users to go on a journey through 185 million years of Jurassic time. Travelling the entire length of the Jurassic Coast is made possible by viewing a continuous linear image photographed from the sea, looking back at the coastline. Interpretation is provided at key points as the visitor pans along the site, together with additional features including an animation of how the rocks were laid down, tilted and eroded, resulting in the present day coastline.

This AV unit will be capable of accommodating updated information and displays in the future.

• Two Victorian globes on Conybeare’s desk, illustrated to show the movement of the earth’s continents through time, from the formation of Pangaea 300 million years ago, through the beginnings of the break-up of this super-continent 200 million years ago, to the formation of today’s landscape, and forward into the shape of things to come. Two jig-saws will lay scattered nearby. The challenge is to rebuild these to reveal a Victorian chart reconstruction of the continents at the beginning and the end of the Mesozoic era.

• A hand-operated crank will turn images in a desk mounted retroscope (‘what the butler saw’). The rapid movement of these images will produce a moving image allowing visitors will show the course of evolution in one or more of the Seaton key species. For example, the evolution of birds through their earliest fossil remains to today’s birds. Visitors will be able to change the retroscope’s cartridge of images. Other cartridges will illustrate geological events such as the Binden landslide and the formation of the Axe Estuary.

22 HG-12-09939 • Three discovery boxes dressed as a Victorian hat box, a suitcase and a plain crate with ‘Specimens - Handle With Care’ written up it. The boxes will be spread around the room. Each box will contain a ‘find’ - a fossil or rock type, a magnifying glass, a Victoriana postcard linking them to a place on the Jurassic Coast, and pioneer. So for example, a fossil rodent-like creature is linked to Victorian Swanage and in turn to the work of Samuel Husbands Beckles (1814-1890), paleontologist and excavator of the famous ‘Swanage Mammal Beds’ the world’s first large find of mammals in the fossil record.

• A set of wall mounted framed prints showing the portraits of notable figures who studied the Jurassic Coast during the nineteenth century. To include Dr William Smith (1769-1839), Prof William Buckland (1784-1856), Mary Anning (1799-1847), etc. Each portrait to be accompanied by short biography and contribution to the growing understanding of the geological past.

• A set of desk mounted framed prints will showcase the work of Rev Conybeare. One would display the skeletal fossil remains of a plesiosaurus, sketched by Conybeare in his groundbreaking study (1824). Another would show Conybeare and Buckland’s pioneering sketches of the anatomy of the 1839 Bindon landslide.

• Conybeare’s bookshelves would be filled to form a library of Jurassic Coast studies covering the large areas of the study’s wall. Amongst Conybeare’s own books on Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales (1822) would be the work of his contemporaries and his successors. The books would be ordered chronologically to illustrate the evolution of thought that has come to shape our understanding of the Jurassic Coast.

The structure of the bookshelves would mimic the geological patterning of the Jurassic Coast. Colour would be used in the books to show rock type and layering. Gaps and misalignments in the books and their shelving would pick out notable Jurassic landscape features including the faultline at Seaton Hole.

At one end of the shelving the books will have tumbled down, slumping on to the study floor. Modern security taping will surround this slump reading ‘Danger – unstable cliffs’, while books will lay open for visitors to read their contents. The pages of one will provide an explanation of the processes of erosion. Another will recount the famous Bindon landslide of 1839 and Conybeare’s role in investigating it. Another will explore the future of the Jurasssic Coast highlighting where erosion is most likely to have impact.

• Cabinets full of drawers would capture the feel of the Victorian collector. With drawers labeled and full of categorized rocks and fossils, visitors could follow an object led journey across the millennia. The order and colour-coding of the drawers from top to bottom would replicate the order of rock types youngest down to oldest.

• Objects including rock hammers, magnifying glasses, notebooks, etc, would allow a hands-on examination of the palaeontologist’s craft.

23 HG-12-09939 There will much to see, touch and do here. The details and range of possibilities open to visitors will mean that they are likely to want to linger and return again to discover more. Individual interpretation elements will be capable of change and refreshment. The ability of the room’s interactive computer to be updated and change has already been discussed (see above). But other features of Conybeare’s study will provide cheap and simple opportunities for change, refreshment and updating. For example, the tools of the nineteenth century antiquarian will be added to and altered, perhaps reflecting the story of nineteenth century fossil hunters in one season and contemporary botanists and ornithologists in the next.

Volunteers will play a key role in the success of this interpretation space. Through their period dress, language and behavior they will generate an air of artifice, making visitors ‘believe’ they have begun a journey back in time. Volunteers will also be important in overcoming any reticence in some visitors. They will re-assure them that this is a space which they can touch, explore and use. The volunteers will be demonstrators, showing visitors how to use exhibits and adding extra explanation to them.

7.4.2 Punctuation Points At places throughout the visitor journey it will be necessary to provide punctuation points: key places in the visitor experience for them to pause, to absorb what has gone before, and to signpost what is coming next.

These places will deliberately allow visitors to go-slow, to pause and take stock. Seating will provide a reason to linger, to take stock, to discuss experiences and ideas.

Interpretation will accompany these points. They will be of the traditional 2-D panel form. Their combination of engaging text will combine with stunning images designed to stop people in their journey.

The focus of these panels will be ‘the story so far’ . They will bring the visitor up to date by re- capping the main themes of Seaton Jurassic - Journeys Through Time, Survivors, Ancestors and Inheritors - together in a single place, in an accessible form.

7.4.3 Through the Time-Line Corridor

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Visitors will leave Conybeare’s study through an open door to enter a corridor. The combination of signage and the presence of volunteers will make their onwards path clear.

Before them another door will take them into Conybeare’s dark room. The development of photography began in the mid-nineteenth century and represented a parallel scientific discovery with that of geology and paleontology.

Visitors will find this to be a small space. Light levels will be suddenly lower here, a single red- light is all that illuminates the space. Overhead wires will be strung with prints of volcanic eruptions and lava flows. The sound of eruptions will fill the space. Print negatives will display 24 HG-12-09939 text which explains that by entering visitors have stumbled upon the Big Bang and the beginnings of the Earth. The combination of an enclosed room, low light, sound, visuals and simple text commentary will make for an intense experience.

Leaving this room, visitors will emerge into a much lighter space. This is Conybeare’s print room, a place to display the work of a Victorian photographer. But instead of sepia prints of people, landscapes and places, we find those that chart the tree of life from its beginnings until today. From framed portraits of modern life on Earth, lines of ancestry represented by other framed prints spread down the walls until reaching the first simple celled life to appear on Earth 2,000 million years ago. Each of these species portraits is placed against Victorian wallpaper printed with the branches of the tree. Using this tree, visitors will be able to linger, tracing back their own ancestral roots, exploring those of other species and discovering the lineages of now long extinct and forgotten species.

Returning to the corridor, visitors will discover a floor-to-ceiling bookcase stretching along its right hand side for its entire length (15 metres). This is an ‘evolution bookcase’ – telling the story of life on earth from its beginnings million years ago until the present.

The bookshelves will hold a mix of real books, tromp l’oeil book ends and faux bookends. The first sections of the bookshelves will be empty spaces save for one or two volumes carrying titles which will include ‘Big Bang? – 4,500 million years ago’ and ‘Life begins – the Earliest Organic Structures – 2,000 million year ago’ . Reaching to remove these volumes will mean opening them to show illustrations and explanations of the processes and events that they represent.

The shelves will be labeled in the style of a library, but with the dates of geological time and the accompanying names of the geological periods – Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, etc.

From the place the shelving reaches 600 million years ago the number of books will increase, with their titles beginning to reflect the growing diversity and complexity of life. Significant milestones will be supplied by large dominating volumes including ‘The Beginnings of Complex Life in our Seas – 580 million years ago’ , ‘The Age of the Fishes – 395 million years ago’ , ‘Life Emerges onto Land – 345 million years ago’ , ‘Age of the Dinosaurs – 200 million years ago’ , ‘The Coming of the Mammals – 65 million years ago’ , and ‘Our Story: the emergence of humans - 1.8 million years ago’ . Once again, visitors will be able to reach for these volumes and open them at set pages to learn more about each chapter of the development of life on earth.

Walking through time, visitors will also see that the run of shelving is not uniform. Instead its progress is broken in obvious and dramatic places. These breaks are the extinction episodes which have punctuated the history of the world.

At the first of these breaks a layer of ‘ice’ will encrust the books and shelving, while ‘snow’ and shards of ice will spill out of the foot of the shelves like a glacier slipping across the floor towards the feet of visitors. This part of the shelving will be labeled with the date of the first of five mass extinction events – the Global Ice Age of 500 million years ago.

At 390 million years ago and then again at 320 million years ago the shelves and their books will be charred (titles just visible through the damage). These places mark those punctuations in time when prolonged volcanic activity saw conditions for life worsen.

25 HG-12-09939 At 240 million years ago massive volcanic activity was responsible for destroying 75% of all land species and 96% of those in the sea. This cataclysm will be marked by a large burnt area of bookcase. Scattered rock fragments and volcanic ash litter the remains of the shelving.

After this event few books fill the following shelves, representing the recovery of life on earth. The number and range of books continues to grow over succeeding shelves, interrupted at 200 million years ago by a further smaller charred section, representing high volcanic activity in the late-Triassic and early-Jurassic periods.

However, at 65 million years ago the book case again lays in ruins. This time a large hole will run from the ceiling and through the shelving to the floor. The edges of this destructive path are blackened and burnt. This has been caused by the collision of earth with a massive comet. The books and their titles show a dramatic shift from one side of the comet’s path to the other. Volumes on the rise and development of dinosaurs stop suddenly and are replaced by the rise of mammals and, eventually, humankind.

At the end of the corridor facing the visitor will be a full length mirror. With a jagged crack running down it the mirror will be accompanied by two provocative questions:

When will the Earth’s next extinction event arrive?

What will be its cause?

On the left hand wall of the corridor a 2-D graphics panel will provide a more conventional telling of the story of geological time, the evolution of life and the mass extinction episodes. Seating will accompany this punctuation point.

7.4.4 The Time Machine Workshop

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The time-line corridor will lead visitors into the next of Exhibition Hall 1’s spaces. Here visitors will be invited to journey to the Mesozoic – to take a trip back 300 million years to witness life and conditions at Seaton during the Jurassic.

But before setting out they will be told they must prepare themselves for the hazardous journey which is to come. Centre volunteers along with accompanying static interpretation will both play a part here in briefing visitors on just how far they will have to go, and what challenges they will face along the way. This briefing will highlight the sheer length of their time travel journey back 300 million years in order to standstill at the beginnings of the Jurassic. It will summarise the interpretation of previous exhibits detailing the events that will punctuate this trip – the mass extinctions, continent shifts, ocean rises and falls, the effects of wind, water and ice in sculpting landscapes, etc. It will also begin to introduce the plants and animals which visitors will encounter on this journey. Life on Earth ancestors will be here - the weird, frightening and unfamiliar, along with the inheritors - those that look similar and familiar to today’s wildlife.

To prepare for their mission visitors will first walk into a plastic tented area suggesting a forensic- or decontamination-zone. They will pass before a ‘body scanner’, familiar from airport

26 HG-12-09939 security. Their movement will trigger lights and a series of pre-programme warning messages which will highlight generic characteristics of the present human form which will make survival back in time challenging – an inability to adapt to atmospheric changes, extremes of heat and cold, an inability to breath underwater will all be highlighted. But it will also highlight physical similarities between us and our evolutionary antecedents, introducing the concept that our pasts are part of the Jurassic story.

The scanner will also highlight the trappings of modern life including mobiles, plastics, food stuffs including plant life (nuts, seeds, berries), etc and the presence of modern pathogens such as viruses and bacteria. All will be highlighted as potential threats and disruptions to the life of the Jurassic world which visitors are about to be transported to.

Visitors will emerge from de-contamination into a workshop in which is set an airship. The room and airship blend are dressed in Steampunk style. 4 This will be their mode of transport back in time. But what should they take with them for the journey?

Here visitors will be able to equip themselves to take on the challenges which they know face them on their trip geological time. Temperature shifts (from Ice Ages to desert conditions), travel underwater (to cope with the dramatic sea rises which occurred during the Jurassic and Cretaceous period), sudden geological events including meteorite strikes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, etc will all be obstacles that their journeys will have to overcome.

The airship and its surrounding workshop will hold a multitude of resources and objects. What is their potential usefulness? How can each be used as a means to help visitors adapt to the time travel which is to come. For example, thermal blankets to protect against the Ice Age; snorkels and flippers to survive rising sea levels; a blunderbuss to frighten off inquisitive and hungry dinosaurs – all will be available for the visitor to examine and deliberate on their likely uses and usefulness.

The workshop walls and benches will also show the signs of experimentation. The journey back to the Jurassic is not to be just a tourist trip, it is a scientific exploration, a chance to take the scientific theories of the present and test them in the past. But what will be needed? A range of measuring equipment will be available to visitors to examine, discuss and make decisions on their uses:

• thermometers showing the contrasting temperature ranges of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods • anemometer to measure wind speed • a canary in a cage (model) to gauge air quality • an augur to measure the depth of ice • a seismograph to record earthquake activity

Equipped and briefed for their journey visitors prepare to board the time machine.

4 Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that typically uses steam-powered machinery to illustrate an alternative history of the Victorian era. Steampunk often features retro-futuristic technologies as people in the nineteenth century might have pictured them. 27 HG-12-09939 7.4.5 Enter the Time Machine

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At the centre of the workshop will sit the time machine. The vessel will be in steampunk style – a hot air balloon contraption that would have been at once familiar and alien to Conybeare, a contraption that melds the imaginings of Jules Verne and HG Wells.

As visitors approach the airship sound and lighting effects will suggest blasts of hot-air being blown into the balloon, ready for lift-off. Once inside visitors find themselves surrounded by the trappings of time travel, blending the new with the old in classic steampunk style. Wheels and levers will allow visitors to ‘steer’ the ship. Periodical charts will show where to go in time. Clocks will show present, historical and geological time. Hand operated bilge pumps will be available in the event of water ingress when/if the ship plunges into and under the sea.

Spreading along the airship sides will be a series of portholes. These will be key in providing a sensation of time travel to the occupants. This will be done in a low-tech and humorous way. Handles to be turned by visitors will move an illustrated and highly stylized depiction of Jurassic landscapes, seascapes and species. Visitors will take charge of their time-travel journey determining its the speed, choosing its direction back and forth in time, choosing when and where to stop. Working together this process will demand teamwork and a sense of fun!

The journey will be a flight which takes place both above and below the waves, reflecting the fluctuating sea levels which characterise the Jurassic Coast’s geological history. Flying and swimming creatures from the Jurassic and Cretaceous will be encountered. Seas, teeming with life will be explored; we may even go back to the time of the very first life on Earth...the possibilities are endless.... and Einstein was wrong as time travel is perfectly possible!

7.5 d) EXHIBITION HALL 2 – JOURNEY INSIDE A ROCK POOL WORLD

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Emerging from the time machine, visitors will have witnessed the story of the Jurassic Coast and the geological forces which have shaped it. They will also have witnessed ‘at first hand’ the great extinctions which punctuated this 250 million year journey. They will emerge blinking and wondering at how life has endured these cataclysms. Now is the time for them to meet their fellow survivors, the species that have endured to be with us today.

Moving from the interior of their time machine and workshop, visitors emerge into a space which links Exhibition Hall 1 with Exhibition Hall 2. The space is dressed as a portal to another time and place. The time-travelling has stopped, but where are visitors now?

The walls of the linking space show the now familiar steampunk style gradually give way to another. Elements of an underwater world are introduced – seaweed twists around the hand 28 HG-12-09939 rail, the murals which cover the curved walls begin to be dominated by marine scenes. Finally, a seaweed curtain blocks the visitors’ progress. Only by pushing through this can they continue.

Emerging from the linking space visitors now enter the world of a Seaton rock pool. But something else has changed? Time travel has shrunk them and our traveller is now no bigger than a prawn in a world of saltwater. This sense of shifting scales will provide the visitor with another perspective, this time a better understanding and appreciation of the battles faced and won by their fellow survivors.

Within this underwater world the visitor will discover the stories of the amazing survivors from the times of the dinosaur – but they will also find out about the fragility of the systems upon which life depends, and about the positive part they can play in its preservation. This is ecology in the raw – as the survival challenge is made....will the traveller escape?

The walls of Exhibition Hall 2 are dressed as the steep sides of a rock pool – sea weeds and giant models of marine creatures hang from above or appear from crevices in its walls. The beady eyes of crabs, the impenetrable shells of limpets, the sound of waves breaking and oyster catchers calling, all provide an immersive experience. The rock pool exhibition hall is divided into areas each holding a separate activity, interactive display or event. Each is linked by tunnels spreading through the rock pool. The route and order of exploration is up to the visitor.

As with Exhibition Hall 1 volunteers will fill the roles of guides and interpreters, helping visitors to orientate themselves and gain the most from the underwater world they find themselves in.

7.5.1 Beneath the Surface of a Giant Rock Pool

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The first area into which they have stepped sets the scene. Visitors gain a sense of their smallness in the giant rock pool. The ripples of the rock pool’s surface shimmer above them via a projection on to the ceiling, while a separate projection makes blennies and shore crabs appear to move around their feet. Periodically a giant face will appear on the rock pool water’s surface – a girl with a net or a hungry looking herring gull. The fish and crabs scatter to escape and the visitor is left with a feeling of their own small size and vulnerability after experiencing this first lesson in survival.

7.5.2 Changing and Adapting to Rock Pool Life There are places to hide from the attention of these monstrous threats. Behind curtains of seaweed lie alcoves. In one – an adaption and dressing up space - a range of survival kit items will be open to visitors to select and try on. Breathing apparatus, a diver’s helmet, a dry suit, etc – all will illustrate the adaptations that are needed to survive in the rock pool environment. A full length mirror will allow visitors to judge their new adaptations!

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7.5.3 Exploring Time and Tide

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A Time and Tide area will expose the fundamental challenge to life in a Seaton rock pool – the way that marine life in the intertidal zone has had to evolve to cope with a transformation of its habitat which occurs four times every day. Three clocks embedded in the rock pool wall will each introduce a different sense of time. One will display a 24 hour clock, displaying a very human sense of time. A second will show tides, the pattern of the rise and fall of the sea each day. A final clock will show seasonal time. The clocks will be speeded up so that the visitor can witness the passage of a single rock pool day in just two minutes. Tides will change every 30 seconds, while seasons will be completed every 45 minutes or so.

Linked to the clocks and suspended above visitors’ heads will be an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system which illustrates the relative positions and motions of the planets and the moon. This orrery will show the movements of the Earth in relation to the sun, and the moon in relation to the Earth. It is this last movement that the visitor will see plays most influence over the tidal forces which challenge the life of a Seaton rock pool.

Large Perspex tubes mounted on the rock pool wall fill and empty in rhythm with the passage of times displayed on the clocks and the movement of the orrery. The tubes also show the tidal range – the forces which create high Spring tides and the low Neap tides. Sound effects of water rushing in and out of the space will complement the sense of the ebb and flow of the sea.

7.5.4 Blending In In a further cave space within the rock pool will be a selection of costumes – a crab, fish, starfish, anemone and cuttlefish. But this is no ordinary game of dressing up. The backdrop to the area will present different habitat background – sand, rock, seaweed and gravel. Lamps will highlight each habitat type in a random sequence. The challenge for the participants will be to select and match costumes to their background as quickly and efficiently as possible. A timer will countdown the seconds until the buzzer alarm sounds – will you win the race to adapt and survive?

7.5.5 Ancestors to Inheritors Gallery

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Further exploration will see visitors come across an ‘ancestors and inheritors gallery’. Here the challenge will be one of tracing back the ancestors of some of today’s most familiar rock pool wildlife. Hinged portholes set in the wall of the rock pool will be labelled with descriptions of species type, listing the adaptions that they have developed over time to adapt to life in the inter-tidal zone. Visitors will be encouraged to use their learning from other exhibits to answer the question ‘Guess Who?’ Opening the porthole will provide the answer and place the modern species in their ancestral line back to the Mesozoic or before.

30 HG-12-09939 7.5.6 Underwater Amphitheatre Elsewhere in the giant rock pool a mini underwater amphitheatre with rock-work benching and fossils/ modern rock pool creatures set into surrounding walls will provide space for 20 people to gather. This will be a place for group activities and demonstrations by Centre volunteers and staff. Capable of operating a controlled entry, the cave space will be the place for getting hands- on and ‘touchy-feely’ with a huge range of marine artifacts, from crab carapaces through cuttlefish bones to shark egg cases. This will be the place to welcome school groups in term time, a place to base children’s parties and provide a changing calendar of Centre led activities at weekends and holidays.

7.5.6 Diving Bell At the rock pool’s centre will lay a diving bell. The view outwards from the diving bell is to the surrounding rock pool through portholes, while a hand-operated periscope invites visitors to take a look above the water’s surface. Manoeuvring the periscope reveals views of each of Seaton Jurassic’s hotspot locations, demonstrating the survivor species that can be found at each today. So, for example, focussing the periscope southwards will show a mural of common cuttlefish hunting amongst the rocky reefs of Lyme Bay close to Seaton’s seafront; pointing northwards locates the mudflats of the River Axe to reveal a mural of shellduck dabbling for a meal of fellow survivor species, the minute molluscs, hydrobia.

At each hotspot location the periscope will also offer a view into the world of today’s creatures’ ancestral world. The periscope will bring representation of life during the Mesozoic into view. Scenes will show a Cretaceous rock pool with ammonites, the underwater world of the Jurassic seabed complete with plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, and a swampy Axe Valley Wetlands complete with giant Triassic crocodiles and reptiles such as the spectacular Rhynchosaurus.

Visitors will leave their giant rock pool world, emerging from Exhibition Hall 2 into the daylight with the smells of ozone from the nearby Seaton seafront and the sounds of the town’s ever- present herring gulls.

7.6 e) INTO THE OUTSIDE

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7.6.1 Journey Beneath the Sea: the Covered Outdoor Space

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From the rock pool visitors continue their journey, this time into the deeper sea. Leaving Exhibition Hall 2 means leaving its interior and emerging onto a wide decking area. This provides views across a shallow infinity pool providing an impression of the sea stretching away from the visitor. Beyond the pool stretches the wildlife gardens of the Centre’s outdoor space and beyond these are views of Seaton, of the Axe Wetlands and the Axe Valley.

31 HG-12-09939 From the decking a gently sloping pathway will lead down into the space beneath the infinity pool; the effect will be one of walking down into the sea. This outdoor covered area will be enclosed on two sides. On the far one (northernmost) water from the infinity pool above will cascade down the outside of a glass wall providing underwater views to the world beyond. On another wall will be a mural, an ocean scene, which will provide a view as if below the waves of the nearby Lyme Bay. The creatures featured in this mural will work as a time-line of life in the seas, charting the development of the ocean’s life forms through the Mesozoic era to the modern day. Coelacanths, plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs will time-shift into today’s Jurassic Coast sea life of sea fans, Atlantic grey seals and thornback wrays.

Provision of static interpretation will be kept to a minimum here. Instead this outdoor covered area will provide the Centre with its largest all-weather activity space. Centre staff and volunteers will work here with groups and individual visitors to provide a changing calendar of events and hands-on activities – Jurassic Seaton story-telling, craft making, treasure hunts and game playing, all will be staged here.

Provision of static interpretation materials will be lighter here than in Exhibition Halls 1 and 2. This is a place for guided activity and learning. However, even when activities are not taking place there will be things for visitors aimed especially at younger visitors. These will include:

• Soft play shapes, blocks and creatures – the task will be to build your own rocky reef to match those of Lyme Bay • Fuzzy felt creature ancestor game – place the creatures along lineage lines, ammonites to squid, etc.

Most visitors will leave the outdoor covered space using an open doorway in its water wall. The feeling will be one of walking through water into the outside. Other visitors will join a path from the space’s western side. Both exits will lead into Seaton Jurassic outside space.

7.6.2 Wildlife Gardens

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Leaving the outdoor covered space will mean entering a wildlife garden.

This will be a place to rest, to play, to enjoy the sunshine (hopefully!) and review the Seaton Jurassic experience thus far.

The space will be bordered by an attractive boundary. Fencing made to echo the form of groynes will be interspersed with the shapes of brightly painted beach huts to set the scene and remind visitors that Seaton and seaside tourism enjoy a rich heritage.

A landscaped and turfed amphitheatre along with bench seating made from ash sourced from the nearby Undercliff will provide a place to dwell or to take in one of the activities/presentations laid on by Seaton Jurassic staff. A nearby ‘Crab Shack’ concession outlet will be available made to sell refreshments.

32 HG-12-09939 Clear signage will point the way back to the Centre’s toilets, entrance lobby, retail area and café. The journey back to these will take in the thin strip of land to the east of the site, between the Seaton Jurassic building and the line of the Seaton Tramway.

The easy access pathway back will allow visitors to explore a network of planted habitats and garden features all under the billing of ‘You’ve seen how tough it has been for life over the last 350 million years – here’s how you can help today’s wildlife survivors’.

The garden will present a series of easily achievable adaptions to the conventional residential garden. Some will be obvious, other less so. Accompanying each will be discreet interpretation explaining the adaption’s purpose, the wildlife that it is aiding and links to the ancestors of today’s species. The aim here will be that visitors will take home the ideas to try in their own wildlife patches.

Adaptations will include:

• A large pond – holding reeds and rushes, edged with marsh marigold – home to newts, frogs, and dragonfly larvae • Bridge over pond to allow closer inspection and pond-dipping • Insect log wall – irregular rotting and recycled timber – home to insects and spiders • Bog garden • Bird nest boxes • Bee and insect boxes • Butterfly nectar feeding table • Bird feeding station • Hedgehog home • Wildflower meadow

Many of the adaptations, for example bird boxes, hedgehog homes, wildflower seed mixes etc. will also be available to buy from the Seaton Jurassic shop.

Visitors will re-enter the Centre appearing in its entrance lobby.

7.7 f) EXPLORING SEATON’S NATURAL HOTSPOTS

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Beyond the hub of the Centre will be four outlying hotspots 5. These will be located at:

• The Axe Wetlands • Seaton Hole • Seaton Seafront • Seaton Harbour and Undercliffs

5 See Appendix 2 for more details of the hotspots 33 HG-12-09939 Delivery at the hotspots will take many forms – from the sensitive installation of interpretative devices in situ, through focal activities and events supported by Seaton Jurassic’s volunteers, staff and its partners, through to the use of self-motivated and guiding new (and old) technologies.

Each hotspot will provide a natural focus point for further interpreting the story of Seaton and the Jurassic Coast. Each will be a place where it is possible to see at first hand the themes of Journeys Through Time, Survivors, Ancestors and Inheritors told through the stories of nearby landscape features. The stories, so vividly introduced within the Seaton Jurassic Centre, will be grounded in the landscape at each of these hotspots (See Appendix 2 for a full description of each hotspot location and its relevance).

The guiding purpose will be to demonstrate how this place tells part of the story of the Jurassic Coast. So, for example, interpretation at the Axe Undercliff will use the dramatic story of the huge landslip of Christmas Day 1839 to expand on the theme of Journeys Through Time, bringing to life its sub-narratives of ‘shifting worlds’ and ‘shifting life’. At the Axe Wetlands, its saltmarsh, estuary and wildlife will be used to illustrate the theme of Survivors, allowing visitors to discover for themselves the life forms which find a life on the fluid boundaries between salt and freshwater, dry and wetland. While at Seaton Hole it will be the turn of Ancestors and Inheritors to be explored at a place where white Cretaceous chalk deposits sit in dramatic colour contrast to neighbouring Triassic red Mercia Mudstones.

Because these hotspots will be unstaffed places, their interpretation will be more basic than that of the Centre. Each hotspot will carry a unifying interpretive feature that tells the visitor they have arrived at a Seaton Jurassic hotspot. This will be provided by a 1.8 metre high wooden pillar. Each would incorporate a graphic, a trail map dispenser, a QR code and geocache. The strong Seaton Jurassic brand would be prominent.

Standing next to this unifying feature will be a distinguishing one. Each hotspot will carry a sculptural element to complement its pillar interpretation.

• At Seaton Hole the sculptures would depict species from Lyme Bay’s deep water reefs – pink sea fans, corals, sea squirts and scallops charting the development of each species group to the relevant passage of geological time.

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• At the Seaton Harbour and Undercliffs hotspot an existing public seating area will be enhanced. Timber decking will be used to create a prominent ‘bow’ of ship to reflect the presence of the nearby Seaton shipping fleet. Beneath the bow an existing concrete platform would be clad to echo the shape and colours of the nearby undercliff.

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34 HG-12-09939 • At Seaton’s seafront hotspot steel sculptures would frame an existing metal gate in the sea wall. Wave shaped and constructed by pebbles sunk into a substrate, this hotspot would illustrate the ways in which Seaton’s seafront is being constantly changed by the forces of the sea. It would also serve to explain the human-made responses to these forces in the shape of the sea defences that dominate the town’s seafront today.

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• At the Axe Valley Wetlands hotspot a ‘winged’ sundial sculpture would sit half submerged in an existing pool which is positioned in front of a sand martin nest bank. Arranged around the sundial will be a recreation of the Ursa Major (The Plough) constellation, picked out in white lights just beneath the water’s surface. The theme here would be time migration and the ways that passerines and other migrating animals use stars and the Earth’s magnetic fields to guide their journeys.

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The hotspots would be gateways to further exploration. Each would carry Quick Response Codes (QR codes) which would link smartphone users from the location to corresponding pages on the Seaton Jurassic website. This would open a range of information available to users, but would concentrate on telling hidden stories, taking visitors to places they otherwise could not go. So for example, using video, audio and images to take people under the sea at the Seaton Seafront hotspot, or back in time to the formation of rocks exposed at the Seaton Hole hotspot.

The four Seaton Jurassic hotspots would become mini-hubs for activity and events. They would be gathering points used by the Centre’s staff, volunteers and wider community groups, places where themed walks began and ended. A geocache would also be installed at each, making them popular destination points for the participants of this growing pastime. Together, the hotspots would form a Seaton Geocache Trail, leading geocachers to them in pursuit of clues and answers provided in each interpretation panel.

A mobile interpretation unit would provide a link between the hotspots and the Seaton Jurassic Centre. A bike and trailer, dressed in Seaton Jurassic motifs (seaweed clad handle bars, ammonite shaped bell, fossil and limpet encrusted casing to trailer), would carry a staff member or volunteer interpreters dressed as a nineteenth century fossil collector to the hotspots.

Using the hotspots as their backdrop interpreters will use materials carried in the bike trailer to present engaging presentations, guided visits and interactive sessions with individuals, groups, etc. At the Undercliffs hotspot will be a regular meet the fossils session – locally found fossils will be passed amongst the audience while the interpreter adds commentary on today’s surviving species and their ancient ancestors. At the Seafront hotspot it will be a chance to see examples of corals and sea fans from the Lyme Bay reefs. At the Axe Valley Wetlands it will be

35 HG-12-09939 a chance to take part in a guided bird watch, while hearing about the amazing migration journeys of the birds seen.

The bike and trailer will become an established part of the Seaton Jurassic offer. Timed appearances and locations will be advertised via its regular events listings, website, etc.

7.8 g) APPROACHES TO RETAIL AND CATERING

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For many visitors Seaton Jurassic’s shop and café will be an end point to their visit. For others it will be a punctuation point, a pause between leaving the Centre and a journey onwards to one of Seaton Jurassic’s other interpretation hotspots. For others, the shop and café will be a destination point in itself. This may be especially true for many local people and repeat visitors.

Whatever route visitors take to the shop and café, once inside they will find a place that sits comfortably with the Centre’s other spaces. Its brand will be consistent with them. Its design will continue the interpretation themes found elsewhere. The café will be part, and not apart, from the Centre’s interpretation experience.

The café’s wall will show strong and attractive images of Seaton Jurassic landscapes and wildlife. Above the heads of visitors will be hanging sculptures depicting the rocks of the Triassic, the Jurassic and the Cretaceous.

The café will continue the active and participative interpretation that characterises the Centre. Tables inset with discovery boxes full of objects (fossils, historic photographs, wildlife objects, magnifying glasses) will offer a tactile exploration of Seaton Jurassic. The boxes will also contain memory booklets - notebooks containing excerpts from the reminiscences of local people, along with their memorabilia - photos, postcards, newspaper clippings, etc. These pads will invite visitors to leave behind their own memories and thoughts about Seaton Jurassic. Together, the contents of these booklets will form the basis of a digital community archive accessible via the Centre’s website.

The café’s menu will reflect the ethos of Devon Wildlife Trust and Seaton Jurassic, drawing on seasonal, local food. Its offers and choices will be a central part in illustrating the story of human uses of the local landscape and the sea. So, the salt marsh lamb stew, sustainably sourced fish and chips, and organic veggie options will not only be delicious, but will be connected to the story of Seaton Jurassic and its people. The café’s staff and volunteers will know this story, the provenance of the food they offer, and the journey it has taken to arrive on visitors’ plates.

The Centre’s shop will emphasise the local and the sustainable. It will offer a range of long shelf-life products, all in-keeping with the themes of the Centre and Seaton Jurassic. The idea driving this commercial area will be to provide income, and to ensure that visitors leave with a part of the Seaton Jurassic story.

The retail area will be designed to; • provide a shopping experience that looks and feels unlike any others in the area

36 HG-12-09939 • provide a range of goods that are linked to the Centre and its subject matter • offer goods which reflect the quality and ethos of the Centre. The emphasis will be on local procurement wherever possible • be inexpensive to operate

The stock for sale will change over time, but is likely to include: • Low value/high turnover items: inexpensive gifts, cards and fossils • Locally sourced consumables, such as bottled fruit juice and conserves • Prints, books, wildlife ID kits • Decorative items, such as place mats or possibly jewellery on a fossil or wildlife theme • More expensive, specialist items such as optical equipment

Making the café and shop a resource for the community The café/shop will also be a flexible, multi-use space, one that is widely used by the wider community. A large retractable screen will be installed along with a high quality audio-visual system. These will be capable of turning the café into relaxed meeting zone, one capable of hosting film shows, illustrated talks, presentations and children’s parties. The AV unit will lengthen the Centre’s operational day, making it capable of evening openings and community hire. Just as the café’s menu will change by the season then the AV unit will also ensure a changing calendar of offers to visitors.

7.9 h) TAKE HOMES AND CONTINUING ENGAGEMENT

Leaving the Centre will not mean the end of the relationship between Seaton Jurassic and its visitors. Each departing visitors will be equipped with a set of resources which will encourage further engagement and repeat journeys.

Leaving visitors with a personal legacy (a ‘take home’) from their visit and then maintaining ongoing contact with them will be key parts of the Centre’s operation. Legacy and future contact are vital if the Centre is to continue to attract audience numbers and ensure its commercial operation in the long term. Visitors should leave its doors feeling that they want to return again. Continuing contact with them should ensure that this inclination is acted upon.

However, take homes and ongoing contact will also be important in ensuring that the influence of the Centre is one that continues to spread far beyond its doors. This will be an important factor in ensuring more people engage with their natural heritage and that this engagement leads to deeper understanding.

Visitors will become the recruits to the Centre’s remote, but connected, audience. It will be the job of staff and volunteers to ensure that communication with this audience is regular and engaging. These communications will balance traditional with new forms of media, ensuring the widest possible access to the Centre’s learning resources and its changing calendar of events/activities.

37 HG-12-09939 Communication will be not just be a one-way process – from the Centre outwards. Instead, contributions and dialogue will be sought. A vibrant community of interest, ideas and learning will coalesce around a shared passion for Seaton Jurassic.

Amongst the take home materials and modes of continuing engagement will be:

• A fully illustrated booklet sold to visitors (or given free as part on the annual ‘Access all eras’ pass). Compiled with the help of volunteers from the Friends of Seaton Visitor Centre Trust, this would be part a self-guide to exploration of Seaton Jurassic and part an ongoing learning resource.

• Visitors to the Centre and its website will be invited to sign up to the Seaton Jurassic newsletter. Produced regularly as hard copy and e-newsletter, the publication would provide the latest news on the Centre’s seasonal activities, events and offers.

• Smartphone usage stood at 39% of the UK’s adult population in July 2012 (a 12% increase on levels in 2010). Growing use of these devices means that Quick Response (QR) codes will be part of the interpretation inside the Centre, in its outdoor spaces and at each of the Seaton Jurassic hotspots. The codes will allow visitors to build up a set of bespoke additional materials and information to take away and use elsewhere. So for example, a QR code in Conybeare’s study accompanying a portrait of Mary Anning could trigger a download providing a full biography of the Lyme Regis fossil hunter, images of her most famous finds, and a location map of where on the Jurassic Coast these were made. These extra resources would be stored within the Seaton Jurassic website, providing people the chance to do further investigation long after their visit had ended.

• Visitors to the Centre and its website would also be asked to sign up to Seaton Jurassic’s social media network. Dedicated Twitter and Facebook accounts would be updated each day by staff and volunteers, relaying a mix of news including the latest wildlife sightings and event/activity booking availability.

• Visitors to the Centre and the website would be encouraged to sign up to RSS (Rich Site Summary) feeds from the Seaton Jurassic. These RSS feeds to people’s home computers, phones and tablets would be another way to keep users up to date with the latest news and staff/volunteer blogs from the Centre.

• A (moderated) web message board and forum will provide the space for people to contribute to latest news and discussions.

• A dedicated Flickr gallery will invite the photographic contributions with which a digital community archive of Seaton Jurassic can be built and shared. Users will also be encouraged to collect, record and contribute biological records from visitors to build a digital community archive of Seaton’s wildlife.

38 HG-12-09939 7.10 i) FUTURE AMBITION: DEVELOPING ADDITIONAL INTERPRETATION SPACE AROUND THE SEATON JURASSIC CENTRE

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A future phase of Seaton Jurassic (not covered by this funding submission to HLF) would see the development of outdoor space to the north of the Centre.

Moving from the underwater landscape, the journey through the remainder of the outside space is a journey which echoes the local Seaton landscape. Visitors will go on a pathway from open sea to water source. A winding, central path echoes the twists of the River Axe as it moves through the landscape. On either side of the path are smaller paths or tributaries leading to activity spaces which mirror local natural landscape features: sea cliffs, beaches of sand and pebbles, saltmarsh, reed beds, and on through rolling farmland.

Each of these spaces holds an opportunity for exploration, activity and learning:

• A beached Seaton fishing boat will provide a link between the Jurassic Coast’s marine environment and local food, economy and culture. The boat will be a play space, but inside a re- created catch of model fish, shellfish and pollution (plastic containers, etc) will provide visitors with the opportunity to sort items by categories such as ‘keep or discard’, ‘threatened or threatening’.

• Giant 3-D pebble sculptures of Jurassic survivor species (eg lobsters, sea sponges, brook lamprey) will be positioned next to spaces in which visitors can create their own pebble sculptures. Simple instructions will invite them to use the knowledge and concepts gained within the Centre to invent their own Jurassic survivors (‘What does a species need to survive a mass extinction?’ ‘How can a creature cope with the regular rise and fall of the tide?’).

• A mini-cliff will recreate the geological rock types of the Jurassic Coast. Visitors will be able to traverse the rock face, finding fossil models and seabird nests as they move along. Fault lines and even a mud slide will interrupt their journey bringing them face to face with the shifting, changing nature of the local landscape.

• Huge water trays fitted with a hand-operated pumps will allow visitors to shape their own landscape. By controlling the flow of water through sand they will re-create the forces of erosion, scouring and landslip that have sculpted the Jurassic landscape around them – a chance for visitors to create their own long shore drift or cliff collapses.

• A maze of tree trunks placed close together will provide a reed-bed experience – showing what life is like amongst the reeds, glimpsing movement through the forest of stems and finding movement restricted. Visitors will be invited to play games of hide, find and capture – re-creating the real-life roles of reed bed specialists such as bitterns and frogs, of predators and prey.

39 HG-12-09939 An outdoor amphitheatre might also be landscaped into the outdoors space’s hills and hummocks. This space will be a natural meeting place, one which is capable of hosting direct instruction, workshops and informal gatherings. Views from the amphitheatre across the outdoor space and to the wider landscape of the Axe Valley Wetlands beyond will provide the ‘live’ landscape examples which will illustrate any number of themed guided activities. From geography, through bird watching for beginners to star-gazing, this outdoor space will provide a wonderful place in which to be and learn.

On reaching the far (northerly-most) end of the Centre’s outdoor space visitors will be able to look back and reflect on a journey upriver from the sea. In front of them will be a controlled gate, part of the secure fencing that will demarcate the outdoor spaces of the Centre from the existing public car park beyond. Through this gate a boardwalk will act as an entrance to the Sheep’s Marsh section of the Axe Valley Wetlands.

Sheep’s Marsh represents the first opportunity to explore the wider Seaton Jurassic, to go ‘wild’ after the interpretation experiences of the Centre and its outdoor spaces. It also represents part of the first of the Seaton Jurassic Hotspots.

The infrastructure development of Sheep’s Marsh lies outside the remit of this project. However, it does form an integral part of the next phase in East Devon District Council’s development of the Axe Valley Wetlands. Plans for this development are ongoing, but a proposed network of boardwalks and hides, along with plans for canoe safaris around the Marsh’s network of watercourses promises a high value added extra, immediately accessible from the Centre.

Visitors will return from Sheep’s Marsh and the outdoor space via a walkway which bisects the space between the Centre and the tram line. Sheltered by a framework of creepers and vines, the walkway will pass through Jurassic planting and past ponds to emerge in the Centre’s retail and café area.

40 HG-12-09939 Appendices

Appendix 1

Seaton’s key species A series of plants and animals will form a basis on which the stories of Seaton Jurassic can be told. Their distinctive forms, unique behaviours and lifestyles will provide rich detail with which to look back, look to today and to look forward.

Each has been chosen because they are an example of a Survivor, a species whose close ancestral forms first appeared in the Mesozoic era, who have adapted to changing geological conditions to inherit the landscapes and seascapes of today’s Jurassic coast.

The species will include:

• Pink sea fan The pink sea fans which inhabit the remaining cold water reefs of today’s Lyme Bay are the antecedents of species which developed in the warm waters of the Jurassic. Today they survive as an example of an ancient life form, but one which has undergone a drastic reduction in its range and numbers due to the pressures placed on the sea’s natural resources by humans. In recent years the pink sea fan has come to be used as an emblem for local struggles for better protection of the marine environment.

Pink sea fans will be a key part of the interpretation of Seaton Jurassic’s Exhibition Hall 2 – Rock Pool World, the Centre’s outdoor covered area and the Seaton Seafront hotspot.

• Ginkgo biloba Now only to be found in native form in two provinces in China, during the Jurassic the Ginkgo was widespread and would have made up a significant proportion of the tropical cycad forests which dominated Seaton 200 million years ago. Today it remains as one of the world’s last ‘living fossils’ dating from the time before the evolution of flowering plants.

Ginkgo will form part of the interpretation materials/activities of the Wildlife Garden and pathway approach to the Centre.

• Sea anemone The soft bodies of sea anemones mean that they are largely missing from the fossil record. However, rare fossil finds do show anemones dating from the Cambrian period – pre-dating the Jurassic by some 250 million years. Today the presence of beadlet, strawberry and snakelocks anemones in the rock pools of Seaton Hole show this species group to be survivors of time, tide and temperature extremes.

Sea anemones will form part of the interpretation materials/activities of Exhibition Hall 2 – Rock Pool World and the Seaton Hole hotspot.

• Starfish Although starfish evolved in the Cambrian period, mass extinction events in the Devonian and Permian periods wiped out many species. However the few that did survive diversified rapidly to re-establish many different starfish species in the Jurassic periods which followed. Recent

41 HG-12-09939 research has shown that modern starfish species are continuing this rapid process of ‘speciation’ (the evolution of new variant species). 30 species of starfish live in the UK’s waters. At Seaton they can be found from the shallow rock pools of Seaton Hole to the seabed of Lyme Bay.

Star fish will feature in the interpretation materials/activities of Exhibition Hall’s 1 and 2, the covered outdoor space and the Seaton Hole and Seaton Rock Pool hotspots.

• Horsetails The plant horsetails is often termed a ‘living fossil’ being the only living genus of the entire class of plants, the Equisetopsida , which for more than one hundred million years was much more diverse and dominated the understory of late Paleozoic forests. Some Equisetopsida were large trees reaching to 30 meters tall. Today horsetails can be found in ditches and other damp places across the Axe Valley around Seaton.

Horsetails will feature in the interpretation materials/activities of Exhibition Hall 1 and the Axe Valley Wetlands and Undercliff/Seaton Harbour hotspots.

• Little egrets The fortunes of little egrets have followed the patterns of climate change. Pushed to extinction by hunting and the arrival of a mini-ice age during the 1600s the bird was absent from the UK for the next four centuries. However with rising average temperatures little egrets returned to England’s South West in the 1980s, returning as a breeding species the following decade. Today little egrets are a regular part of the rich birdlife of the Axe Estuary.

Little egrets will feature in the interpretation materials/activities of Exhibition Hall 1 and the Axe Valley Wetlands hotspot.

• Freshwater lamprey These jawless fish, characterized by their toothed, funnel-shaped mouth, are still common in the River Axe and its tributaries. The lamprey fossil record dates back some 120 million years to the early Cretaceous, a time when dinosaurs walked the earth.

Lampreys will feature in the interpretation materials/activities of Exhibition Hall 1, the Wildlife Garden and the Axe Valley Wetlands hotspot.

• Water vole While debate amongst paleontologists still takes place as to what the first true mammals would have looked like and when their evolution took place, we can say with more certainty that one very successful mammal group, the rodents, began their story of survival right at the end of the Cretaceous period. Today, a once common rodent, the water vole, is being re-introduced to the Axe Valley Wetlands after suffering local extinction in the 1990s.

Water voles will feature in the interpretation materials/activities of Exhibition Hall 1 and the Axe Valley Wetlands hotspot.

• Common frog The mass extinction event of the Triassic was followed by a long period of species recovery. Most of today’s living groups of four-legged animals evolved during this time. Frogs along with many other amphibian species emerged at this point. Today frogs remain one of the world’s

42 HG-12-09939 most successful animal groups, although many species are the focus of growing conservation concern.

Common frogs will feature in the interpretation materials/activities of Exhibition Hall 1, the Wildlife Garden and the Axe Valley Wetlands hotspot.

• Dragonflies Although insects first appeared on earth in the Devonian period some 400 million years ago, subsequent dramatic climate changes and the mass extinctions which followed mean that most of today’s insect families appeared during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. However dragonflies were one family group who survived these mass extinctions. The dragonflies which patrol the Axe Valley Wetlands have ancestors which date back 250 million years to the Permian period.

Dragonflies will feature in the interpretation materials/activities of Exhibition Hall 1, the Wildlife Garden and the Undercliff/Seaton Harbor hotspot.

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The Four Seaton Jurassic Hotspots

The Axe Valley Wetlands

The Axe Estuary Wetland project being undertaken by the East Devon District Council’s Countryside Service is one of the most exciting and expansive restoration and creation programmes in England. Its aim is to develop a ‘megamarsh’ at a landscape scale, establishing a 104ha nature reserve from the outskirts of Seaton town to the A3052 to the north. Much of the land required to realise this vision has been acquired or brought into appropriate management. New areas have been flooded or are allowed to seasonally flood; boardwalks and hides have been constructed and, over the past five-ten years, the wildlife has responded extremely well. This is now a recognised growing hot spot for birders and naturalists within Devon and surrounding counties and has the potential to become a nationally important site. At the moment is very well kept secret that is quickly becoming better known. The opportunity exists for much greater awareness and access of and to the site. The Seaton Jurassic project offers a means to capitalise upon this opportunity.

The reserve is unique in having the Seaton Tramway running alongside it; no other reserve in the UK has this opportunity of the ‘moving hide’. Birds and other mobile wildlife have become habituated to the trams allowing for an almost African style safari experience. The Tramway itself is worthy of interpretation in its own right, with a fascinating history since its conception in the 1930s through to its eventual move to Seaton in 1970, taking up a branch line axed by Dr Beeching in the 60s.

In 2012, EDDC took ownership of the marshy farmland immediately adjacent to the regeneration area of the town and the new Discovery Centre – Sheep’s Marsh. The ambition is for this area to be developed into a wholly accessible reed-bed and wetland complex. With this acquisition the final link in the chain of key sites is complete.

The existing Axe Wetland area has a number of local designations – as Local Nature Reserves; the aspiration, on join-up, will be to seek designation of the whole site as a National Nature Reserve.

The Undercliffs / Seaton Harbour and Axe Estuary mouth

The walk from Seaton to Lyme Regis through the National Nature Reserve takes the visitor through 25 million years of geological time from the late Triassic to the early Jurassic. An undercliff is the area of land between a sea cliff and an inland cliff – the inland cliff is typically a scar resulting from land that has broken free. The undercliff is torn into ridges and troughs, which are shaped by small rock falls and landslides. Massive landslides and slips characterise this western end of the NNR, with water ingress through the soft Chalk permeating to the clays below from the Triassic and Jurassic periods – high pressure of water causing the Cretaceous rocks to break away and slide downhill. One of the most famous and dramatic of these happened on Christmas Eve 1839 when a massive section of cliff slid seaward – the Great Landslip creating The Chasm and visited by Queen Victoria. This is a part of the Jurassic Coast that can tell fantastic geological stories, is incredibly rich in wildlife due to its wilderness qualities, and provides links to great human stories of discovery and resilience. These 44 HG-12-09939 latter include the pioneering and important scientist and geologist, the Rev. William Conybeare of Axmouth who believed that the world evolved through a series of catastrophes.

At the eastern end of the beach lies Seaton Harbour, where the Axe Estuary meets the sea. Here England’s oldest concrete bridge (1877) spans the river, the mouth of which has gradually infilled with the onshore drift of the pebbles. This is an area rich in a history formed of the underlying geology – the Axe Valley was created in a major rift in the Earth’s crust that stretches to the Severn Estuary and beyond. At one time the harbour was a major Roman port – the Fosse Way starting here. Archaeological remains include a medieval ship that some have called the ‘Mary Rose of Devon’ – excavation of which is proceeding. This hotspot provides ample opportunity to link the historic with the geological and ecological in the Seaton Jurassic story.

Seaton Hole

At the western end of Seaton beach, Seaton Hole and its White Cliff mark an important and geologically intriguing unconformity – where Cretaceous rocks appear to grow out of the Triassic (the Jurassic, apparently missing). Uplifting and sinking of strata cause this, but the effect is to create a spectacular series of white cliffs that run from here westward to Branscombe. At the base of these cliffs, amazing rocky shore formations provide a rock pooling experience to rival any in the south of England. The marine habitats exposed here offer a glimpse into the riches of Lyme Bay – again, one of the most important and ecologically rich in the UK.

Seaton Seafront

Views from Seaton’s seafront are of the spectacular Lyme Bay, part of a Special Area for Conservation (SAC) designated for its reefs and sea caves – these typically forming between offshore bedrock outcrops and cobble. The reefs, home to many fragile and rare species including the pink sea fan and Devon cup coral, have been subject of much conservation efforts and debate – finding sustainable solutions to the seeming polarities of nature conservation and some fisheries is an ongoing issue. Devon Wildlife Trust has played a leading role in highlighting these issues and there are opportunities through the Seaton Jurassic project to both reveal the hidden wildlife treasures off shore and to continue participatory debates over the heritage/sustainability issues involved.

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