Island Thinking Suffolk Stories of Landscape, Militarisation and Identity Sophia Davis Island Thinking

“In this thoughtful and illuminating book, Sophia Davis asks us to consider the imaginative appeal of what it means to be an island. Taking in the view from the shores of the Sufolk coast, Island Tinking looks at how ideas of nationhood, identity, defence and nature become bound together in place. Tis book uncovers the stories of how this small, seemingly isolated part of England became signifcant to emerging national narratives about Englishness, its rural inheritance and its future military technological prowess.” —Rachel Woodward, Professor of Human Geography, School of Geography, Politics & Sociology, Newcastle University, UK, and author of Military Geographies

“Sophia Davis’s Island Tinking ofers a fascinating and compelling account of mid-twentieth-century Englishness, as seen through a rich archipelagic history of one of England’s most peculiar and most iconic counties, Sufolk. Davis leads the reader through the intensely local impacts and afects of profound historical and global change, and reads the landscape wisely and well for what it can tell us about the dramatic transformations of English culture through and after the Second World War.” —Professor John Brannigan, University College Dublin, and author of Archipelagic Modernism: Literature in the Irish and British Isles, 1890–1970

“Trough close scrutiny of Sufolk stories, Sophia Davis ofers a compelling narrative of islandness in England from the mid-twentieth century. Tese accounts of landscape and militarisation, migration and the natural world, show how island thinking invokes both refuge and anxiety, security and fear. In looking back, Island Tinking captures ongoing English preoccupations.” —David Matless, Professor of Cultural Geography, University of Nottingham, and author of In the Nature of Landscape

“Island Tinking expertly takes the reader into the secrets of the Sufolk countryside in a way that no other study has. Adeptly guiding the reader through the historical layers of its twentieth century landscape, Davis exposes the deeper roots of how the nation relates to itself, using Sufolk to trace the broader themes of isolation, defense, heritage, and nostalgia. Anyone with a fascination with the countryside will enjoy the way that the county’s traditions of silence and secrecy were punctuated by pioneering conservationists, returning avocets, ex-servicemen, and the rewilding of abandoned ruins. Beautifully researched and written, the reader can discover in Island Tinking a parable for our times as we seek an understanding of how this landscape has done so much to create a sense of “Englishness”. Tis superb scholarly researched study marks an invaluable new contribution to British landscape history.” —Michael Bravo, Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge Sophia Davis Island Thinking Suffolk Stories of Landscape, Militarisation and Identity Sophia Davis Berlin, Germany

ISBN 978-981-13-9675-5 ISBN 978-981-13-9676-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9676-2

© Te Editor(s) (if applicable) and Te Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 Tis work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Te use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Te publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Te publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional afliations.

Cover image: Sophia Davis

Tis Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. Te registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Acknowledgements

Tis book has been a long time in the making. It is largely based on a Ph.D. that I completed back in 2010, and it fnally reaching the world owes a lot to Professor Nick Jardine, one of my mentors at Cambridge, who periodically and encouragingly nudged me in this direction. Nick was a wonderful support during writing the thesis, and an inspiring role model in the department, with his enduring capacity to fnd things fascinating and his devotion to teaching. I am also hugely indebted to Helen Macdonald for sparking my interest in the history of nature conservation and natural history and their weird entwining with military themes. Working with Helen during my M.Phil. both propelled my analytical and writing abilities and emboldened me to do the Ph.D., and it was a joy to have her energy, encouragement and guidance throughout the process of creating that thesis. Although I was based in history and philosophy of science, my work encroached increasingly on the territory of cultural geography, and I benefted greatly from discussions with Michael Bravo over in the geography department at Cambridge. Another cultural geographer to whom I am deeply thankful is Professor Hayden Lorimer, who examined the thesis and gave me a lot of time and support in developing postdoc ideas. Back on home

v vi Acknowledgements turf, I am very grateful to Professor Simon Schafer for a particularly helpful chat near the end of the thesis writing process. Simon was another very inspiring presence for me in the history and philosophy of science department through his generosity and openness to discussing with students. Tat particular chat took place at the Eagle pub, at the end of our department’s street, and where many a lively and thought-provoking discussion took place after our weekly departmental seminar. Both the Eagle and the tearoom up on the top foor of the department were key sites for my own intellectual development, and I am very thankful for having experienced such a warm, open academic atmosphere. My thanks go to Tamara Hug and all the staf at the department for their work in shaping it to be like that, and I greatly appreciated wide-ranging conversations there with my colleagues, particularly Leon Rocha, Rebecca Wexler, Nicky Reeves, Safron Clackson, Ruth Horry, Josh Nall, Boris Jardine, Nick Tosh and Christina MacLeish. Some of them joined me for various trips to the Sufolk coast, including a feld trip to Orford Ness with the department’s Cabinet of Natural History, and Boris kindly supplied me with some photos from one of those trips. Tis book is also the product of explorations in second-hand bookshops, as well as wandering around Sufolk by car and foot. At Cambridge, I received helpful comments on papers presented to various seminar groups within my department and in Darwin College, and I also benefted from the feedback on papers I delivered at conferences, especially the Militarised Landscapes conference in Bristol in 2008 and the Science in Society conference in Washington, DC, in 2011. My Ph.D. was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK, and I am hugely thankful for receiving that scholarship. During my subsequent scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, I greatly enjoyed conversations with Jenny Bangham, Professor Felicity Callard and Etienne Benson. Te feedback from three reviewers via Palgrave Macmillan was helpful for writing this book from the original Ph.D. thesis over the past year, and I am thankful to Joshua Pitt and Sophie Li at Palgrave Macmillan for their help during the publication process. Obtaining the permissions for the images led to some delightfully warm Acknowledgements vii communication with various people, which I appreciated very much. I would like to thank the RSPB, both for the use of their images and for some enjoyable stays at their archive in Sandy. Te Orford Museum also allowed me to use some images from their collections, and I had the honour of joining some members back in 2008 as they prepared for an exhibition on the village’s wartime history. David Hosking and Tristan Allsop both very kindly allowed me to use images from their fathers, the late Eric Hosking and the late Kenneth Allsop. Te family of the late Gordon Kinsey also gave me permission to use one of his images, and Allan Powell from the Martlesham Heath Aviation Society was very cooperative in supplying the image itself. At the Sufolk record ofce in Ipswich, the archivists were very helpful, and I’d like to thank Wayne Cocroft from English Heritage and Grant Lohoar and Angus Wainwright from the National Trust for taking time to talk with me about Orford Ness. Over the past year of writing this book, I greatly appreciated the support of my friends, with a special mention to Maggie for kicking me into action again with sending out the book proposal and listening to extended monologues on its contents, as well as Joey, Florencia, Nick, Andy and Leon for being great friends throughout. I have met many courageous and powerful people through my work in somatic therapy over the last seven years, and I am deeply grateful for the experience of being able to accompany them in their transformative journeys, which has taught me a lot. I will be forever thankful to Susanna, Peter and Liz, Lisa and Rich, James and Jenny, and Charlie and Hannah for being there for me for all this time. Finally, a massive thank you goes to my wife, Steph, for backing me in pursuing my goals and cheering me on at every stage along the way. Contents

1 Island Stories 1

2 Secluded Sufolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 31

3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 73

4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 115

5 Birds and Belonging: Te Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 161

6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 199

7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness, c.1995 to the Present 237

8 Conclusions 277

Index 295 ix List of Figures

Chapter 1 Fig. 1 Map of coastal Sufolk 17

Chapter 2 Fig. 1 Shingle Street (Photograph by the author, May 2008) 35 Fig. 2 River Alde at the Snape Maltings at dawn (Photograph by the author, May 2008) 45 Fig. 3 Anti-erosion measures near Shingle Street (Photograph by the author, May 2008) 51 Fig. 4 Martello tower with pillbox near Shingle Street (Photograph by the author, May 2008) 64 Fig. 5 Martello towers from Shingle Street towards Bawdsey (Photograph by the author, May 2008) 65

Chapter 3 Fig. 1 Anti-invasion structures known as “devil’s teeth” on Minsmere beach, 1949 (Photograph courtesy of the Eric Hosking Trust, www.erichoskingtrust.com) 79

xi xii List of Figures

Fig. 2 Anti-tank cubes near Bawdsey (Photographs by the author, May 2008) 83 Fig. 3 Pillbox near Orford (Photographs by the author, May 2008) 84 Fig. 4 Orford Battle Area map (Courtesy of Orford Museum) 87 Fig. 5 Orford castle in the “Invasion Village” series, 1940 (Courtesy of Orford Museum) 91 Fig. 6 Orford square in the “Invasion Village” series, 1940 (Courtesy of Orford Museum) 92 Fig. 7 A few hundred metres south of Shingle Street (Photograph by the author, May 2008) 106

Chapter 4 Fig. 1 Bawdsey’s transmitter masts in the 1940s (Photograph courtesy of the late Gordon Kinsey’s family, originally appearing in his Bawdsey: Birth of the Beam [1983]) 130 Fig. 2 Observation tower and pillbox at Bawdsey (Photograph by the author, May 2008) 131

Chapter 5 Fig. 1 RSPB logo from 1970 162 Fig. 2 Photograph of avocets by Eric Hosking, appearing in Te Times, 1950 (Courtesy of the Eric Hosking Trust, www.erichoskingtrust.com) 163 Fig. 3 Nesting avocets as pictured in Brown’s Avocets in England (1950) (Courtesy of the RSPB) 170 Fig. 4 Illustrations from Allsop’s Adventure Lit Teir Star, by Anthony Smith (Courtesy of Tristan Allsop) 180 Fig. 5 Illustrations from Adventure Lit Teir Star, by Anthony Smith (Courtesy of Tristan Allsop) 181

Chapter 6 Fig. 1 Bulldozer transporting soil at Minsmere in October 1969 (RSPB 1976) (Courtesy of the RSPB) 210 List of Figures xiii

Fig. 2 Visitors outside the island mere hide at Minsmere with Bert Axell top left, from Minsmere: Portrait of a Bird Reserve (1977) (Courtesy of the Eric Hosking Trust, www.erichoskingtrust.com) 221 Fig. 3 Tree hide at Minsmere, from the RSPB’s Minsmere guidebook (1952b) (Courtesy of the RSPB) 226 Fig. 4 Temporary hide at Minsmere (RSPB 1976) (Courtesy of the RSPB) 227

Chapter 7 Fig. 1 Pagoda laboratories from Orford harbour (Photograph by the author, October 2008) 243 Fig. 2 Building entrails seen from the path (Photograph courtesy of Boris Jardine) 244 Fig. 3 Concrete circle and shingle ridges (Photograph courtesy of Boris Jardine) 246 Fig. 4 AWRE laboratories in the shingle, and a sign warning of unexploded ordnance (Photograph by the author, May 2006) 246 Fig. 5 Laboratory 1 (Photograph by the author, May 2006) 248 Fig. 6 Laboratory 1 (Photograph courtesy of Boris Jardine) 249 Fig. 7 WE177 (Photograph by the author, May 2006) 249 1 Island Stories

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, a new urgency has come to asking questions about developments in British identity. Tis book explores the imaginative appeal of the island, which has always resonated strongly in Britain, dealing with developments in local and national identity broadly concerning the period 1930–1969, with a fnal chapter on 1995 to the present. Whilst considering the national and global scales is always relevant, the book focuses on a very local scale, using a regional study to unravel the motif of the island, and showing how deeply embedded this island thinking has been both on micro-scales and at the level of the nation. My focus is on coastal Sufolk in the east of England, a mostly fat land leading to heaths, marshes, rivers and the North Sea. Tis little patch of the country is closed in on the south by the River Orwell, on the west by the road from Ipswich, on the north by the River Blyth and the village of Southwold, and on the east by the sea. Referred to as an “island within an island”, this corner of England provides fascinating stories of a nation looking both outwards and inwards, trying to understand itself. As the countryside was given greater importance in mapping out Englishness during the twentieth century, this area was characterised as giving a glimpse into a more

© Te Author(s) 2020 1 S. Davis, Island Tinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9676-2_1 2 S. Davis authentic, older version of England. It was also home to the early developments in radar, the project to “make Britain an island again” after the early twentieth-century advances in aerial warfare had raised fears of Britain’s vulnerability to aerial attack. Post-war narratives of radar’s development there extended the motif of the “island nation” and the myth of the “hero’s war”. Following the Second World War, the tendency to look to the skies for invaders carried on in another guise, as a craze in amateur studies of bird migration saw the nation’s coast become dotted with bird observatories in a chain reminiscent of the wartime chain of radar stations. Described as “the heritage we are fghting for” during the war, birds and their watchers provide interesting insights into contemporary cultural imagination and identity. In another intermingling of war and birds, wartime fooding prompted the return of the avocet to this area of the country, the protection of which sparked a key episode in the history of British nature conservation. Te avocet’s protection in the late 1940s was full of ex-servicemen and behaviour that seemed to reenact wartime watching and guarding and the recovery from violent wartime experience through reorientation to local nature. Te project of creating British nature reserves took of in earnest in the post-war years, raising questions about exactly which “nature” was seen as in need of setting aside as islands of conservation. Te reserves created for the avocets on the Sufolk coast, Minsmere and Havergate Island, provide a window into the changing attitudes to nature in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, ideas of conservation and heritage took another form much later in this same area, when a former military-scientifc research site became a National Trust nature reserve in 1995. Referred to by locals as “the Island”, Orford Ness and the experiences there allow us to trace contemporary formulations of wildness, war and nation. In John Gillis’ book, Islands of the Mind (2004), he explores how islands have occupied a central place in the collective imagination and history of the Western world. As he claims, “western culture not only thinks about islands, but thinks with them” (Gillis 2004, 1). Focusing specifcally on the island-as-nation metaphor, Fiona Polack writes that “an island’s boundaries provide the sort of fxed limits that make it a perfect microcosm of … national concerns” that are “less easily 1 Island Stories 3 containable or comprehensible in other locations” (Polack 1998, 217). Tis book explores narratives of isolation and enclosure in the run-up to and aftermath of the Second World War, with a fnal chapter on memorialisation of twentieth-century warfare. It uses a variety of narratives about the region of coastal Sufolk to unpick layers connecting to ideas of England, its national past, its nature, its relationship with militarisation, and our place in it. In a world in which English nationalism has been on the rise for some time, some have argued that the Brexit vote should primarily be understood as a response to England’s loss of faith in the once-glorious British project, or what political commentator Anthony Barnett (2017) refers to as “the lure of greatness”. Tis book explores developments in how the nation related to itself during the mid-twentieth-century fall of the empire, using a highly local focus to trace broader themes of isolation, defence, heritage and nostalgia.

1 Island Nation

In 1940, Graham Clark wrote that “We are so accustomed to think of ourselves as islanders that we sometimes tend to forget that Britain is part of the European continent from which she has at certain intervals in her history become temporarily detached” (Clark 1940, 1). Tis was not part of a political text, but the beginning of a book on Prehistoric England, one of the new “British Heritage Series” that the publisher Batsford had begun the year before. Literature about the countryside had grown in popularity in the 1930s in what geographer Catherine Leyshon (see Brace 2003) has called the popular discovery of the countryside. During the Second World War, the countryside focus grew to encompass the nation’s heritage and its nature, and the English countryside was presented as what the “people’s war” fought to protect. Te special importance of the countryside during the Second World War can be seen in J. B. Priestley’s popular “Postscript” broadcasts, many of which referred to the countryside. In a particular broadcast in June 1940, he spoke of a “powerful and rewarding sense of community” experienced in the countryside, when he spent a night with the local village guard helping keep “watch and ward over the sleeping English hills and felds 4 S. Davis and homesteads” (Priestley 1940, 12). Continuing his study of the deep heritage of the island nation, Graham Clark wrote that “From the moment that geographical continuity with the continent was broken our insularity became a factor of immense signifcance”, since Britain existed “within a barrier behind which we could develop our own distinctive civilisation”. Te separation also came with the threat of these barriers being penetrated, however, as Britain became the “natural vic- tim of those who coveted her natural wealth”, and Clark describes the “waves of invaders” over the few thousand years of Britain’s history (Clarke 1940, 5, 8). Tere is a slippage from England to Britain between Priestley’s and Clark’s 1940s narratives, and this shifting scale of reference will recur throughout this book. For many of those who we will encounter, the frame of reference is England and Englishness. Indeed, the identifcation of England with the island, although false, has been “an unwaver- ing one among English writers and other English people” (Beer 1990, 269). Tis quote is from literary scholar Gillian Beer, who argues that “Te island has seemed the perfect form in the English cultural imagining … Defensive, secure, compacted, even paradisal” (Beer 1990, 269). Tat appeal can be seen in another of Batsford’s series, the Face of Britain, which included John Ingham’s book on Te Islands of England. Many of Ingham’s claims about “island fever” seem to operate on a double level, referring to the national “island” at the same time as the smaller islands within the archipelago. As Ingham put it, “the lure of islands never fades; it is as old as it is irresistible; and who among us, at one time or another, has not dreamt of possessing a small, self-sufcient kingdom of his own? Perhaps we English, with our insatiable curiosity about the sea, and reared on a tradition of Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson, are particularly prone to this emotion” (Ingham 1952, 14). Ingham attributes his interest in islands to Ronald Lockley, a naturalist who pioneered the establishment of bird observatories on the islands around Britain, beginning on his island of Skokholm in the mid-1930s, and expanding around the nation’s shores in the late 1940s and 1950s. Like Ingham, Lockley’s Islands Round Britain describes how “Tere is something about a small island that satisfes the heart of man”, 1 Island Stories 5 going on to discuss the feelings of ownership and control over the place: “a kingdom of our own set in the silver sea” (Lockley 1945, 8). Sea is as important as land for the island concept, as Beer observes— land surrounded by sea, ofering a vast extension of the island, and allowing the psychic size of the body politic to expand, bumping into others’ territory. From the early twentieth century and through the period considered by this book, the “island” of Britain was seen anew in two important aspects. With the rise of the aeroplane, it was seen from above, challenging the notion of the sea’s extension. As H. G. Wells commented in 1927, you cannot fy to dominions around the empire without “infringing foreign territory”, whereas it had been possible in the steam-ship era to sail from England around the empire through international waters, which are requisitioned as part of the island (Wells 1928, 131). Seen from the perspective of the aeroplane, the island seemed suddenly much more fragile. As Wells’ quote reminds us, along with the sea, the empire was the second great extension of the island nation, and the second to be lost in the twentieth century. Vulnerable, and reduced in size, what would happen to the island nation’s view of itself, an England that was suddenly centre without periphery? Islands have long captured the Western imagination, and have for a long time been a space for exploration, self-inquiry and satire of writers’ own cultures. Te variations in fgurations of the island form, whilst relevant to considering the nation’s view of itself, also necessarily interact with Britain’s imperial history. Discussing the anxiety bound up with Britain’s smallness in contrast to its vast empire, historian Linda Colley (2003) observes that up to the early nineteenth century, there were pervasive fears that Britain was too small to accomplish great things, and despair that its small population was draining to the colonies and to its woefully small army and navy. Arguing that Britishness was “forged” between 1707 and 1837 in confict with an external “other”, Colley (2005) observes that even when they were winning, there was often a fear that the British imperium was inherently unnatural. Tis changed during the nineteenth century, partly due to the late eighteenth-century emergence of new racial, scientifc, political and religious attitudes (Said 1994). In addition to the subsequent notions of European or British 6 S. Davis superiority, another factor was the shift at home in both real population levels and how the population was perceived following the work of Tomas Malthus and the frst census in 1801. Te fearfully small British population suddenly appeared staggeringly large, and in need of spilling over into the colonies. Britain’s sense of smallness at this time was also soothed by its accession of a very large, cheap and seemingly tractable Indian army. Britain’s empire, it should not be forgotten, always rested in fact on the backs, bayonets and taxes of those living outside the “island” of Great Britain. Another crucial factor in Britain’s changing image of itself was the Industrial Revolution, fuelled by the nation’s easy access to coal, iron and water power, making Britain’s global power seem more practicable, even inevitable. Early modern industries were all, to quote Robinson Crusoe, “island industries”, the British Industrial Revolution being enmeshed with revolutionary developments in seaborne trade, naval power, and their sciences and technologies. Advances in transport and communications addressed some of the challenges of a small set of islands attempting to handle a global empire, with trains, ships and tel- egraphs moving people, ideas, goods, information and profts at unprecedented rates. Industrialisation thus seemed to quell concerns about Britain’s inadequate base, through increasing productivity and allowing its population to boom. Nineteenth-century Britain seemed less a fragile dot on the map than a spider at the centre of a global web, an octo- pus with tentacles in every part of the globe. Returning to the notion of islands bringing with it the dual elements of land and water, one surrounded by the other, literary scholar Samuel Baker (2010) argues in his Written on the Water that Britain’s insular situation shaped not only British culture, but also the very concept of “culture” that the British Romantics developed, framing their picture of human life as a whole within the horizon of a common experience of the sea. Tus Wordsworth and others who pioneered culture talk referred to islands, shores, oceans and systems of aquatic circulation when doing so, and the British Romantics developed a new architectonic for modern poetic practice by embarking on an intense involvement with the sea. Shifting from the water back to the land, geographer Robert Peckham (2003) argues that during the nineteenth 1 Island Stories 7 century, national cultures were increasingly construed as autonomous, self-contained island-like spaces set apart from other communities beyond. In Britain, the authentic islands within the island state received particular interest in the late nineteenth century, as a relationship was forged between these two levels of island. Biogeographical and evolu- tionary writing represented the island as a site for observing preserved life forms and diversifcation, and through this interest, islands emerged as ambivalent, problematic places, at once prison and refuge, places of innocent childhood adventure and beastly aggression (Peckham 2003). Gillian Beer (1989) also observes that within the strong island discourse emerging in the mid-nineteenth-century natural sciences, islands were painted as full of resourcefulness, diversity, productivity and strangeness, exemplifed by Darwin’s Galapagos Islands fnches and Wallace’s Aru Islands birds of paradise. Contemporaneous to Darwin and Wallace’s studies, the literary island of the time stood for loneliness, tedium and lost community. By the late nineteenth century, Britain seemed to have efectively can- celled out its own islandness through empire, and the infuential late nineteenth-century historian, J. R. Seeley, framed empire as nation in line with a great deal of other contemporary works scheming to create greater imperial unity. Despite these attempts to exorcise the spectre of smallness, anxieties about Britain’s limited dimensions was never far beneath the surface. Other states seemed to loom large as Germany and Italy unifed, the Russian empire expanded, and the United States sur- vived its civil war. Although British imperialism was near its territorial peak by the turn of the century, it had already started to lose momentum, to fssure internally, and to meet serious resistance from nationalist movements in the colonies (Porter 2004). Literary high modernism explored this sense of vulnerability, combined with the view aforded by inherited centrality (Said 1994), or what Raymond Williams (1989) described as “metropolitan perception”. In the modernism of the early twentieth century, such as the writing of E. M. Forster, a defning tension exists between a nostalgic yearn- ing for a lost insular and pastoral state, and the privileges of living at the centre of an expansive industrial and imperial power. As shown in Frederic Jameson’s (1990) account of “meaning loss” in modernism, 8 S. Davis those at the centre could no longer grasp what Gertrude Stein referred to in the 1930s as “the daily island life”. Politically, such an elegiac tenderness towards a vanishing cultural integrity at the core of a mul- tinational British Empire was expressed as Little Englandism, exemplifed by the writing of Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton. Jed Esty describes England’s lost insular wholeness in the course of British expansion as a hallowing and hollowing of Englishness; empire hal- lowed Englishness by virtue of its projection onto (and invention for) the colonies, and simultaneously hollowed Englishness by splitting its being into core and periphery (Esty 2004, 26).

2 Shrinking Islands

If the notion of English islandness has been at once alluring and problematic, as this sketch suggests, then the period from around 1930 brought a new intensity to the motif of the island. It was becoming clear by the late 1930s that England’s global domain would not grow any further, and if anything, it would shrink (Darwin 1991). Te converging crises of economic disaster, imperial overextension and totalitarian threat pointed to the inevitability of British contraction. Anticolonial nationalisms were building strength on the imperial periphery, particularly in Egypt and India, and the dominions (Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand) began seeking and gaining autonomy from British authority in the 1920s and 1930s. As the challenges in 1930s Europe started diverting resources away from the empire, colonial unrest became more important and alarming (Barnett 1986). Jed Esty’s brilliant A Shrinking Island describes the intellectual and artistic projects of the 1930s as not so much pro- or anti-empire, but rather post-empire, littered with signs of British imperial contraction as both an anticipated crisis and a burgeoning historical reality. By the time the European war became imminent, England (with Scotland and Wales in tow) was already on its way to an insular status it had not experienced in hundreds of years (Esty 2004, 38). Already earlier in the century, the island had seemed to come under question through the impact of air power, with the phrase “Britain is 1 Island Stories 9 no longer an island” becoming well known after newspaper headlines used it to report Frenchman Louis Bleriot’s frst crossing of the English Channel in 1909 (Clark 1999, 42). Invasion anxieties began occupying the national psyche, fuelled by thrillers like Erskine Childers’ Te Riddle of the Sands (1903) and John Buchan’s spy novel, Te Tirty- Nine Steps (1915). Although the latter features Richard Hannay being pursued by an aeroplane, the plots usually centred on attack from the sea. After the Zeppelin attacks of the First World War, however, invasion fears shot skywards, and by the 1930s Britain was increasingly gripped by fears of vulnerability to aerial attack, the prevailing mood being fear that the next war would bring sudden annihilation from the air (Deer 2009, 167). As Air-Commodore Charlton put it in Te Air Defence of Britain, the nation’s geography had spared Britain the unending conficts of the continent, but with the coming of the air age, “At one fell swoop the barriers are lowered, the walls are breached, the rivers crossed and the mountains overtopped” (Charlton 1938, 13). Tis sense of threat took form in Baldwin’s doom-laden 1932 prediction that the “bomber will always get through”, something of a mantra in the 1930s, and by the end of the decade, fear of invasion by parachutists had become acute (Patterson 2007, 76). Populist next-war fction from the time often focused on air power (Searle 2009), and clearly, the idea of the physically bounded island nation had gained a new level of attention, and seemed newly vulnerable. In parallel with these shifts, late modernist writing translated the end of empire into a resurgent concept of national culture, a rediscovery of the insular whole without its periphery. Unlike earlier nostalgic writing, this was a redemptive act, reclaiming territorial and cultural integrity for English culture and thus in a sense disavowing the history of British expansionism. As England shrank back to its original island centre, it could be reimagined outside of the stream of worldwide modernisation and “progress”. Jed Esty (2004) describes an “anthropological turn” within writers who transitioned from high to late modernism, bringing an anthropological notion of Englishness back to the core. For centuries, defnitions of the English homeland had been situated in the dual- isms of home/abroad, modern/primitive and metropolis/periphery, and now such representations would have to be reworked to make sense of 10 S. Davis

England on its own terms. Exemplifying this trend, T. S. Eliot shifted from the multicultural world of Te Waste Land to the sacred national sites in “Little Gidding”, and E. M. Forster moved from Italian and Indian culture to his midcentury pageants and country rambles. Instead of romantically projecting the irrational and the primitive onto the colonial periphery, English intellectuals had to redis- cover magic and mystery in the centre (Mellor 1987). In addition to this reenchanting of England, the 1930s saw a blossoming of documentary realist novels, in which the nation’s daily life and society were taken as something unknown but discoverable. A good example is George Orwell’s exploration of what he considers the unknown territories of English life in Te Road to Wigan Pier (1934). Tis anthropological, documentary tendency is also demonstrated by the Mass Observation project, in which observers throughout the nation recorded people’s day-to-day interactions. Created by a poet, a flmmaker and a sociologist, and infuenced by surrealism, Mass Observation began by treating each individual as a microcosm of society, styling itself as a “science of ourselves”, and aiming to bring the scientifc citizen into being through its observers (Jardine 2016). Te 1930s also witnessed the (re)discovery of the English countryside, with a boom in domestic tourism fuelled by books like H. V. Morton’s In Search of England (1927), and a wave of amateur-naturalist books revealing the nationally sacred landscapes. Batsford published over 50 titles on the countryside between 1934 and 1940, with much of the countryside writing focused on locating England’s national past in the countryside (Brace 1999). Tis was also the period in which the preservationist movement gained momentum, in what Raphael Samuel described as the “historicist turn in national life” (Samuel 1998, 139). A striking literary example of the “anthropological turn” is Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts, in which Mrs. Swithin talks of England’s pre- history, before it was an island, when “Once there was no sea … No sea at all between us and the continent” (Woolf 1941, 23). Te main focus of the book is a village pageant-play that tells England’s “island history” through fragmentary snapshots separated by gramophone music. As the audience attempts to synthesise the meaning from the fragments, the Clergyman saying “Surely, we unite?”, an aeroplane formation overhead 1 Island Stories 11 disrupts their eforts, acting as the fnal burst of music and ensuring that only fragments remain. Gillian Beer describes Woolf as particularly acute in her understanding of the aeroplane in relation to the cultural form of the island (Beer 1990, 267). As the audience discuss the play and the Clergyman, Mr. Streatfeld’s words—“And if one spirit animates the whole, what about the aeroplanes?” (Woolf 1941, 230)—Woolf deepens her use of the island to explore the difcult relationship of air power to the island nation. Woolf’s use of the island form also recalls John Brannigan’s (2014) argument that “archipelagic modernism” turned to the “peripheral” spaces of islands, coasts and the sea to reinvent the Irish and British archipelago as a plural and connective space. From the midst of the looming imperial contraction and growing sense of vulnerability, during the Second World War the British propaganda machine battled to keep alive the island form. Churchill’s speeches were full of references to the besieged “island fortress” and our “island nation”. As part of the ofcial “war culture” in Britain, such rhetoric held a great deal of power. In his excellent Culture in Camoufage, Patrick Deer discusses how the Ministry of Information worked through various channels to create a vision of “a fully mobilised island fortress, loyal empire, and modernised war machine ready to wage a futuristic war of space and movement” (Deer 2009, 3). Within this imagery existed a tension between the “island fortress”—England standing alone—and the expansive empire standing there too, much of which was being recruited in the war efort. Wartime media representations attempted to resolve this tension through inclusive imagery of a “people’s war” at home and a “people’s empire”, as Wendy Webster (2005) explores in Englishness and Empire. Attempting to address diverse audiences across empire and metropolis, as well as to quell a strong feeling of anti-imperialism in America, “people’s empire” imagery portrayed a temperate empire through themes of welfare and partner- ship, showing the common people of Britain and the “British world” united across vast distances in a common cause. Togetherness was a recurrent theme in empire imagery, and although there was a clear preference for the racial community of white Britons—the “sons of empire” from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa—, the war 12 S. Davis marked a twentieth-century high point in racially inclusive imagery of Britishness (Webster 2005). As war receded and the empire shrank, diferent views took hold. Te home front imagery during wartime had emphasised the “little England” of the common people, united across genders and class, and characterised by humour and quiet courage, modest domestic pleasures, homely comforts and kindliness. Tis was the image of the quiet, pipe-smoking J. B. Priestley, whose wartime radio broadcasts had reached 40% of the adult population in 1941 (Nicholas 1996, 244). Films on the home front, such as Millions Like Us (1943), Te Gentle Sex (1943) and A Canterbury Tale (1944) had shown women abandon- ing domesticity to serve in aircraft factories, the services and the land army. But this “people’s war” imagery was eclipsed in the 1950s by a new narrative of a “hero’s war”. Te inclusive wartime imagery faded from view in 1950s depictions of the war, as women, home front civilians, Indians and Africans were largely expelled from wartime narratives. Churchill became a cult fgure, and his many-volume autobiography appeared in the late 1940s and 1950s, which Deer argues “audaciously abolished the distinction between history and memoir”, giving a decades-long “popular and enduring afterlife” to ofcial war culture and the “island fortress” discourse (Deer 2009, 236). In contrast to Priestley’s “little England”, Churchill represented a “greater Britain” signifed by martial masculinity and imperial identity on the front line. Adding to this shift, as the empire was dismantled and relabelled as the Commonwealth, the imagery formerly associated with empire was replaced with narratives emphasising order and domesticity (Webster 2005). Te imagery associated with empire in wartime—of martial masculinity and fghting away from home—became associated with the Second World War in war narratives of the 1950s. Webster argues that whilst the Second World War was reworked from the “people’s war” into a “hero’s war” in the 1950s, the exclusive story of national greatness took over the territory vacated by empire imagery. Second World War flms were the most popular genre after comedy in the 1950s, with top box-ofce earners like Te Dam Busters (1955) and Reach for the Sky (1956). Such flms showed exciting adventure, and celebrated the virtues of the old imperial hero—active, resourceful, manly, courageous, 1 Island Stories 13 high-minded and self-sacrifcing. Te idea of a heroic white British masculinity was thus transposed from an imperial to a Second World War setting, ofering an enlarged and dignifed idea of Britishness, a narrative of national destiny, and a new energising myth of the nation. Tis notion of England beginning to function as a symbolic replacement for its colonies is closely bound with Esty’s “anthropological turn”. Along with these narratives, an important new strand in post-war British politics and self-image was the so-called “special relationship” with the United States. Tis phrase, voiced by Winston Churchill in 1946 as a special relationship with both America and the British Commonwealth and empire, provided Britain with a heroic narrative of national destiny based on the idea of English-speaking peoples. As the realities of power emerged, however, wartime anxieties that Britain was being invaded and occupied by American troops—and that Britain was dependent on America for victory—were succeeded by anxieties that Britain was fnancially dependent on America for survival (Webster 2005, 82). Tere were concerns about the Americanisation of British culture, and the Suez crisis of 1956 highlighted tension within Anglo- American relations, showing American dominance. From within these changing times, it is helpful to follow Linda Colley in acknowledging the extent to which Britain’s one-time empire was characterised at its core by insecurities and persistent constraints, and that “one relic of empire has sometimes been a markedly schizoid sense of national self and size, a perception that whilst Britain is naturally small, it is also simultaneously and deservedly large” (Colley 2003, 189). To this end, she quotes Winston Churchill, who once remarked that: “We on this small island have to make a supreme efort to keep our place and status, the place and status to which our undying genius entitles us” (quoted in Barnett 2001, 81).

3 An Island Within the Island

In the period of Esty’s anthropological turn and Samuel’s historicist turn, Island Tinking investigates a series of stories within a small geographical area that witnessed the 1930s development of radar, the 14 S. Davis wartime creation of many enclosed military spaces, the post-war recolonisation by the avocet, and the subsequent establishment of enclosed nature reserves. Common to these episodes was a presence of island-like places, the rhetoric concerning which brought them into conversation with the island nation as it underwent its inward turn. Te language of place in these stories also resonated at a regional level as the county of Sufolk was written as an island of the past. I investigate a series of stories or moments within this region, most of which take place within the period 1930–1969, with the fnal chapter jumping to the early twenty-frst century. Tese stories are treated as a collection rather than a comprehensive overview or chronicle of change, each ofering an insight into what John Taylor has called “the English obsession with landscape” (Taylor 1994, 6). Trough this series of moments within a small corner of the archipelagic nation, the local themes speak to a sense of broader identities or associations. Te stories are taken to be instances of what Homi Bhabha described as the transitional social reality of nations. Bhabha uses encounters with the nation as it is written to explore the temporality of culture and social consciousness: the nation-space in the process of articulating its elements, where history is in the process of being made, and the image of cultural authority may be ambivalent because it is “caught, uncertainly, in the act of ‘composing’ its powerful image” (Bhabha 1990, 3). Te performativity of language in narratives of the nation is a crucial concept on which the present book relies. In Raphael Samuel’s classic book, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain (1998), he tours a variety of accounts of the national past as viewed from diferent perspectives and points in time, including their “foundation myths”. Historian Paul Ward (2004) approaches Britishness as having been constantly shifting since the 1870s, looking at topics like class, gender, region and ethnicity. In Tom Nairn’s 1977 study of British decline, he observes a particularly conservative nationalism throughout imperial times, “a sense of underlying insular identity and common fate” (2003, 32), which recognises class divisions but places more importance on maintaining stability. Nairn refers to the mobilisation of this nationalism for external warfare up until the fall of the empire as strength- ening its inward conservatism and its conviction of an internal unity. 1 Island Stories 15

For Nairn, an advocate of the break-up of Britain, this nationalism has been useless outside of imperial conditions, since it inhibits radical change or reform. Island Tinking is concerned with this insular unity during the empire’s decline, approached not through politics, but through the countryside and the mythical histories located there. In Chapter 2, I embark on a journey around eastern Sufolk: an “island within an island” as it was described in 1950 (Pennington 1950, 167). Tis chapter draws on countryside writing, a genre that fourished in interwar Britain as its many regions were described in guidebooks, historical studies and other non-fctional writing. Touring 1940s–1950s writing, I show how the Sufolk of post-war imperial contraction was imagined as isolated and secluded, and as preserving a more authentic version of England. In particular, the sea, the sky and old Martello towers were written as essential elements to understanding Sufolk, and I explore how they crystallised nostalgic views of the region, written alternately as sinister or as untouched by war and modern technology. Te nation’s edge is also the focus of Chapter 3, where I consider the theme of wartime intruders and contested understandings of the region. During the Second World War, Sufolk became home to countless airfelds and their staf, a ten-mile strip of coast was evacuated and covered in anti-invasion structures, and villages were evacuated for various military purposes. I follow one such village, Iken, through its wartime use as a battle training area, and its subsequent release in 1947. Drawing on press articles and oral histories, I show how the landscape took on the character of no-man’s-land or even the front line. Jostling with this view, post-war countryside writing persistently wrote over the local traces of militarism, looking instead to the past, as if an older version of England was preserved there. Invasion never seems far from the imagination on these shores, however, and in the 1990s another evacuated village was propelled to national fame through rumours of a failed 1940 invasion attempt, just south of Iken at Shingle Street. In Chapter 4, the themes of militarisation and invasion multiply as Orford Ness and Bawdsey—a few miles from Iken and Shingle Street— were used for the military-scientifc research that developed radar in the late 1930s, framed as the project to “make Britain an island again”. A string of watching stations was constructed along the coast, later 16 S. Davis credited as crucial to winning the Battle of Britain. Narratives of that story are laced with imagery of those places being islands themselves, and the researchers calling themselves “the islanders”, and radar was also depicted in ways that seemed to restore a commanding sense of vision to a nation in blackout. Te “island fortress” discourse circulated in ofcial stories of radar after the war, salvaging the sanctity of the nation during a transition into a time when national isolation had become increasingly problematic. Chapter 5 weaves a diferent intruder into the region’s story, in the form of a bird. In 1947, the avocet began breeding in two areas fooded for war-related reasons, Havergate Island and Minsmere, after a hundred-year absence from Britain. Guarded and kept secret by former servicemen, the birds then came under the protection of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), who took the birds’ success as a symbol of success for British nature conservation, and later made the bird their logo. In a nation increasingly full of birdwatchers, this story captured the public imagination. Exploring the theme of militarised nature, I show how the story was framed in terms of secrecy and privacy, and related to the public as a continuation of wartime watching and guarding. Protecting birds (including avocets) also appeared in post-war fction as a way for returning servicemen to recover, where nature appeared both as intrinsically militarised and simultaneously as a refuge from war: the Britain they had been fghting for. Developing the avocet’s story, Chapter 6 focuses on the development of nature reserves. Te RSPB’s management at Havergate and Minsmere nature reserves was both pioneering and crucial in the development of British nature conservation practices, making them excellent places to investigate which nature was seen in need of conserving in post-war Britain. Minsmere was key to a new phase in British nature conservation in the late 1950s, in which the survival of wild places was seen to need much more active interference, and during the 1960s, bulldozers created new feeding areas, and screened walkways and observation hides orchestrated and hid visitors’ movement. Te avocets were also important to the development of the RSPB’s flm unit in the mid-1950s, with the birds thus becoming visible not only to the reserve’s visitors but also to people attending public lectures and watching televisions. 1 Island Stories 17

Fig. 1 Map of coastal Suffolk 18 S. Davis

Conservation and heritage form the focus of Chapter 7, through a place that brings together my intertwining themes of nature and militarisation in yet another form. Tis is Orford Ness, a long, shingle spit across from Havergate Island and Shingle Street, which was home to various forms of military-scientifc testing throughout the twentieth century, including an atomic weapons research establishment. After being abandoned in the 1970s, the Ness was bought in 1993 by the National Trust, who view it as a monument to the Cold War. Te Trust’s strategy has been to let the various, mysterious buildings there slowly decay and be reclaimed by nature. I use my own experience at the site as well as interviews with the site’s managers to investigate the way that the site functions in terms of ideas about nature and destruction. I explore the way that military science is thus brought into the heritage industry, contextualising the experience at Orford Ness with ideas of memorialisation and aesthetics (Fig. 1).

4 Regional Geographies

Within the context of England’s shifting relationship to itself and its island-like nature, this book uses an intensely regional study of an island-like patch of the country in order to trace developments from around 1930. Te stories are cross-disciplinary in nature, creating a thickly textured picture of landscape and history through interweaving natural and environmental history, literary history and military history. Connecting local issues to broader themes, it tours through the history of English countryside, nature conservation and national heritage, as well as episodes connecting science and warfare, and the militarisation of landscape. To achieve this it draws on a wide range of source material, including countryside guides, fction, local oral histories, archive material in natural history, memoirs, interviews, and the author’s own impressions of the landscapes. After falling out of fashion for some time in geography, regions have made something of a comeback in the past two decades, refashioned as relational, polymorphic and multi-dimensional. A recent edited volume on Reanimating Regions explores what regional geographies might mean 1 Island Stories 19 today, following the non-representational movement within geography, and investigating the spatial tensions within and between regions, as well as between region, place and landscape (Riding and Jones 2017). Resisting the attempt to fnd a single defnition, this volume views a region as a temporary permanence, something held stable at diferent points in time, for diferent purposes. Te key point of interest in what Martin Jones describes as the “new new regional geography” is the process of region-making. Within this comeback, a prominent proponent of the region, David Matless, has called for a renewed interest in “regional cultural landscapes”, exemplifed in his work on the Norfolk Broads (Matless 1996, 2000; Matless et al. 2005). Matless’ In the Nature of Landscape (2014) ofers an excursion around these wetlands, through a wide range of stories and levels of appreciation of the area, and describes work in regional cultural landscapes as investigating how regions came to be through contested boundaries and history, claims to cultural authority, and the formation of iconic sites and understandings of landscape. Matless’ book ranges from the nineteenth century to the present, unfolding the 1950s debates over the artifcial origins of the Broads, exploring changing practices of conduct, photography and leisure, and investigating plant and animal landscapes through narratives that created Broadland as a scientifc region, and that shifted from sporting masculine adventure to the development of spaces of protection and reserved practices of seeing. In addition to Matless’ work, Island Tinking builds on many other studies of localities, and the natural histories, identities and animal landscapes associated with them. Infuential within these is Hayden Lorimer’s explorations of the Cairngorms and the wider Scottish Highlands on feld trips and the geographer-citizen, reindeer herding and deer stalking (Lorimer 2000, 2006; Lorimer and Spedding 2005). Fraser MacDonald’s research also resonates with the present study in its combination of military and empire themes with folklore, photography and archaeology in shaping the cultural histories of the Hebridean island landscapes (MacDonald 2006a, b). Pyrs Grufudd has studied the geographical discourses of Welsh nationalist movements in the interwar period, and the construction in travel writing of Wales as 20 S. Davis a place of diference (Grufudd 1995; Grufudd et al. 2000). Looking at non-fctional rural writing, Catherine Leyshon (see Brace 2003) has examined the uses of history in regional and national identity making in the Cotswolds in the frst half of the twentieth century. Te narration of landscape and environment also formed the focus of a collection in Cultural Geographies, focusing on themes of temporality, locality and textuality (Daniels and Lorimer 2012). Shifting register, Mike Pearson’s book ‘In Comes I’: Performance, Memory and Landscape uses a patch of Lincolnshire to explore performative engagement with landscape, using feld observation, autobiographic memory and historical geography to show landscape as a “matrix of related stories” (Pearson 2006, 17). Feeding into this local level is a broader area of research in historical geography connecting landscape and identity. Following Raymond Williams’ (1975) seminal analysis of the opposition between country and city, and the developments in the idea of the pastoral, historians and geographers showed the importance of the English countryside in defning national identity, and investigated the emergence and development of its portrayal. Te very idea of “landscape” was destablised by showing it to be indebted to nineteenth-century nostalgic, bourgeois ideas of an ideal Britain, such that practices of representation were never far removed from practices of power (Barrell 1980; Cosgrove 1985). Tis opened up a long-running discussion of the meanings and dis- tinctions between landscape, place and space, leading to a great variety of approaches in cultural and historical geography (Daniels 1993; Olwig 1996; Merriman et al. 2008). As Peter Coates neatly put it in his book on Western attitudes to nature, “every culture projects its values onto nature and then holds them up as nature’s own authority, deploy- ing this apparently unimpeachable and independent source of authority to justify its vision of society and the world” (Coates 1998, 146). Moving from mirrors to tangles, cultural geographer John Wylie (2007) describes landscapes as tensions of proximity/distance, observation/ inhabitation, culture/nature, all of which create a tangle between subject and object. Taking cultural geography into the particular case of Englishness, John Taylor’s A Dream of England (1994) investigates ideas of Englishness connected to photography and tourism in the English 1 Island Stories 21 countryside in the late nineteenth, mid- and late twentieth centuries. Picturesque appreciation of landscape spread across the social spectrum in the nineteenth century as an escape from urban life, enlarging the appeal of the rural idyll, which the English, Taylor states, have used to defne themselves and remain united as a nation. David Matless’ Landscape and Englishness (1998) explores rural and urban versions of national landscapes between 1918 and the 1950s, crossing between studies of landscape, identity and militarisation, and examining the changing representations of nature and the countryside during wartime, and the 1940s discourses on planning and reconstruction. Other key texts in environmental history cover the social history of the twentieth-century English countryside (Burchardt 2002; Howkins 2003), as well as the competing interpretations of and claims to the countryside in the 1930s (Lowerson 1980). More recently, a collection of essays on the English countryside explores counter-currents to the notion of the countryside as rural idyll (Haigron 2017). Island Tinking ’s concern with narratives of memory and place also resonates with the work of Kitty Hauser, whose Bloody Old Britain (2008) combines cultural histories of archaeological enquiry, visual technology and historical imagination in the fgure of O. G. S. Crawford. We already encountered Raphael Samuel’s notion of the historicist turn in national life, and the rise of preservationism and the heritage industry forms another background to this study (Lowenthal 1985; Wright 1985; Hunter 1996), with a related body of historical work concerning the rise of nature conservation in twentieth-century Britain (Evans 1992; Sheail 1998). Samuel (1998) took up the theme of the coexistence of myth and history as complementary and sometimes intersecting modes of representing the past, and Patrick Wright (1985) also explored nostalgia and the mythical representation of the national past—postulated as vague, inscrutable, and as if still alive now, this history-as-identity providing a lost inheritance in the face of the empir- ically alienated past. Some particular aspects of this tendency include the appeal of places that seem to have meaning in themselves, and the glorifcation of war, although the ties between the idea of nations and the romanticisation of war are hardly new (Samuel 1998, 8). Towards the end of the twentieth century, David Lowenthal was writing that 22 S. Davis

“nothing seems too recent or trivial to commemorate” (1996, 3), locating this desire to salvage in an attempt to fend of irreversible change. “Heritage history”, as opposed to scholarly history, generally involves a strong mythicisation and celebration of the past in the service of the present, providing the material for societies’ continuous self-representation, or what Ben Anderson famously described as creating the “imagined communities” that we call nations (Anderson 1983). Anderson argues that the nation is imagined because it is not directly experienced as a community, but is joined through images held in the minds of its members. Te particular images of nature and the Britain to be conserved are therefore of key interest, informing notions of British identity and citizenship.

5 Military Geographies

As the title of this book indicates, militarisation is interwoven into the perceptions of the countryside and nation in the stories it considers, where militarisation can be taken to mean the operation of military frameworks in broader contexts than direct combat. Island Tinking builds on recent scholarship on military geographies and militarised landscapes, which investigates the pervasive infuence of elements of militarism on everyday life and understandings of landscape. Historian Michael Geyer defnes militarisation as “the contradictory and tense social process in which civil society organises itself for the production of violence” (Geyer 1989, 79), characterising the interwar years as the fulcrum in the militarisation of Europe, when the prepa- ration for and threat of war became a central theme. David Edgerton also argues against the traditional picture of interwar Britain in military decline, demonstrating that this was a key phase in the creation of the military-industrial-academic complex of the “warfare state” (Edgerton 2006). According to Geyer, during this period society began to organise itself for war (rather than war organising society), as the military was nationalised, danger was socialised (no longer separating soldiers from civilians), and weapons production and control were industrialised. 1 Island Stories 23

Militarisation constitutes at its core a border-crossing between military and civilian institutions, activities and aims, and sociologist Jackie Orr (2004) argues that the psychology of the civilian home front became important in war from the context of two early twentieth-century technological developments: the aeroplane changed the dynamics of the delivery of destruction, bringing it to civilians’ doorsteps; and the radio brought mass communication about the war into their living rooms. Following these developments, there emerged a new consensus in the Second World War that winning required understanding and govern- ing the subjectivity of the citizen. Several studies of the Second World War and its Cold War aftermath have therefore focused on the recon- fguration of the borders between the psyche of the soldier and civilian (Rose 1996; McEnaney 2000), and the way that a militarised mindset is shaping the modern world (Bourke 2014). Other theorists of war have placed a diferent framework on its development, notably Paul Virilio’s emphasis on the increasing speed of war and on processes of mediation (Virilio 1989, 2002). For Virilio, the twentieth-century development of warfare centred on the increasing primacy of the image over the object, as perception and representation have increasingly assumed responsibility for ordering space. A second important contribution from militarisation studies is the recent focus on the cultural meanings of militarised landscapes. Rachel Woodward’s work on military geographies emphasises the shaping of civilian space and social relations by military objectives, rationales and structures (Woodward 2001, 2005). She calls attention to more- than-confict situations, since networks of military training grounds, test sites, technologies and administration centres are always in place, and she focuses on the social consequences of military presence, for instance its experience as a source of stress or security. Along these lines, Jacqueline Tivers (1999) has investigated the iconic status of military establishments to those inside and outside of the services at Aldershot, considering the organisation of space around polarities of meaning. Woodward (1998, 2001) has also investigated the co-construction of landscape and gender, and recent trends in military environmentalist 24 S. Davis discourse from the Ministry of Defence and the army. Anthropological studies of militarism have multiplied in the last two decades, focusing on ethnic violence and genocide, memory work, the phenomenol- ogy of violence, nuclear weapons and American militarism (Gusterton 2007). Concerning the responses and conficts over militarism, David Wood (2004) has explored the changing real and symbolic construction of space as territory at RAF Menwith Hill. More recently, Mariana Dudley (2012) has contributed an excellent study of the environmental history of the defence estates and rise of military environmentalism at Dartmoor, Castlemartin, Salisbury Plain Training Area, Tyneham and Sennybridge Training Area. Another key issue in militarisation is the cultural geography of military representation, including memorialisation. For the case of aerial warfare, Pyrs Grufudd (1991) has shown how war artists of the Second World War aligned war in the air with the pastoral, using symbolism of the prehistoric and archaeological. Patrick Wright’s (1996) Te Village that Died for England looks at Tyneham, the Dorset village that was evacuated in 1943 to create a fring range and never repopulated. Wright uses a thickly descriptive approach to examine the campaigns to restore the village to its former inhabitants, which mobilised symbolism of essential rural Englishness, and mapped increasing distrust of the government in the 1960s–1970s onto the refusal to give back the village. Sam Edwards’ (2015) study of the memorialisation of American troops in East Anglia is also particularly relevant. Viewing commemoration as a continual process of creating collective memory, Edwards traces the contours of this process in post-1945 Europe. He explores the “military memory” created by American military elites, which normalised the experience of war through a framework of heroism, patriotism, material sacrifce, masculine camaraderie and unit pride. Tis challenges the view that the Second World War put an end to the traditional languages of memory and mourning that had fourished after the First World War, and Edwards unravels how the American approach to memorialisation was adapted into the “community memory”, shaped by a complex mix of regional and national concerns often defned by local elites. 1 Island Stories 25

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Non-fction writing on the British countryside grew hugely in the 1930s, and this chapter uses such writing to conduct a tour through Sufolk from roughly 1930 to 1960. On one level, this allows us to become familiar with the region of the book, and on another, we meet visualisations of the national past through particular features of the landscape. During the Second World War, various cultural out- puts evoked the mythical landscape of Deep England, exemplifed by J. B. Priestley’s celebration of nature and the English countryside. As Victoria Stewart observes, wartime non-fction writing attempted to “assert the continuities of the countryside by emphasising its traditions, history and natural cycles” and “to champion the country as the repos- itory for values that the war should be defending” (Stewart 2006, 96). Whilst the ofcial war culture of the “island fortress” worked through the complex channels of the Ministry of Information, some writers engaged in what Elizabeth Bowen described as “resistance writing”. In what Patrick Deer (2009) describes as wartime’s “cultural boom”, Bowen resisted the mythical national landscape of “village England”, and Rex Warner and Virginia Woolf questioned the relationship between militarism and authoritarianism. George Orwell satirised the

© Te Author(s) 2020 31 S. Davis, Island Tinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9676-2_2 32 S. Davis power of state propaganda, and Henry Green explored the ambivalence of the experience of blackout. Following such critical explorations, one of the most common themes of post-war writing was writers depicting their own or others’ war experiences, exposing the difculty of making the transition from the army to civilian life, or from war to peacetime (Stewart 2006, 135). Deer, however, sees a late-1940s emergence of a narrowly British national “victory culture” in which the ambivalence and experimenta- tion of writers like Bowen, Woolf and Green had no place (Deer 2009, 239). Churchill’s authoritative memoirs and the transition of the “people’s war” to the “hero’s war” gave a long afterlife to the island fortress imagery and ofcial war culture. Early-1950s writing seemed to reinforce the tendency of forgetting the experience of the war, and Jed Esty (2004) argues that writers in the mid-century turned towards insular ethnographies of the homeland, rediscovering and reenchanting the island’s interior and national past in the face of the shrinking empire. In popular media, Wendy Webster (2005) shows that post-war narratives on colonial wars and immigration portrayed a “little England” under threat, as well as continuing the image of imperial greatness through celebrating the martial masculinity of ofcers and leaders in the war. From within this context, the cultural form of the island found expression in isolated Sufolk, which was written as keeping alive a more authentic version of the disappearing country. Sufolk’s countryside, however, underwent massive changes during the Second World War, from the movement of people to changes in land use, with anti- invasion defences on the coast, airbases and battle training areas, and more mechanised and extensive farming. As if forming an antidote to or escape from these changes, countryside writing evidenced a static form of time. Already in interwar writing on the countryside, as Catherine Leyshon (see Brace 1999, 2003a) shows, the past was invoked to show particular regions alternately as unspoilt and distant from modern England. Leyshon uses the example of the Cotswolds to explore how early twentieth-century rural writing constructed regional identities, creating a powerful myth of regionalism that together informed a discourse of national unity. 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 33

In Sufolk, isolation was read into the countryside and used to draw it into association with the past. Tis chapter examines representations of Sufolk in its popular (re)discovery in popular guidebooks, topo- graphical writing and histories, particularly through ideas of seclusion, region and nation. Especially in post-war writing, Sufolk appeared as a secluded, eerily disconnected remnant of another time, channelling the threats to the “little England”, and I explore the “island” of Sufolk in connection with the role played by time in perceptions of the countryside. Certain features, notably the sea, sky and old Martello towers, were written as essential elements to understanding Sufolk, and I show how these features crystallised nostalgic views of the region, written alternately as sinister or as untouched by war and modern technology.

1 Discovering the Countryside

Troughout the 1920s and 1930s, use of the British countryside increased dramatically in popularity and availability down the social scale (Coates 1998; Howkins 2003). First World War propaganda had positioned the rural landscape as the essential England being fought for, and there emerged an unprecedented interest in the English countryside and the open air, fuelled by a dramatic increase in suburban housing after the war and the cultural nationalism following the 1931 economic crisis. John Lowerson describes “a nostalgia for a resurrected past, a rediscovery of yeoman roots, a search for a half-remembered countryside”, which for many people was the “real” England within which they wanted to locate themselves (Lowerson 1980, 260). As diferent groups fought for their rights to use and view the countryside, many focused on the lack of open space in the countryside available to the broader public. Te new Ramblers’ Association called for access to the mirages beyond Shefeld and Manchester, blocked from working-class use by class property rights, and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England began pressurising the government to create national parks. 34 S. Davis

Te growing interest in the countryside was encouraged by a food of writing, from pulp countryside literature to fction and poetry, and popular magazines with subjects ranging from hunting and ornithology to archaeology (Miller 1995). All of these provide insights into the changing values, symbolism and understanding of the English countryside (Darby 2000). I use the term “countryside writing” to refer to non-fction rural writing, including historical, architectural and topographic guides, vast numbers of which were published in the 1920s–1930s: H. V. Morton’s In Search of England (1927) went through 24 editions in a decade; Robert Hale produced the Regional Books and County Books series; and Batsford produced 113 countryside books in seven series (Brace 2003b). Tis food ranged from the high quality of John Betjemen’s Shell Guides (beginning in 1934) and distinguished writers like H. J. Massingham, to the prolifc outpourings of S. P. B. Mais. In Mais’ 23 guidebooks between 1930 and 1940, including titles like Tis Unknown Island, he provided hurried journeys composed of a succession of glimpses and interesting views, which were eagerly consumed as car-ownership rapidly increased (Merriman 2007). Malcolm Chase (1989) argues that this genre of writing endowed rural England with the essential qualities of Englishness, a trend peak- ing between 1930 and 1945. As Victoria Stewart observes, writers like C. E. M. Joad and Massingham reacted against industrialisation, championing rural England as the real, virtuous England, and calling for its preservation (Stewart 2006, 102). Catherine Leyshon describes how interwar rural books and their drawings presented an image of what might be termed “village England”, and how they “naturalised a version of rural England in which timelessness and continuity were powerful recurring motifs” (Brace 2003b, 52). Leyshon argues that interwar countryside writing defned the nation through the uniqueness and individuality of the regional, rural landscapes within it. Rather than political boundaries, for example, books’ subjects were often areas characterised as possessing some essential quality, landscape or style (Brace 2003a). Accentuating that trend, the eastern county of Sufolk, along with the broader region in which it is situated, East Anglia, was always described as secluded, somehow detached from the rest of the country (Fig. 1). 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 35

Fig. 1 Shingle Street (Photograph by the author, May 2008)

2 Secluded Suffolk

In the countryside writing of the late 1920s and 1930s, Sufolk’s seclusion was expressed in terms of the spirit of adventurous exploring. Hugh Meredith, for example, advised readers of his 1929 book, East Anglia: “If you like solitude you should follow the coast northward past Bawdsey and on to Shingle Street, that extraordinary spit of pebbles that provides at once a fascinating study to the geologist and an addi- tional spice for daring yachtsmen” (Meredith 1929, 50). Te appeal to the solitary traveller was repeated in Lilian Redstone’s Sufolk in 1930, where she noted that although many visitors come to Sufolk at holiday times, there is little through-trafc, and “many of the wide heaths remain unspoilt … Sufolk, in fact, still maintains a somewhat isolated position” (Redstone 1930, 92). With the socially stratifed ways of travelling, this emphasis on solitary exploration was implicitly set against the lower-class “infestations of trippers and their young” that Doreen 36 S. Davis

Wallace (1939, 106) described at some of East Anglia’s coastal resorts. Whilst countryside enthusiasts wanted to promote appreciation of the countryside, they were often extremely wary of lower-class urban types, regarded as requiring education in how to appreciate the countryside, as in C. E. M. Joad’s (1938) writing in Britain and the Beast. East Anglia’s insular nature was often attributed to its geographical isolation from the rest of the country in ancient Britain. Tis can be seen in Charles Ford’s comment in Te Landscape of England that “Te physical segregation of East Anglia, bounded almost on three sides by the long sweep of its coastline, has had its efect not only on its history but in maintaining its isolated local independence” (Ford 1933, 32). A second type of foundation myth, in addition to Sufolk’s and East Anglia’s geographical isolation, concerned the human history of three key periods. Regional identity was drawn frst from the Iceni tribe, there before the Roman occupation, as in M. R. James’ 1930 book on Norfolk and Sufolk, where “East Anglia is a very ancient district regarded from the human point of view”, whose written history begins with the Iceni tribe (James 1987, 2). Te second period of human history key to its identity concerns the Angles, who frst unifed East Anglia. Tis England even ordered its chapters according to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, East Anglia, Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, showing the appeal of that period of history in which “England” frst came into existence (Shears 1936). Tese factors—physical geography and tribal origins—were often combined, as in O. J. R. Howarth’s study of the nation’s “scenic heritage”. Here, we read that “At the time of the invasion and settlement by the Angles in the second half of the ffth century, East Anglia was self-contained within the limits of the sea to the north and east, the forest to the south, the Fen country to the west” (Howarth 1937, 69). Te third key period associated with East Anglia was the fourishing of the wool industry, and the magnifcent Perpendicular churches that came from it, with the associated “golden age” in the fourteenth and ffteenth centuries. Beyond these particular defning points, Sufolk’s past was usually told with a meander through its agricultural and seafaring history and a few key fgures: the painters Tomas Gainsborough and John Constable, and the poets George Crabbe and Edward Fitzgerald. 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 37

According to Meredith, for instance, “Woodbridge is inseparably bound up with the name of Fitzgerald” (Meredith 1929, 51), and for Wallace, “Much the best way to enjoy Aldeburgh is to let Crabbe open one’s eyes to it” (Wallace 1939, 106). Travel writing has a long tradition of acknowledging the work of previous travel writers, but what is important here is that authors saw these signs of the past in views of the present, emphasising timelessness and continuity. Although timelessness was a powerful, recurring motif in interwar countryside writing, a dialogue also existed between ancient and modern, as David Matless (1998) explores. Te geographer Vaughan Cornish, for example, mixed bucolic and geometric imagery in his depictions of Sufolk in his (1928) paper on aesthetic geography and in Te Scenery of England (Cornish 1932). Popular countryside writing in the 1940s, however, became decidedly more anti-modern. At the beginning of this phase was Julian Tennyson, great-grandson of the famous poet, Alfred. Tennyson wrote Sufolk Scene in 1939, conjuring a Sufolk that echoed the “little England” of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc: the anti-imperial England of traditional, anti-industrialist, pub-going people. Indeed, it was after an excursion to the East Anglian fens that Belloc declared that in England “the corner of a corner is infnite, and can never be exhausted”. Tennyson’s book was immensely popular, being reprinted eight times in just a decade. Evidencing the emerging Deep England trope, Tennyson makes incommunicable and indefnable the experience of identity associated with Sufolk: you have to have experienced it to understand it. Tennyson maintained the explorer motif of interwar writing, but rather than stressing its appeal to potential travellers, he used it to express ambivalence towards intruders into his Sufolk. He sets up the dominant characterisation of his reader early on in the book, writing that the “slight animosity of Sufolk attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones. It is a country for the individualist, for the explorer and the lover of loneliness” (Tennyson 1939, 2). Te reader is implicitly addressed as part of the privileged set, and at many points in the book, Tennyson simultaneously mystifes Sufolk’s qualities and ofers guide- lines for coming to appreciate them, suggesting that although many others have failed, the reader will succeed. On the one hand, “You will have to look for the charm of the Sufolk countryside—it is a charm 38 S. Davis most carefully hidden”, and “[T]he spirit of the county itself is independent, capricious and elusive—if you don’t treat it properly it will, like an unresponsive tortoise, retire to the seclusion of its own shell and escape you for ever” (1939, 3, 2). But on the other hand, Sufolk would not go so far as to repel your eforts; it is just that “few people have bothered to penetrate its frst layer of self-defence” (1939, 14). Hidden, elusive charms are present at other levels of social organisation too, such that villages display an “inward warmth distilled by the years and cloaked with an outward austerity” (1939, 4). Te traveller must break through to the protected inner workings of Sufolk to be able to appreciate the villages fully. Indeed, the virtues of Sufolk’s villages “still exist because they are as yet undiscovered by the world” (1939, 4). In Tennyson’s writing, the ways of the country cannot be easily seen and must be patiently learned to be understood. To a certain extent, you must become a local in order to appreciate Sufolk. Te privacy and opacity of the county are deeply written in Tennyson’s Sufolk, shaping even its physical features. He delights in the restriction of one’s view by hedgerows and bends in the lanes, which leave you in a “state of constant speculation” about what will appear around the corner (1939, 3). For Tennyson, the way to appreciate Sufolk is to receive passively what the landscape has to ofer, rather than attempting to assert order over it. His emphasis on twisting and turning lanes recalls Chesterton’s English countryside of “rolling English lanes” made by the “rolling English drunkard” in his (1914) poem, Te Flying Inn. Tis sense of countryside muddle is echoed elsewhere, as when “Like the county itself, the buildings are quite irregular and illogi- cal in their placing and character” (1939, 4). Tis sentiment runs counter to the rhetoric of the planner-preservationist movement of the time, where key fgures such as Patrick Abercrombie praised the orderly in the English countryside and sought to plan a landscape both traditional and modern (Matless 1998). When Tennyson reaches the Sufolk coast, the motifs of seclusion and muddle amplify, the coast being even more isolated and less known to England than the rest of the county. A sense of natural determi- nation appears here, since the coast “by its very nature is its own sav- iour”, having resisted the modern features of coastal roads or towns 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 39

(Tennyson 1939, 152). Te coast also appears to confound the ordering power of cartography. Challenging a hypothetical character to reach the edge of the coast from only a mile inland, with a pint of beer as a reward, Tennyson claims that after starting “in some pleasant and seemingly pur- poseful lane” they would discover “that it doesn’t lead to the coast at all and will miss the only turning which does” (1939, 153). Both the irreg- ularity and beer again echo a Chestertonian image of England and its “secret people”. Te only way to truly “defeat the marshes”, Tennyson writes, would be to “borrow the bird’s wings” (1939, 153), an image which goes against the contemporary discourse that aligned map-reading with citizenship in the countryside (Matless 1998, 75). Te importance of this imagery becomes clearer when Tennyson draws this muddled corner of England into direct relation with the nation: “On the Sufolk coast there is every type of land known in England, all jumbled together and ftting into a quite irregular pat- tern” (Tennyson 1939, 154). Tis reaches a climax between Iken and Bawdsey, which “compresses into a dozen miles everything that is best in the country, and you will fnd here the complement to every mood and taste” (1939, 171). In other words, Tennyson’s Sufolk coast is a translation of England into miniature form. Tis relationship between isolated Sufolk and the wider nation developed further in 1940s–1950s countryside writing.

3 Isolating the Past

Te past took on a greater air of nostalgia in the 1940s–1950s countryside writing, as somewhere to which to escape. Malcolm Chase sees the growth in popularity of often lavishly illustrated books about the English countryside in the period 1930–1945 as an “ultra-conservative” reaction to “economic and social instability” (Chase 1989, 129). During the Second World War, non-fction writing seemed to ofer “a timeless and indestructible conceptual retreat to those whose uncertain present was bombing raids, the rubble of destroyed cities, factory production lines and foreign battlefelds” (Boyes 1993, 181). Radio also assumed a central role here, locating public life within domestic life, and by 1941, 40 S. Davis

J. B. Priestley and Churchill were reaching 50% of the adult population (Curran and Seaton 2003, 136). As Patrick Deer argues, Priestley celebrated nature, the English countryside, and the plucky heroism and communal sacrifce of the British people (Deer 2009, 133). In his radio broadcasts, the mythic landscapes of Deep England were mobilised for a more populist vision on the confict, forming a symbolic core around which rapidly crystallised the compelling iconography of the “people’s war” (Deer 2009, 134). A sense of external threat was key to the defnition of this Deep England, demonstrated in a radio broadcast by naturalist Peter Scott on Easter Day in 1943. After stating that England means something slightly diferent to all of us, he continued “But probably for most of us it brings a picture of a certain kind of countryside, the English countryside. If you spend much time at sea, that particular combination of felds and hedges and woods that is so essentially England seems to have a new meaning”. After a description of his Devon countryside, with its moors, valleys and ducks, he declared that this was “the countryside we were so passionately determined to protect from the invader” (quoted in Harman 1943, 5). Although wartime non-fction writing asserted the countryside’s continuities by emphasising its traditions, history and natural cycles, it also attempted to use landscape to “symbolise the survival of the country beyond the war” (Stewart 2006, 130). Not long after the end of the Second World War, however, the dire situation of Britain’s econ- omy became apparent, and despite austerity policies, the situation was still precarious after the introduction of Marshall Aid in 1948 and the devaluation of sterling in 1949 (Kynaston 2007). Rationing and controls continued until the mid-1950s, as the economic difculties met with Labour’s commitment to full employment and the growth of the welfare state (Hennessey 2007). Tese post-war years also saw the ofcial dismantling of the empire after its earlier destabilisation, beginning with Indian independence in 1947 (Darwin 1991). Te combined infuences of wartime threat and shrinking empire intensifed both interest in and the meanings of the countryside. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Jed Esty links the search for England’s national past and cultural integrity to the crumbling empire, arguing that imperial contraction was mediated by an “anthropological turn” 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 41 that attempted to reanimate the national core and heritage. Countryside writing was a key element of this anthropological turn. Championing the national countryside in his introduction to the Country Lover’s Companion, Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald declared that “man made this island of ours one of the most beautiful places in the world” (Vesey-Fitzgerald 1950, 7). He continues: “Te British rural scene was made with hands and, therefore, if the canvas is to be complete, the painter must be included in the picture”, explaining that to understand the landscape’s history, we must consider that “what made the countryside was a multitude of crafts contained within one major craft, agriculture” (Vesey- Fitzgerald 1950, 7). Countryside writing evidences both anti-modern nostalgia and its sense of loss, as well as an attempt to recover and revive the lost core with folk and national traditions. In contrast to the interwar planner-preservationists, the melancholic, nostalgic writing of post-war preservationist countryside writers contained no alternative suggestions or plans for the countryside. Trough the growth in popularity of archaeology in the 1930s and 1940s, the new technology of aerial photography showed the connectedness of present-day England to the past through its “palimpsest” landscape. Te aerial photographs fattened the landscape, or fattened time into it, and through detailed, expert observation of topography, writers like W. G. Hoskins presented themselves as greater authorities on seeing English history by reading the signs of past peoples in the landscape (Hauser 2008). Te development of landscape history drew from 1950s anti-modern writing, notably Hoskins’ Making of the English Landscape (1955). Devoting only the last few pages to “the landscape today”, Hoskins explains that since the Industrial Revolution, and especially since 1914, “every single change in the English landscape has either uglifed it or destroyed its meaning, or both” (Hoskins 1955, 298). “Barbaric England of the scientists, the military men and the politi- cians”, he writes, “let us turn away and contemplate the past before all is lost to the vandals” (Hoskins 1955, 14). Te trend extended beyond Sufolk, but Sufolk seemed to present an intensifed version of this vision. Within this focus on the past, post-war countryside writing crossed paths with the folk revival occurring at the time, adding a generational 42 S. Davis sense of history to the interwar emphasis on epochs. A number of writers wove childhood stories into their topographies, particularly William Arnott (1950, 1952) and George Carter (1951). Looking further back to the elders, Allan Jobson’s Sufolk Yesterdays (1944) is an in-depth study of his home place, the tiny village of Middleton in coastal Sufolk, in which he describes traditional ways of life, including long descriptions of local characters. Jobson’s Tis Sufolk (1948), contrary to the claim of its title, is similarly concerned with that Sufolk of the previous generation. A study of the village next door to his, two-thirds of the book is made up of transcriptions of elders’ anecdotes about the old ways of village life. Another nearby village is the focus of George Ewart Evans’ Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay (1956), a study of traditional rural life in Blaxhall, just a few miles away from Jobson’s villages, in which he represents Blaxhall’s older generation as symbolic relics of the by-gone rural British community. Like Tis Sufolk, Evans’ book was based primarily on the spoken word, but rather than quoting local people wholesale, he threaded their stories into his own narrative. Prior to this book, Evans had been unsuccessfully attempting to make his mark in fctional writing, but Ask the Fellows was a great success, being reprinted six times over the next two decades, and securing him three more books in the next decade. Whilst Jobson and Evans ostensibly presented reminiscences of the old traditions of Sufolk, their writing slips ambiguously between past and present. In Tis Sufolk, Jobson makes no attempt to connect the world of the elders’ memories with the present appearance of the village. Although most of Evans’ book is overtly concerned with the past century, he refers to “the countryman” and his activities using the present tense. Although defnitive and time-transcending, this countryman represents the dying breed of those farmers still in touch with traditional methods, but there is an awkward, unmentioned gap between past and present. Te impact of this is clear in a review of Evans’ book, where the reviewer was not sure which tense is appropriate, stating that Evans “has recorded the daily life and custom of the old rural community as this is, or was, seen in a single East Anglian parish” (Hole 1957, 313). In the elevation of the pastoral idyll within such writing, the books tried to rekindle what local lore had previously sustained, indicating both Esty’s 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 43 anthropological turn and a sense of the fragility of collective memory. Tis describes what Patrick Wright called the replacement of history with heritage. Part of the sense of historical consciousness that developed in Britain in the twentieth century, this Deep England is a language of vague and evocative gesture, where sights, smells, sounds and their undefned, incommunicable meanings are used to convey a sense of England (Wright 1985). Tis mode of description has all the exclu- siveness of a ceremony of recollection, since in order to understand the character of what is described, one must already have been there long enough to partake in the remembrance.

4 A Worthy Microcosm of England

During the Second World War, rural writing functioned in some senses as an attempt to preserve the England being fought for. Tis can be seen in H. V. Morton’s I Saw Two Englands (1942), which relates two journeys from May and October 1939. Morton was involved in his village’s Home Guard, and in the Postscript of 1942, he refects that in defending his own “few square miles” he was implicitly also defending all the places visited in the book (Morton 1942, 290). Tis preservationist view often took refuge in the deeper past. In a wartime book on Sufolk, Arthur Mee reassures readers that “Modern history has passed Sufolk by … but in medieval days there was fghting round the feudal castles of Orford, Bungay, Haughley, and Framlingham” (Mee 1941, 7). It seems more comfortable for Mee to see Sufolk’s villages through their deeper history, and it is telling that “fghting” is located only in medieval days, rather than in any violence closer to the present. From within this conservatism in the literary countryside emerged a new sense of Sufolk’s seclusion in the 1940s–1950s, presented as more authentically English. Continuing the shift from appealing to curious travellers to Tennyson’s ambivalent attitude to intruders, Sufolk was presented predominantly from an insider–local’s perspective in the 1940s. A focus on Sufolk as a home rather than somewhere to travel is evident in several books from this period. Jobson’s Sufolk Yesterdays (1944) and Tis Sufolk (1948) both function as elegies to village England and 44 S. Davis

“Old Sufolk”, located in around the 1890s. Te frst of these books was reprinted just six months later, and its appeal is further indicated by Jobson’s subsequent success; he went on to produce a score of books on Sufolk. Another micro-study of a home place was William Arnott’s (1950) book on the River Deben, inspired by the wartime act of leaving “one of the few stable things left in a rapidly changing and dreadfully uncertain world”. He began writing it during his service, “whiling away the long hours of watching and waiting” (Arnott 1950, 2). Arnott’s book received a second printing too, fve years later, and its positive reception is further indicated by Arnott publishing two similar studies of the Deben’s two neighbouring rivers, the Alde and the Orwell, by 1954. Both Jobson and Arnott educate their readers from a distance about the area’s qualities as a home place, rather than to trying to inform a visitor. Arnott even writes that “We could almost say that we resent the stranger who sails within our gates, so jealous are we of our seclusion” (Arnott 1950, 22). Similarly, Jobson declared that “we are insular and self-contained”, and that “the insularity expresses itself not only in a fne contempt for town-bred people … but also for those ‘turnpike sailors’ whose habitat is inland waters!” (Jobson 1944, 16). Even in William Arnott’s Sufolk (1950), much more clearly a countryside guide, this self-declared Sufolk local shows suspicion towards outsiders: “Te fear of invasion has never been absent long from Sufolk, so a stranger always had to be proved before he could be trusted” (Addison 1950, 14). Tis stream of countryside writing tended towards a greater level of insularity, focused on the countryside as a home (Fig. 2). After its beginnings in Tennyson, the use of insular, isolated Sufolk as a metaphor for England took hold in the 1940s. Although the villages and region are represented as enclosed, this became newly conceptualised with reference to the nation as a whole. In Jobson’s frst book, for example, the villagers appear as “A compact, self-contained, individual people; a worthy microcosm of the macrocosm which was England!” (Jobson 1944, 36). Te past tense here again highlights the tendency to see a vanished past in the countryside. Whilst East Anglia’s physical separation from the rest of the country had long been emphasised in rural writing, it took on a new tone in the 1940s as Sufolk was represented as preserving an older, more authentic version of England. Tennyson’s book anticipated 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 45

Fig. 2 River Alde at the Snape Maltings at dawn (Photograph by the author, May 2008) this trend, describing Sufolk as content to “amble along at least a century behind the rest of England” (Tennyson 1939, 1), and this nostalgic picture of an older England was widespread in the 1940s–1950s. In the Country Lover’s Companion, John Pennington painted East Anglia as an “island within an island”, which had been “cut of from the rest of Britain for hundreds of years in the course of its development” (Pennington 1950, 167). At times, this island would appear as a remnant of ancient England, as when Andrew Young’s A Prospect of Britain declares: “Te Sufolk coast retains more of its natural state than any other in England” (Young 1956, 55). Te idea of authenticity comes clearly across in a 1949 Penguin guide, where Claude Messent holds that agricultural Sufolk “can claim in many ways to be the most English part of England” (Messent 1949, 7). Sufolk was still portrayed as displaying the past’s continuity, like in the interwar writing, but this was now portrayed as if 46 S. Davis contrasting with the rest of the nation. In brief, the island county was made to stand for and yet apart from the island nation. In much of the writing on Sufolk, the version of the nation that the county symbolised was located in particular historical periods. George Ewart Evans’ book on Blaxhall had the “old people in this countryside” as “survivors from another era. Tey belong essentially to a culture that has extended in an unbroken line since at least the early Middle Ages” (Evans 1956, 14). An early pioneer of oral history, or what he called “spoken history”, Evans claimed that still-spoken dialect words are the most “authentic traces” of spoken history and went on to describe how the language of Blaxhall showed many elements of the past: “Te world of Chaucer, Spenser, Tusser and Shakespeare is not entirely dead whilst these old words are used in the identical way they used them” (Evans 1956, 221). Evans went on to produce nine similar books published by Faber and Faber and by the 1960s had become infuential in per- suading many people to collect oral histories. Whichever “golden age” was referenced, the common theme was that Sufolk was a survivor from pre-industrial times otherwise lost, capturing “true” Englishness. In a book edited by preservationist C. E. M. Joad, Te English Counties Illustrated, R. H. Mottram frst describes Norfolk as so far from the “stream of modern material life that runs from London to the north” that it ought to be a thousand not a hundred miles from London, and then continues: “Sufolk, even nearer the metropolis, is further away” (Mottram 1948, 173). Sufolk is still untouched by “the nineteenth-century rush to change the whole aspect of life, by the sudden irruption of new industry”, so that “nowhere” are there any of “those devastated areas that are the grief and danger of twentieth-century England” (Mottram 1948, 174). Similarly, William Arnott (1950) depicted the River Deben’s sailors as knowing “that here amongst the soft, sweet countryside of the Deben, the aims and energy of modern life are very, very far away” (Arnott 1950, 121). In Arnott’s subsequent book on the other Sufolk river that winds through coastland, the Alde, the villages of Butley and Iken appear as “one of the few remaining corners of Arcadian England” (Arnott 1952, 4). In short, going to Sufolk was like travelling back to an older, lost England, held comfortingly far away from the present and its modern, industrialising anxieties. 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 47

5 Threatened Edges

In addition to the concern with heritage and seclusion, a revealing aspect of countryside writing comes through the themes of the sea and the sky, expressed as defning elements of Sufolk. To writers on Sufolk, the sea had an important presence, understanding which was portrayed as crucial to understanding Sufolk. Te sea was a source of livelihood, but also of threat. Not only might it bring invaders to the island’s edge; it could carry on the corrosive work of the last centuries, where it had taken great chunks of the soft coastline and the villages that used to lie there. Local legends told of mermen and a mysterious black dog that leads you out into the sea to your death, and rural writers often portrayed Sufolk’s people as unfathomably amphibious. Although this special relationship to the sea was not described as accessible to an outsider to Sufolk, they were not totally excluded from experiencing it. At Dunwich, the village famous for having slipped into the sea, the clifs and ruins were portrayed as somewhere that anyone could go to gaze into the lost past, so that at the real edge of the country one could conjure an old edge and an old age. In the 1930s, the sea was bound up with the trope of insular seclusion explored earlier. When Lilian Redstone observes Sufolk’s isolated character in her book, Sufolk, she immediately explains: “Te county looks out to sea rather than inland to England, and its chief centres lie on the coast” (Redstone 1930, 92). Defning these centres in terms of fshing (Lowestoft), tourism (Lowestoft and Felixstowe) and industry (Ipswich), she makes Sufolk’s orientation towards the sea appear somewhat modern. Touring the Seas and Shores of England in 1936, Edmund Vale describes the atmosphere of the North Sea as very diferent from that of the other coasts. Contributing to its poetic atmosphere is:

Te losses through coast erosion, and also the amazing fnds to be had on the seashore: amber, jet, cornelian agate, bones of primeval elephants, stone cofns, mediaeval and Saxon jewellery. Tese losses and fnds have fostered a tradition of church bells heard ringing under the waves, of cities seen in the deeps on still days … And then there are the tales 48 S. Davis

of the wrecks… In fact, wherever you go along this coast there is a sort of reserve of beautiful melancholy, having its source in a threat or a vision out of the sea. (Vale 1936, 85)

Here, the coast could be a place of loss at the same time as holding physical souvenirs and imagined reminders of what has been. Published by Batsford, Seas and Shores was one of their popular British Heritage series, and Vale was a successful and prolifc countryside author. Although Vale emphasises both losses and fnds along this coast, in Sufolk he sees an “air of charmed melancholy”, and in Dunwich, in particular he fnds a place of “sightseers who come not to see what it is, but to muse on what has been” (Vale 1936, 94). In the mid-1930s, Vale’s coast has the nostalgic, picturesque appeal of decay. Picturesque appreciation necessitates the viewer feeling themselves to be distanced from the object of view, since only then can melancholy or decay can be pleasing. Te early, bourgeois tourist industry in Britain had revolved around the distanced aesthetic of the picturesque, but in the nineteenth century the intellectual avant-garde moved towards a new romantic afnity with nature. Picturesque ways of looking, however, continued to appear in diferent guises. John Urry (1995) argues that the expansion of rail transport in the late nineteenth century rede- fned perceptions of the relationship between nature, time and space; the traveller was newly separated from landscapes, passed as a series of framed panoramas. Similarly, as photography became accessible to amateurs in the early twentieth century, the visual appropriation of nature as a commodity reached a far wider audience than had been case with landscape painting (Cosgrove 1985; Taylor 1994). Joining the picturesque, interwar descriptions of Sufolk, O. J. R. Howarth’s book on Te Scenic Heritage of England and Wales recounts that “In eastern Sufolk the tracts known as the sandlings are still in part heathy, open, and of a pleasant wildness” (Howarth 1937, 68). Such distanced appreciation goes even further in Hugh Meredith, who describes the string of houses at Aldeburgh’s Parade as reminding him of “a merry line of children, hand in hand, each daring the other to stand further into the waves” (Meredith 1929, 56). Te 1930s sea and coast thus appeared at times modern, but typically picturesque and nostalgic. 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 49

Te sea ceased to be viewed with such detachment in 1940s–1950s writing, becoming internalised in the local people. In Jobson’s Sufolk Yesterdays, for example, the sea symbolises the otherworldliness of Sufolk’s residents. Attempting to pin down the essential features of Old Sufolk, Jobson eventually settles on “It is all in the hearts of these men and women; the men with that far-distant look of the sea in their eyes; the women in the curious rise and fall of their voices” (Jobson 1944, 9). Here, the locals’ lives, bodies and expression pivot around the sea, which stays with the men no matter where they look, and seems to guide the wave-like undulations of women’s speech. For William Arnott, too, “half the county’s business has been with the sea”, and as if as a natural consequence of that fact, “It is little wonder that weird, unearthly stories are told here. Sailors are naturally superstitious, and in every place on the Sufolk coast we hear of the ghostly visitor” (Arnott 1950, 120). Whereas for Vale the “beautiful melancholy” of the area had an external source—a threat or a vision out of the sea—for Jobson and Arnott, the properties of the sea are internalised in Sufolk’s local people. Tis blurring of the boundary between subject and object was also made to incorporate the relationship to time described earlier. Standing in Aldeburgh in the early 1950s, Arnott felt that: “In reality, the town does not look at us at all for its gaze is seawards and to the lost haven at Torpe” (Arnott 1952, 85). Whereas Redstone linked the sea-gaze to the industrial centres of Sufolk, Arnott links them to loss, such that the sense of a lost past being captured in Sufolk fnds expression in the sea. In Orford, Arnott sees a dead place, where “You feel lost, like someone who has lived long after his time”, and again the sea emerges as the key to mourning lost life. A village whose port was gradually closed of by the southwards extension of the spit of Orford Ness, “Orford’s gaze has always been towards the sea which gave the place its life” (Arnott 1952, 84). Arnott’s descriptions centre on the viewer and their memory, rather than on the external objects. Arnott’s sea may have been a reminder of loss, but the coast and sea around Sufolk also took on a more threatening air in the 1940s. Writing during the Second World War, Arthur Mee’s ominously titled Sufolk: Our Furthest East describes the North Sea as the county’s “insatiable enemy”, continuing that “For ages the sea has been at war with 50 S. Davis

Sufolk. Nearly all the 50 miles of its coast has been giving up its sub- stance to the ever moving waters that move remorselessly on” (Mee 1941, 1). We encountered Mee earlier, declaring that modern history has passed Sufolk by, but locating medieval fghting in its villages. Te present war may have been too difcult to see in or write into the countryside, which needed to provide continuity, but the sense of threat could be transposed into the guise of the sea. Beyond the war, the 1940s–1950s sea continued to symbolise threat to the countryside. In the 1949 Penguin guide, the coast appears vulnerable by its very nature: “Te coast of Sufolk has always been liable to invasion by foreign enemies” (Messent 1949, 19). For Andrew Young in A Prospect of Britain, his description of Dunwich is preceded by the statement: “Te Sufolk coast also has a dramatic interest; here England is being defeated in a sea battle, losing ground” (Young 1956, 55). Te beautiful melancholy of the sea in 1930s writing has been replaced with the aggressive language of danger and attack. In addition to its imagery of battles and war, the sea took an unsettling character. As Andrew Young put it, “there is something sinister about the sea on this coast” (Young 1956, 55). In Sufolk, William Addison describes the resorts on the Sufolk coast as “almost discon- certingly isolated and original” (Addison 1950, 129), writing that “the Sufolk coast has a strange and indefnable atmosphere, wild and restless and at times foreboding” (Addison 1950, 133). After claiming “much of the Sufolk coast is still as Swinburne described it” (1950, 129), Addison quotes from Swinburne’s By the North Sea (1880): “A land that is lonelier than ruin / A sea that is stranger than death”. At Slaughden Quay, on the River Alde, he sees “a dreary waste of shingle between Aldeburgh Marshes and the sea”, which “retains the sinister, foreboding atmosphere that Crabbe described” (Addison 1950, 154). Again, his choice of quote from Crabbe clarifes the reader’s sense of this atmosphere: “Here joyless roam a wild amphibious race / With sullen woe display’d in every face”. As when Arnott characterised whole towns as gazing out to sea, here the people of Sufolk are drawn into a strange union with the sea. An even more disturbing version of Sufolk’s coast came in George Carter’s Forgotten Ports of 1951, in which he tours England’s disused 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 51 ports with the photographer Bill Brandt. Carter spends nearly half of the book walking around the Sufolk coast describing desolation and ruin, stark and bleak landscapes, and seeing reminders of death and tragedy at every turn. Te past and its ghosts are often the main occupiers of the places he visits, as at Blythburgh: “just another ghost village, dreaming of its past when it almost rivalled the mighty city of Dunwich” (Carter 1951, 114). At Slaughden, he notes that “Like all the rest of these sea-plains along our little-known Sufolk coast, there is a haunting beauty, a nostalgia that takes one by the throat and makes one pause in spite of oneself” (Carter 1951, 41). In the early 1950s, Sufolk’s writers see only loss, its dislocation from the present acquiring a disturbing quality that fnds particular expression at the coast (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Anti-erosion measures near Shingle Street (Photograph by the author, May 2008) 52 S. Davis

As well as its connection to the past, the post-war sea also prompted visions of a doomed future. Te threat of erosion ebbs and fows throughout Arnott’s book on the Alde River, warning that “One day the sea may stop, only to strike again elsewhere along the coast” (Arnott 1952, 14), and elsewhere musing: “Soon, perhaps, the sea will complete its work and break through to the Alde. What will then happen to Orford and the sea walls against Sudbourne?” (Arnott 1952, 86). Slaughden prompts him to wonder “how much longer the huge grass walls will be able to withstand the pressure”, and at Aldeburgh he asks: “How long will this, too, survive?” (Arnott 1952, 14). Circling back from these imagined futures, he dreams of reconstructing the coastline of 2000 years ago (Arnott 1952, 6). Arnott revels in imaginary pasts and futures: anything but now. His sea is an aggressive enemy, cruel, stabbing and striking. Such a sea also appeared in Carter’s Forgotten Ports, although Carter’s response was more melodramatic. Tere, the waves that destroyed Dunwich were “Sullen and majestic, seemingly conscious of their own destructive power”, and at Dunwich, he sees “Nothing but a few small cottages huddled together as if in comfort and protection to each other against the old enemy. An enemy which even now, year by year, draws nearer and nearer” (Carter 1951, 35, 38). Te aggressively coded sea is again conceptualised with reference to a doomed future. Te representation of the sea as threatening and aggressive in these years tells us as much about those looking at it as it does about the sea. Patrick Wright described how the geography and history that developed throughout the twentieth century tended to create contemporary projections of an endangered Deep England. Te coding of threat within the sea also seems to express or contextualise more recent threats of invasion. Writing on memory in wartime literature, Victoria Stewart observes that the wartime writing of H. V. Morton and J. B. Priestley favours visions of earlier conficts to those of the First World War, which was too difcult to reconcile with the otherwise timeless countryside (Stewart 2006, 110). In post-war Sufolk, the island within an island encapsulating a lost, authentic England is defned as characterised by the sea, and that sea appears as threatening the shrinking island’s edges. 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 53

6 Suffolk Skies and England of All the Years

At Sufolk’s coast, another element of the scene also took on an important role in countryside writing; the sky was often used as a centrally defning feature. Whilst hedgerows enclose the twisting and turning lanes further inland, near the coast these lanes are surrounded by fat, expansive marsh and heathland, with views out to sea and the presence of huge skies. Te signifcance of the skyward gaze is not unique to Sufolk, and Pyrs Grufudd (1991) argues that the sky is a deeply rooted part of English cultural identity, carrying as much signifcance in landscape painting as the land. Recent work in geography has highlighted the importance of verticality in understanding the production of space, shifting the traditional emphasis on the horizontal world (Graham and Hewitt 2012). Te importance of the English sky was infuenced by fears of aerial invasion during the 1930s, following the First World War, in which discourse on the airman had treated that fgure as a survivor of the romantic idea of war, where individual efort, heroism, glory, honour and chivalry were still intact (Grufudd 1991; Deer 2009). As fears of aerial attack grew in the interwar years, the fgure of the airman was a constant presence in interwar literature and popular culture, at an “interface between the body and technology, between individual heroism and the war machine” (Deer 2009, 63). During the Second World War, droves of bomber planes droned over Sufolk en route to London and the country’s industrial heartland. Dozens of American and British airbases in Sufolk were highly active, and aeroplane recognition became a popular pastime. As the artist Paul Nash refected in 1948, “when the War came, suddenly the sky was upon us all like a huge hawk hovering, threatening. Everyone was searching the sky expecting some terror to fall” (Nash 1948). Grufudd (1991) shows how the war in the air was drawn into analogy with the pastoral through the war culture of commissioned artworks, including those of Nash and Alan Sorrell. Teir work aligned the RAF with prehistoric and archaeological symbolism, incorporating the military into the New Romanticism that David Mellor (1987) described in the 1940s and early 1950s. Eric Ravilious’s planes were often naturalised, 54 S. Davis appearing like birds at graceful play, and in Nash’s 1940 Encounter in the Afternoon Grufudd argues that England appears as ancient and in tune with Nature, whereas Germany is modern, a war machine. Tis harmony between aerial warfare and the pastoral is also demonstrated by Helen Macdonald (2002), who shows how 1940s aeroplane- spotting and birdwatching were united by common observational language and identifcation practices. If aerial warfare could be brought into line with the pastoral in the work of ofcial war artists, however, countryside writing worked to ensure the timelessness of the sky and its detachment from war. To give a sense of the dominance of the Sufolk sky over a scene, Te English Landscape in Picture, Prose and Poetry (Greene 1932) introduced the Sufolk landscape using Alice Meynell’s 1893 essay, “Te Sun”: “Nowhere else does the greater light so rule the day, so measure, so divide, so reign, make so imperial laws, so visibly kindle, so immediately quicken, so suddenly eface, so banish, so restore, as in a plain like this of Sufolk with its enormous sky”. Calling the sky an “organism”, Meynell feels it is only on the plain that “the unity” of the sky can be understood. Although such language is suggestive of a Romantic union between nature and the observer, or sky and land, Meynell indicates no object with which the sky is supposed to unify. It is the sky’s own oneness that we comprehend from the plain. Te case is similar to the long list of verbs in the quotation above; it is ambiguous who or what the “greater light” might divide, quicken or banish. Te power with which she imbues the sky is on the one hand enormous, independent of its object, but on the other hand meaningless to the reader, written without any sense of relation to them. Trough the inclusion of this essay in the 1932 collection, the sky was complicit in the creation of a sense of continuity in the English countryside; Sufolk is still the same as forty years ago. Tis sense of timeless skyscape and landscape was also achieved in that collection through the likes of Alfred Tennyson, Richard Jefries, Tomas Hood, Izaak Walton and Robert Bridges. For Sufolk, the use of past fgures to defne the place centred especially on Constable, as when Allan Jobson’s began Tis Sufolk thus: 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 55

And what shall we say of our felds? Constable thought them lovely; but then he reckoned the sky and felds as one, and so should we. Have you ever stood and considered a Sufolk sky over the ruby red of a patch of trifolium? … And have you watched the wind playing across the rye, or oats or wheat, whether green or gold, turning it to a sea of grain, or the silken spread of Nature’s gown? If you have, then you know. (Jobson 1948, 16)

Again, we see in Jobson the exclusivity of the Deep England trope: you have to have been there and had the essential experience. To understand England is thus above all to remember and recollect it (Wright 1985, 85). Jobson instructs us to follow Constable’s way of seeing, and as Alex Potts argues, Constable was “reconstituted” in the twentieth century as “father of an English landscape vision no-one previously had thought to conjure into existence” (Potts 1989, 168). By the 1930s, Constable was commonly invoked as typifying the English countryside, with the area encompassing southern Sufolk and northern Essex being referred to as “Constable country”, and known for its “Constable’s skies”. One of Collins’ Britain in Pictures series, for instance, claimed that “It is this country with its changing skies and fying shadows that has produced Wordsworth, Constable and Turner” (Bone 1946, 47). Here, the great men provide the frame on which hangs the nation’s identity, for which the skies are given ultimate responsibility, again emphasising the timelessness of the landscape. What Jobson achieves with Constable, therefore, is to make his corner of Sufolk an emblem of the nation, using Constable to claim the sky as the source of the felds’ aesthetic appeal; Constable’s admiration of the felds rested on seeing their unity with the sky. Arguing that to perceive a landscape is to engage in an act of remembrance, Tim Ingold (2000) has emphasised the rhythms, harmonies and temporalities at work in a landscape. Te reading of the past into the Sufolk countryside and its sky can be thought of as one version of the temporality of the landscape. Another temporality operated at a diferent scale in post-war countryside writing, exemplifed by Jobson’s focus on farmers’ functional Sufolk in addition to its aesthetic qualities. In Sufolk Yesterdays, Jobson portrays the old local folk as having worked 56 S. Davis closely in accordance with nature, so that there was “Nothing wasted, everything alchemised into service from the dandelion and dock leaf to the last scrap of pig, the last ear of wheat” (Jobson 1944, 8). Tis har- monious relationship extends beyond the purely land-based elements of their surroundings: “Often they could neither read nor write but they could read the sky unerringly; read the weather, know how to scratch a harvest from the most delusive of skies” (Jobson 1944, 8). A lament for lost practices and ways of life, the implication is that today people no longer understand or are in harmony with the sky. Tus, although the aesthetic appeal of the sky and its connection with the land have apparently remained continuous over time, its pragmatic connection to everyday life has dwindled. One way of interpreting this change would be to use Ingold’s (2000) concept of the “taskscape”: the collected ensemble of socially experienced tasks. Te temporality of the taskscape, Ingold argues, is a vital component for understanding a landscape. Jobson’s portrayal of the sky describes the radical modern disruption of the taskscape’s temporality. Similarly, George Ewart Evans’ folk study observed that “Te countryman takes a great interest in the weather: he has to because his living is bound up with it; and he observes it as closely as a scientist watching a long and intricate experiment” (Evans 1956, 229). Evans was keen to argue that farming has long “showed at least the germ of scientifc practice”, even though it is “still very much an art” (Evans 1956, 109), relying upon practical adaptation to local environments. Although Evans wanted his weather-wise countryman to appear equal in authority to the new agricultural scientists, the countryman is caught in the act of disappearing. Local knowledge of the sky was being replaced by blanket application of the rules of agricultural science (Howkins 2003), disrupting the taskscape. Te loss of a functional interaction with one’s surroundings is symptomatic of the twentieth-century rationalisation and dislocation of everyday life, bringing a greater nostalgia for the past, which then takes on the air of a golden age. Te interruption of the taskscape’s temporality and the rise in nostalgia are linked to the appeal of the temporality of the static past, and this also included an occlusion of military presence in the sky. After 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 57 recounting in his wartime book how much Sufolk has changed in recent decades, Jobson comforts his reader:

But with all the change there are many things that are changeless. Te shape of ricks against the sky. Te old granaries perched up on legs under which the carts nestle; the creeping roofs of barns and outhouses … And thank God! there’s no change in the clearness of the Sufolk air, or the loveliness of its sky; while the fantastic shapes of the Elms still mark the sky-line and the felds, giving a gracious balance to the scene. (Jobson 1944, 14)

Te sky and the objects punctuating the skyline dominate his characterisation of Sufolk. Tey are the home imagined from and defended at the front line; the sky is clear and lovely rather than criss-crossed with fghters and bombers and their destructive discharge. Te boundary between sky and land is defned by the marks of traditional agricultural practice and a tree iconic to England, to whose shape he attributes the administration of the entire scene’s grace. As with Jobson’s use of Constable above, by focusing on these boundary objects he tames the sky, attaching it to the ground. Indeed, the sky played a central role in Jobson’s efort to detach Sufolk from the present war. Later in the book we read that “one feels to be on top of the world here”, where “the great city and wars and rumours” to the south are “too far away to know or trouble”. Instead, here are mills, trees, “and all over the sky, a Sufolk sky with its winds and its stars! … Here is England of all the years since the Saxons left their abiding marks of blue eyes and fair hair” (Jobson 1944, 28). In this regional nativism, blood and soil appear joined by sky in the creation of a timeless England. Similarly, Jobson closes the book by describing a Sufolk woman who went to London to work, and after living in the same house for sixty years moved back to Sufolk early in the war, after a bomb dropped on the house next door: “[S]he returned to live in that air and under those skies which gave her birth … And in returning to her nativity so she grew young again inspired by the memories of the years!” (Jobson 1944, 149). Te Sufolk air and skies appear as crucial to it being a place to recover youth. Tis particular use of time recurred throughout the 1950s, as both Arnott and Carter used their 58 S. Davis books to revisit their own childhood memories, rooted in particular localities in coastal Sufolk. Beyond the changelessness of the wartime sky, the post-war sky began to take on an unsettling character. After examining the trope of wartime RAF pastoral, Pyrs Grufudd states that in the post-war decades, the pastoral trope broke down, as if “the postwar sky had lost its innocence” (Grufudd 1991, 24). After the war was over, the development of radar came out of its secret realm, and the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forever changed the dynamics of warfare. Te sky held new and ominous meanings, especially during the Cold War’s fears of nuclear annihilation. Grufudd describes the 1930s–1940s as “perhaps the last fowering of a modernist notion of the rural landscape, confdent enough to accommodate aesthetic change in a reconciliation between tradition and modernity” (Grufudd 1991, 24). Tis is demonstrated in W. G. Hoskins’ Making of the English Landscape (1955), where he describes how day after day during the war droned “the obscene shape of the atom-bomber, laying a trail like a flthy slug upon Constable and Gainsborough’s sky” (Hoskins 1955, 232). Hoskins’ recruitment of the painterly past helps defne the bomber: more than abhorrent, it is specifcally anti-English. Like other post-war preservationist countryside writers, Hoskins’ view is melancholic, nostalgic, and centred on loss and encroachment. Elsewhere, however, the vertical realm appeared with a more complex character. In Harold Clodd’s 1959 guide to Aldeburgh, he writes that “Te coastwise scenery of Sufolk either fascinates or repels strangers”, asking “Wherein lies the secret of this charm?” Quick to reply, he suggests “Te answer seems to be in the limitless expanse of the sky; in the rivers … pursuing their sinuous course, the marshlands, and … the common and heath” (Clodd 1959, 1). Te sky is the dominant feature in this passage, marked out from the other, secondary features by a semi-colon; beyond this, the other elements of the scene are separated by the less decisive comma. Tis priority is confrmed a few lines later: “Nowhere in our island is the sky so completely ‘master of the scene’ as in these coast regions” (Clodd 1959, 1). Te sky here is a powerful agent in the local environment; what Sufolk’s elders had been able to master and harmonise with in Jobson’s 1944 book has become for 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 59

Clodd the master par excellence. Clodd’s language here is that of the sublime. In sublime experience, terror of and repulsion from a natural or technological phenomenon alternates with the pleasure of feeling able to observe it from a position of safety; one is drawn towards the phenomenon over which one imagines oneself into a state of power. Te subject oscillates between feeling dominated and imagining oneself into the position of dominator. In Clodd’s writing, the fascination/repulsion he perceives in strangers seems to stem from the feeling of being out of control under the unknown master, the sky. What was so lovely in Jobson’s writing has acquired the power to intimidate. Linked perhaps to this sublime quality, the sky appears fractured in some 1950s writing. In George Carter’s bleak wanderings, aerial warfare is at the heart of this fracturing process. At the ruins of Dunwich’s con- vent, Carter fnds that:

[T]he brooding sadness of unnumbered centuries of neglect and decay was broken by the sudden whining scream of a jet aircraft overhead. I paused to wonder what bloody old Penda of Mercia would have thought of these modern weapons. A blackbird warbled in a near-by elder-bush, and pigeons cooed in the deep woods to the south of us. Coarse grass glittered in the sun, stirred by the probing fngers of the still-keen wind. (Carter 1951, 22)

In this passage, the aircraft achieves the rare feat of preventing Carter from dwelling in the past centuries of decay, instead triggering him to mobilise the yet deeper past to view the present, as he turns to the sixth-century fgure of Penda. Penda invaded East Anglia from Mercia and ruled for only a few years, invoking a sense of Sufolk as a threatened territory trying to protect itself. Tis certainly fts Carter’s vision of Sufolk’s coast, which he fnds unique in Britain for its capacity to “evoke three thousand years of invasion, rebellion, bloodshed and death. Tere is nothing friendly about these wild stretches” (Carter 1951, 14). Carter mainly sees the past in the countryside, such as at Blythburgh church, where “Even the bright sunshine could not dispel the brooding sadness of this mighty relic of a vigorous past” (1951, 19). Whilst the sun is not powerful enough to shift the atmosphere of past, however, 60 S. Davis the aeroplane is able to cut through his mood. Te military incursion, through provoking contemplation of the deeper past, creates an opening that is flled by nature, the sound of the jet being replaced by that of birds, who, in contrast to the otherness of the jet cutting through the scene appear in place, situated in their natural habitats. In other words, the militarisation of vertical space jolts Carter out of his nostalgic mood, ultimately enabling a reencountering of the natural life closer at hand. Te aeroplane achieves what nature on its own—the sun—could not. Whereas Jobson used the sky to symbolise unity and harmony, Carter’s sky and its connection to human memory are sliced up by aeroplanes. Tis is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts (1941), mentioned in Chapter 1. As Gillian Beer (1990) argues, the aeroplane is powerfully placed in Woolf’s novels, typifying the present day, and functioning as a bearer and breaker of signifcation. Whereas in Mrs Dalloway (1925) the aeroplane is associated with light-hearted, frivolous play rather than war, in Between the Acts its presence is menacing. Set in 1939, Woolf’s fnal book focuses on a village pageant-play proposing to tell “Our island history”. Recurring throughout Between the Acts is the idea of islands as continuous geological processes rather than as essential forms. England is introduced, for example, as “sprung from the sea … cut of from France and Germany”, and now “weak and small” (Woolf 1941, 48). Pageant-plays drew the attention of several writers in the 1930s, including E. M. Forster and T. S. Eliot (Esty 2004, 55). Tis form of native ritual typically performed a pastoral, apolitical version of national identity: a series of scenes dedicated to continuous history and glorious legends of a particular English place. Showing the absence of change and the symbolic continuity of rural folkways and national traditions, the pageant-play typically achieves the displacement of history by heritage. Although the pageant tries to fatten time and unify history, in Woolf’s village, saturated by traces of militarism and empire and threatened by war, the pull towards unity is countered. At the end of the pageant, bomber planes fy overhead in “perfect formation like a fight of wild duck”, their sound frst interpreted by the audience as music, drawing them into analogy with the scratchy gramophone music that had separated the pageant’s acts. Evidencing the military pastoral 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 61 mentioned earlier, the aeroplanes suggest a new historical snapshot that never materialises, instead severing the words of the vicar’s speech, which was attempting to synthesise the pageant’s fragmentary outline of history. “One spirit animates the whole”, he had said, but the audience were left pondering the ominous way in which the aeroplanes resisted such a synthesis (Woolf 1941, 230). Aeroplanes may have functioned to resist insular unity in Between the Acts, but such critical exploration of the relationship between militarisation and national historical identity was usually absent in countryside writing. Despite Carter’s tendency to nostalgically write loss and decay into Sufolk, however, the jarring incursion of the overhead plane is a rare instance of him reconnecting to nature in the present.

7 Eerie Martello Towers

At the sea’s edge, the skyline is punctuated by another defning feature of the Sufolk coast, and another through which countryside writing struggled with contemporary militarisation. Lining Britain’s southern and eastern coasts is a series of watchtowers dating from Napoleonic times, Martello towers. In the 1930s, the towers were described as connected to the region’s deeper past, for instance when Lilian Redstone’s Sufolk (1930) tells readers how in the early nineteenth century, fears of French invasion ran high, and plans were made for evacuating the coast. Extra troops came to Landguard Fort at Felixstowe, and “along the whole coast were built the curious ‘Martello’ towers, copied from a similar tower in Corsica, which the French had used successfully in defence against two British men-of-war” (Redstone 1930, 88). One of a series of accessible histories of the English counties, the whole book is devoted to explaining chronological order and lineage, and the reference to the foreignness of the towers’ origin seems to explain away their unusual, “curious” appearance. Such a chronological explanation was absent from Edmund Vale’s Seas and Shores of England (1936), in which he set himself the task of balancing the views of the sailor with those of the land-lover. Pausing near Bawdsey, Vale notes how deep water runs right up to the land, 62 S. Davis which is “an anchorage where, at many critical junctures in history, large feets have ridden. Probably for this reason there is a special concentration of Martello towers here. No less than four, each within about a mile of the other, guard the approach to the Ore River” (Vale 1936, 92). Although Vale gives to this coast the importance of playing a role in “critical junctures in history”, the particular, national invasion threat under which the towers were built does not feature. In fact, the ultimate origin of the towers comes across here as the character of the seafoor, and they emerge from the passage protecting a river rather than the country. Te towers’ root in local topology and the absence of association with one real invading force work together to keep the notion of foreign enemies in the background of this description. Despite the diferences between Redstone and Vale, for both of them the Martellos are frmly consigned to the distant past. As war approached, the towers elicited new responses, acquiring an unsettling appearance in Tennyson’s Sufolk Scene (1939). Tennyson describes how “on the most deserted stretches of the Sufolk shore they are only a few hundred yards apart” (Tennyson 1939, 9). Trough his emphasis on the land next to the sea, unlike Vale’s focus on the seafoor, Tennyson accentuated the country’s vulnerability to invasion; it is not merely that invaders could anchor here, but that on landing they could easily penetrate the “deserted” countryside. Tis efect is intensifed by Tennyson’s contraction of the distance between the towers from a mile in Vale’s writing to only a few hundred yards. In 1939, the nation’s invasion anxieties were focused on the sky rather than on the sea, but being near to the coast and its old anti-invasion structures seems to keep closer the fear of land invasion. Te Martellos were also connected to more recent invasions in Tennyson’s writing. Immediately after relating their Napoleonic origin, he explains that they were built “on the same principle as the little pill-boxes which were placed further inland to hold up possible German advance during the Great War” (Tennyson 1939, 9). Te towers thus appear as the ancestors of 20-year-old pillboxes, contrasting with Redstone’s descendants of a much older tower in the Mediterranean. Te 1939 Martellos signifed defence in a much more pressing way than they had a few years earlier. In addition, the towers on the eve of the Second World War seem markedly unpleasant: 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 63

“grim, squat little fortresses”, and “cold, eerie places” (Tennyson 1939, 9). Tennyson is almost repulsed by the Martellos and yet uses only diminutive terms for the newer anti-invasion structures, pillboxes. Away on the Western Front, pillboxes were removed from normal sight, whereas the Martellos were visible from a distance and more easily associated with invasion of the homeland. Te Martellos’ potency as a reminder of home invasion is exaggerated when they are juxtaposed with pillboxes, and yet the deserted land that they guard transforms them from symbols of protection to symbols of the country’s inability to defend against aerial invasion. Tis unpleasant conjunction of associations seems to be the root of the Martellos’ unsettling appearance. Tey still appear as great protectors against sea-invasion, as “tough” and “solid”, but their inadequacy in the face of modern warfare makes them seem “cold”, “eerie” and “grim” (Figs. 4 and 5). During the war, writers and commentators were keen to look to older defensive structures in the countryside to make sense of the present threat of invasion. Although 1940s fction frequently drew on First World War memories to make sense of the current war (Stewart 2006), within the timeless countryside, that war seemed too close for comfort. In J. B. Priestley’s “Postscript” broadcasts of June 1940, for example, his transformation of the village into “an emblematic fction of the nation” had the efect of eliding the First World War and foregrounding the Napoleonic Wars (Featherstone 1986, 109). Similarly, in Morton’s 1942 Postscript to I Saw Two Englands, he refects that “in the countryside in particular, one becomes aware of a history of local defence: I think one is peculiarly conscious of this in a country district full of old farm-houses which have been standing for centuries”. He details these as “buildings whose panelling conceals secret rooms, whose wide chimneys lead to ‘priests’ holes’, whose windows have known the tap of a secret code in the night, whose barns and outhouses have stabled many a strange horse and have concealed many a mysterious rider” (Morton 1942, 287). As Victoria Stewart observes, the features he refers to here are much older, giving a romanticised gloss to the invasion threat (Stewart 2006, 110). Morton concludes this list: “Danger has skipped us for a century or two; and now we are back in Danger” (Morton 1942, 287). Stewart argues that Morton contextualises the present 64 S. Davis

Fig. 4 Martello tower with pillbox near Shingle Street (Photograph by the author, May 2008) 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 65

Fig. 5 Martello towers from Shingle Street towards Bawdsey (Photograph by the author, May 2008) threats with the evidences of earlier conficts, preferring this cultural memory to his own memories of the First World War, which are “both too proximate and too dissonant to provide a useful point of reference” (Stewart 2006, 110). Te Martellos gain particular signifcance within this tendency to look to older traces of defence. Architectural history became more unavoidably brought into contact with militarisation in some cases, as many old defensive structures were adapted for re-use during the Second World War. On the Sufolk coast, a radar observation post was built on one of the towers of the castle at Orford, a pillbox was inserted on top of a Martello tower near Shingle Street, and soldiers were billeted in the Martello at Aldeburgh. Tis literal incorporation of newer military meanings may have been too jarring to see during wartime, but in some 1950s 66 S. Davis writing the militarisation of the countryside crept into representations of the Martellos. In Clodd’s 1959 book on Aldeburgh, connections to the recent war appear when he comments on an 1861 description of the Martello’s platform as “bomb-proof”, “a term painfully familiar to modern ideas” (Clodd 1959, 121). Te Martello is, however, consigned to the past; it is now “disappeared”, “undermined and broken up” by a great gale (1959, 120). Other accounts in the 1950s were more complex, particularly George Carter’s description of the Martello at Aldeburgh, the town of his youth. Incorporating his own memories, Carter relates how he would “creep fearfully” inside the tower as a child (Carter 1951, 57). Mentioning that soldiers were billeted there during the Second World War, he describes evocatively its present-day appearance, setting the scene with doors that are “warped and creak dismally in the damp sea winds”, where “Te doors of the dungeons gape like wry, black mouths. Birds fy unhampered through the narrow, glassless windows in the thick bastions” (1951, 57). Te signs of civilisation—its doors and windows—are either disfgured or disappeared and seem to mock the onlooker in their absence with their wry, black mouths. Continuing, we read that “Huge sections of the shattered wall lean at crazy angles like monoliths”, and fnally that “Part of the wreck of an aeroplane, shot down during the war, lies within the moat. Te sun cast long shadows and on the landward side tall thistles and thick brambles blew in the wind from the sea. Overhead a curlew wailed its nostalgic music” (1951, 57). In this description, very diferent to the Martellos of earlier years, the tower appears ominous and somewhat surreal with its crazy angles, echoing the surreal, fragmentary 1940s writing on nature in bombsites (Mellor 2011). Wild nature has reclaimed the building and wrecked warplane, with birds inside and above it, and thistles and brambles beside it. As with the description of the jet engine and Penda of Mercia, Carter jumps from the past to the aeroplane to the sounds of wind and birds. Within the ruin, the aeroplane seems to take on heightened signifcance, functioning as a metaphor for war-induced ruin on a grand scale in this post-apocalyptic image. None of the previous authors dwelt in quite so much detail on Martello towers, let alone on just one. Although Carter gives in-depth, 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 67 experiential descriptions of everywhere he visits on the Sufolk coast, his fowing prose is normally devoted to crafting either desolate landscapes or tragic events far in the past; rarely does he apply his eye to a building. Te Martellos’ symbolism of national defence seems to be reanimated in Carter, but the towers are reminders of the old, slow wars fought at sea and on foot. By the early Cold War, warfare was undergoing shifts in character, moving away from sea and land, downwards to underground bunkers and upwards to the sky and its threat of bomber planes, long- range missiles and nuclear stand-ofs. Usually, Carter’s depiction of ruin comes within a tale of the demise of one of the Sufolk coast’s ports due to the forces of nature. At the tower, its status as a childhood adventure area and assimilation into the recent war keep it alive right up to the very near past, the last trace of humans there being the ruined plane. Te monoliths that the tower is reduced to at once refer to a more ancient past and appear hideous. Set against decay of the Martello, the wrecked plane seems to have destroyed the world that came before. In this tour through rural writing on Sufolk, we have seen that the seclusion of Sufolk came to stand for the insular nation in more authentic form. Jed Esty (2004) argues that England was found in its regions in the period of the 1930–1960, and we have seen that the region of Sufolk showed intensifed expression of nostalgia towards the lost past. Countryside writing was permeated with imagery of Sufolk as a remnant of an older England in the 1940s and 1950s, mediated by images of rural idylls. Rather than displaying historical continuity, the place had become disconnected with the present, the fattened, timeless past appearing as lost heritage in need of rediscovering. In the nativist writing looking for folk tradition, some post-war writers narrated Sufolk through their own childhood memories or those of village elders, struggling to come to terms with the disappearance of the functional, taskscape-mediated connection between land and sky. Te hiding of the military presence in the landscape by peaceful agrarian imagery was another example of this tendency to shy away from the present day. For some writers, however, the sense of threat was seen in the sea, and militarisation began to make incursions into the countryside and skyscape, interacting with the nostalgic view to bring sometimes a reconnection with nature, sometimes post-apocalyptic imagery. 68 S. Davis

In his 1952 book on the “island fever” of exploring the islands of England, J. H. Ingham declares “Te threat of atomic warfare seems to have added new impetus to this desire for island life” (Ingham 1952, 23). Continuing with his bleak speculations, he wondered whether “when our urban civilisation has been blasted almost out of existence by some future war, men will once again seek our islands and learn to live a satisfying life on them” (Ingham 1952, 24). Like the island nation, the “island within an island” of Sufolk would have to be understood in diferent terms following not only the contraction of empire to its core, but following the increasing permeation of militarisation into civilian and everyday life, and it is to this theme that we turn directly in the next chapter.

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Chesterton, G. K. 1914. Te Flying Inn. London: Methuen. Clodd, H. P. 1959. Aldeburgh: Te History of an Ancient Borough. Ipswich: Norman Adlard. Coates, Peter. 1998. Nature: Western Attitudes Since Ancient Times. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cornish, Vaughan. 1928. “Te Harmonies of Scenery: An Outline of Aesthetic Geography.” Geography 14: 275–283, 383–394. ———. 1932. Te Scenery of England. London: CPRE. Cosgrove, Daniel. 1985. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble. Curran, James, and Jean Seaton. 2003. Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain. London: Routledge. Darby, Wendy Joy. 2000. Landscape and Identity: Geographies of Nation and Class in England. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Darwin, John. 1991. Te End of the British Empire. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Deer, Patrick. 2009. Culture in Camoufage: War, Empire and Modern British Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Esty, Jed. 2004. A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Evans, G. E. 1956. Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay. London: Faber and Faber. Featherstone, Simon. 1986. “Te Nation as Pastoral in British Literature of the Second World War.” Journal of European Studies 16: 155–168. Ford, Charles. 1933. Te Landscape of England. London: Batsford. Graham, Stephen, and Lucy Hewitt. 2012. “Getting Of the Ground: On the Politics of Urban Verticality.” Progress in Human Geography, 37 (1): 72–92. Greene, K. Conyngham, ed. 1932. Te English Landscape in Picture, Prose and Poetry. London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson. Grufudd, Pyrs. 1991. “Reach for the Sky: Te Air and English Cultural Nationalism.” Landscape Research 16: 19–24. Harman, Richard, ed. 1943. Countryside Mood. London: Blandford Press. Hauser, Kitty. 2008. Bloody Old Britain. London: Granta Books. Hennessey, Peter. 2007. Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties. London: Penguin. Hole, Chloe. 1957. “Review of Evans’ Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay. ” Folklore 68: 313. Hoskins, William G. 1955. Te Making of the English Landscape. London: Hodder & Stoughton. 70 S. Davis

Howarth, O. J. R. 1937. Te Scenic Heritage of England and Wales. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons. Howkins, Alun. 2003. Te Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside Since 1900. London: Routledge. Ingham, J. H. 1952. Te Islands of England: A Survey of the Islands Around England and Wales and the Channel Islands. London: Batsford. Ingold, Tim. 2000. Te Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. James, M. R. 1987. Norfolk and Sufolk. Bury St Edmunds: Alistair Press. First published 1930. Joad, C. E. M. 1938. “Te People’s Claim.” In Britain and the Beast, edited by Clough Williams-Ellis. London: J.M. Dent. Jobson, Allan. 1944. Sufolk Yesterdays. London: Heath Cranton. ———. 1948. Tis Sufolk. London: Heath Cranton. Kynaston, David. 2007. Austerity Britain 1945–51. London: Bloomsbury. Lowerson, John. 1980. “Battles for the Countryside.” In Class, Culture and Social Change: A New View of the 1930s, edited by F. Gloversmith, 258– 280. Brighton: Harvester Press. Macdonald, Helen. 2002. “‘What Makes You a Scientist Is the Way You Look at Tings’: Ornithology and the Observer 1930–1955.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33: 53–77. Matless, David. 1998. Landscape and Englishness. London: Reaktion Books. Mee, Arthur. 1941. Sufolk: Our Farthest East. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Mellor, David. 1987. A Paradise Lost: Te Neo-Romantic Imagination in Britain 1935–55. London: Lund Humphries Publishers. Mellor, Leo. 2011. Reading the Ruins: Modernism, Bombsites and British Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meredith, Hugh. 1929. East Anglia. London: Robert Scott. Merriman, Peter. 2007. Driving Spaces: A Cultural-Historical Geography of England’s M1 Motorway. Oxford: Blackwell. Messent, Claude J. W. 1949. Sufolk and Cambs. London: Penguin Guides. Miller, Simon. 1995. “Urban Dreams and Rural Reality: Land and Landscape in English Culture, 1920–45.” Rural History 6 (1): 89–102. Morton, H. V. 1927. In Search of England. London: De Capo Press. ———. 1942. I Saw Two Englands. London: Methuen. Mottram, R. H. 1948. “Sufolk.” In Te English Counties Illustrated, edited by C. E. M. Joad. London: Odhams Press. 2 Secluded Suffolk: Countryside Writing, c.1930–1960 71

Nash, Paul. 1948. Outline: An Autobiography and Other Writings. London: Faber. Pennington, James. 1950. “East Anglia.” In Country Lover’s Companion: Te Wayfarer’s Guide to the Varied Scenery of Britain and the People Who Live and Work in the Countryside. London: Odhams Press. Potts, Alex. 1989. “Constable Country Between the Wars.” In Patriotism: Te Making and Unmaking of British National Identity. Volume III: National Fictions, edited by Raphael Samuel. London: Routledge. Redstone, Lilian. 1930. Sufolk. London: Alfred A. Knopf. Shears, W. B. 1936. Tis England: A Book of the Shires and Counties. London: Hutchinson. Stewart, Victoria. 2006. Narratives of Memory: British Writing of the 1940s. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Taylor, John. 1994. A Dream of England: Landscape, Photography and the Tourist’s Imagination. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Tennyson, Julian. 1939. Sufolk Scene. London: Blackie & Son. Urry, John. 1995. Consuming Places. London: Routledge. Vale, Edmund. 1950. Seas and Shores of England. London: Batsford. First published in 1936. Vesey-Fitzgerald, Brian. 1950. “Introduction.” In Country Lover’s Companion: Te Wayfarer’s Guide to the Varied Scenery of Britain and the People Who Live and Work in the Countryside. London: Oldhams Press. Wallace, Doreen. 1945. East Anglia. London: Batsford. First published 1939. Webster, Wendy. 2005. Englishness and Empire 1939–1965. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woolf, Virginia. 1941. Between the Acts. London: Hogarth Press. Wright, Patrick. 1985. On Living in an Old Country. London: Verso. Young, Andrew. 1956. A Prospect of Britain. London: Hutchinson. 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories

Following our tour of the isolated, insular Sufolk, represented as encapsulating endangered, timeless England, this chapter deepens its focus on the nation’s edge. I investigate the themes of invasion, intrusion and militarisation in this landscape and their role in forming understandings of the region. Tese stories centre on the Second World War, when the landscape was mobilised in more than one sense. In the traditional, military sense, the land was recruited and its people deployed in the total war that Britain experienced for the frst time in the Second World War (Childs 1998). Te people of the Sufolk coast felt particularly close to the front line and invasion as a host of military activities and physical structures flled the area, some of which did not stay long, but many of which persisted in the landscape. Te Sufolk countryside became a patchwork of airfelds and military training and testing areas, whose occupants spilt over into the village pubs and town dance halls. Anti-invasion structures were erected all along the coast, and civilians became involved in a huge variety of ways in the war efort. Te second sense of mobilisation operated on a more symbolic level, as we saw in the previous chapter, the English countryside being imbued with meaning and myth. Within ofcial war culture, this

© Te Author(s) 2020 73 S. Davis, Island Tinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9676-2_3 74 S. Davis functioned as a strategy for recruiting diferent groups of people to the aims and identities of one particular group. Tese two senses of mobilisation were intertwined, and this chapter explores how the physical and mythical roles of the military were formative aspects of the cultural geography and history of the area. Te wartime mobilisation of people and land altered conceptualisations of space, bringing new ways of seeing, interpreting and living in local spaces. Te mixing of diferent groups in new places during wartime sparked a proliferation of interactions with the surrounding landscape, with Sufolk’s twisting and turning country lanes becoming places where one might see Army convoys or American airmen wobbling along on the unfamiliar bicycle. Old country houses were transformed into accommodation for the training British Army and the Women’s Land Army (WLA), and locals formed new relationships to their home places through the Home Guard and the Air Raid Precautions (ARP). On the other hand, Sufolk’s coastal area became a place of many enclosed areas during the Second World War: new islands within the island. Te controlled military areas represented attempts to stabilise the meanings of particular patches of space. Access was limited for the various military sites, such as at the military research site at Bawdsey Manor, pioneering the new defensive technology of radar, and at Orford Ness, where military research focused on bomb ballistics and lethality/vulnerability trials into the efectiveness of fring at enemy aircraft and the ability of home aircraft to withstand fre. Similarly inaccessible were the many British and American airbases that covered the region and the Orford Battle Training Area, in which ground troops prepared for action. At other sites, the line between civilian and military was more blurred, as in a ten-mile wide “defence area” along the coast, from which all except “essential workers” were encouraged to evacuate. Although the war’s mass mobilisation of people and efect on civilians have been well studied, I add an exploration of the efects of spatial enclosure and control on the experienced and imagined countryside. Tis chapter begins with the infux of various groups into the Sufolk countryside and then follows the evacuation of the villages Sudbourne and Iken to create a battle training area and the subsequent transformations in how the landscape was understood. As we saw in Chapter 2, 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 75 countryside writing expressed militarisation through an aggressive sea, sliced up sky and eerie Martello towers. Tis chapter continues to explore countryside writing’s response to militarisation, both in terms of keeping it out of view of the timeless countryside and its gradual appearance as time passed. Invasion never seems far from the imagination on these shores, and later in the 1990s, another village in this small patch of the country, Shingle Street, was propelled to national fame through rumours of a failed 1940 invasion attempt.

1 Mobilising People

As with much of the nation, the county of Sufolk was thoroughly militarised during the Second World War, being drawn into the prepara- tion for and efects of war in highly pervasive ways. At frst, Sufolk was treated as a relatively safe place and into its rural communities came two waves of Londoners in the evacuations of 1939–1940, bringing town and country ways of life into closer contact. Government plans to evacuate children from the main urban areas were under way before the Second World War was even declared, and private arrangements were made for many children. Nearly one and a half million people moved in four days in September 1939 from towns and cities to the countryside (Parsons 1998; Werner 2001). At the other end of the line, however, reception areas had been given little instruction, and children arrived without homes allocated to them, and in many cases were lined up and selected by residents. As diferent versions of England mixed, a spectrum of responses emerged, with the rural positioned by many commentators as the “real”, superior England. Te contrast between town and country life was particularly intense in Sufolk, whose major urban areas are all around its periphery (Ipswich to the south, Lowestoft in the north and Bury St Edmunds in the west), whilst the majority of the county is made up of much smaller settlements. Te contrast had already been a theme in earlier countryside writing, and organicists had used the rural landscape to defne the moral body (Matless 1998). Tis efort gained momentum during the war and resonated with much ofcial propaganda, as the difering ways of life were reacted to and 76 S. Davis expressed in complex ways around the nation. Tis frst wave of evacuation was followed by many other ebbs and fows of people. By the winter, almost half of those who had moved away drifted back home (Browne 1981), but the government announced a new evacuation scheme in February 1940. Although a propaganda campaign encouraged East Anglian householders to accept evacuees, enthusiasm was low. In Southwold, out of 923 forms distributed only 23 were returned with positive ofers of help. Te disorganisation of the frst evacuation contributed to this reluctance, but it also transpired that one of the reasons that Southwold’s council claimed their area was not safe for children was that boarding house owners wanted to keep their accommodation vacant for summer visitors (Browne 1981). A second major incoming group of townsfolk to Sufolk were the women recruited for the farming efort. Created in June 1939, the WLA helped solve the problem of a greater need for agricultural productivity at a time when an already ageing male workforce had been recruited into the armed forces. Te so-called War Ags in each country attempted to meet wartime’s demands on agriculture, newly ploughing a huge amount of land, including over 300,000 areas nationwide and 5000 acres in East Sufolk (Ward 1988, 26). By August 1943, the WLA employed 87,000 women across the nation (Sackville-West 1944). Tese women embodied the confrontation of town and country, whose values delineated one another as citizenship was defned through the landscape. According to ofcial war culture, in the form of the Ministry of Information’s Land at War, town folk “tore of their shirts, took a good swig of country air, and plunged into the corn and cabbage as if for a sea-bathe” (1945, 93). David Matless (1998) argues that the land girls were pictured as having been transformed in body through their work, going from pale and fragile to strong and healthy. Counter to the rhetoric of their absorption into the rural area, however, was imagery of their separateness from the rest of the agricultural workforce. In the pictures in Vita Sackville-West’s ofcial account of the WLA, for example, the girls are used to promote an aesthetic of recognisably feminine beauty and were never accompanied by male workers or indeed any of the pre-war female workforce. Te number of WLA girls employed in East Sufolk grew gradually, but many farmers still resisted the infux 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 77 of women to work the land: by June 1942, there were still only 500 (Browne 1988, 145). We will continue to encounter the meeting of urban and rural worlds, but contrasting with these infuxes was also a large-scale emptying of the Sufolk coast.

2 Emptiable Space

As German troops moved west across the continent in 1940, the character of Britain’s east and south coasts changed in the eyes of the government and civilian residents, and the direction of evacuation switched to prepare for the possibility of invasion. In the summer of 1940, when the threat of invasion loomed, residents were encouraged to evacuate a strip of the coast reaching ten miles inland, stretching from the Tames to the Wash. Signposts were removed from the area, and church bells were silent. In May, when German forces had reached Holland’s coast, the parents of all children living within ten miles of the east coast were warned to prepare to move their children inland. All state schools in a ten-mile coastal belt were closed, and although evacuation was not compulsory, heavy persuasion was used. On the newspapers and radio were slogans like “Won’t you give them shelter in your home?” and “Caring for evacuees is a national service”. Even so, large numbers of children were later found to have stayed at home, including 3000 in Lowestoft (Browne 1981, 74). Tis frst stage of evacuation used classifcation by both space and type to infuence movement; a person’s age or a building’s function appeared as having primary importance. By the next month, classifcation of people became determined solely by space. On 17 June 1940, a long, wide strip of land along the vulnerable east and south coasts was declared a Defence Area, from which the War Cabinet wanted everyone to leave except a minimum of “essential workers”. In Sufolk, the strip included Lowestoft, Ipswich, Stowmarket and Sudbury, and by mid-July, 127,000 people, nearly half the population, had left the East Anglian coastal towns (Collier 1957). Te signifcance of this development is clear from the language as well as the actions of government spokesmen. Churchill told his staf on 5 July 1940 that “Clear instructions should now be issued about the people living in the 78 S. Davis threatened coastal zones” (quoted in Browne 1981, 105). As the terms “defence area” and “coastal zone” imply, the way people were classifed was now defned entirely spatially, bringing the area in line with Robert Sack’s notion of territoriality. Sack’s territoriality refers to “a spatial strategy to afect, infuence, or control resources and people by controlling area” (Sack 1986, 1). As the “geographical expression of social power” (Sack 1986, 5), one of its tendencies is to create the idea of a socially emptiable space; a place is ascribed the quality of emptiness when it contains socially or economically non-valuable items. Demonstrating this tendency, the Defence Area was discussed by cabinet ministers in terms of applying to “non-essential people” (War Cabinet 1940), and as Churchill instructed his staf: “Only those who are trustworthy should be allowed to stay. All doubtful elements should be removed” (quoted in Browne 1981, 105). Te implication of a place operating under territoriality, Sack argues, is that there is control of access to or over things inside the area. Te Sufolk civilians were not subjected to territoriality in this full sense, although three times in a fortnight the War Cabinet considered and rejected making evacuation compulsory. Suggestions were made that martial law should be declared in the Defence Area, so that the administration of justice in the area would also be under military control, but this too never came to pass. Even though control within the area was not total, it did include the control of movement across the boundary into the coastal zones. Manned roadblocks controlled movement in and out of this “defence area”, and beaches remained closed and covered in anti-invasion structures for the duration of the war. From 21 July 1940, holidaymakers were barred from everywhere within 20 miles from the coast between the Wash and the Tames in a notice issued by East Anglia’s Regional Commissioner. Te notice also declared that only those with “legiti- mate business” could enter the area. Car access was controlled as of 9 July to a number of coastal towns, including Southwold, Aldeburgh and Felixstowe. A resident from the Southwold area remembered: “If you’re on war work you were allowed in, otherwise you’d have to get a permit … You weren’t even allowed to come in with a motorcar within ten miles” (OHT 148). Cars without a permit were either removed 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 79 or efectively immobilised by removal of some parts. Te roads were almost completely deserted, except for military trafc, and most petrol pumps were closed down (Browne 1981). Signposts were removed to make navigation difcult for potential invaders (OHT 183), and although they were re-erected in urban areas in the summer of 1942, they remained forbidden everywhere within 20 miles of the coast for much longer (Fleming 1957). When two Mass Observation investiga- tors visited Aldeburgh in August 1940, they found one hotel shut, the other abandoned, many of the shops boarded, tank traps on the beach and notices everywhere about the various orders concerning cars, the curfew and beach access (MO 372). Te War Cabinet tried to keep the coastal evacuations out of the national press, but the restrictions on movement were still reported in some places (Fig. 1). Despite the wartime limits on access along the Sufolk coast, there were also creative responses to being in and moving through the area. A wartime Ipswich freman told a story of taking equipment to

Fig. 1 Anti-invasion structures known as “devil’s teeth” on Minsmere beach, 1949 (Photograph courtesy of the Eric Hosking Trust, www.erichoskingtrust.com) 80 S. Davis

Felixstowe just before D-Day, where, since the road was closed, they “discovered a way across farm tracks and whatnot. We took a convoy of appliances down … It was quite an experience” (OHT 176). Having been forced to fnd new routes around the countryside, the freman’s language is of discovery and adventure. Te oral history interviewer questioned him further:

Interviewer: So you did that in advance did you, because you knew that the road was going to be closed? Fireman: Oh yes. Int.: You didn’t know what for? Fireman: No. Int.: Did you have any idea? Fireman: I had an idea of course. You couldn’t go about the countryside and not notice things. But of course, it wasn’t mentioned … you didn’t divulge anything. (OHT 176)

Te freman thus eventually disclosed a practice of silent observation of the militarised countryside, described as if commonly used among the civilian residents. Following the dramatic emptying of the coastal area of civilians, the restrictions and population of the area waxed and waned a number of times. As the summer of 1940 turned to autumn, and the invasion threat reduced, people from the coastal belt began returning to their homes. Many of the troops who had come into the area were with- drawn for training inland, and in December 1940, the coastal Defence Area was reduced to a fve-mile strip. Observing that “Plenty of people have left the town and some have returned again”, the Mass Observation reporters in Aldeburgh detected increasing social strain from the migra- tions: “Tose who have never left express frequent contempt for the others or show a feeling of superiority towards them” (MO 372). Adding to this infux, another wave of evacuees from London came at the start of the blitz, but many found the country too quiet and left (Browne 1986). With the passing of winter, however, the direction of movement turned again. Early in 1941, notices on churches and public buildings informed residents that the danger of invasion had increased and that the government expected all who could be spared to leave without delay. 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 81

By September 1941, a Mass Observation reporter found there to be “very few children about” in Ipswich, whereas in the summer of 1940, only about 10% of the children went (MO 884). Restrictions on visiting the coastal belt were removed in November 1941, but by February 1942, a complete evacuation of the coastal area was being planned. Te Cabinet’s Home Defence Committee planned to order complete evacuation of Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Southwold, Aldeburgh, Felixstowe, Harwich, Frinton and Walton, Clacton, Trimley St Mary, Ipswich, Colchester and Southend-on-Sea (Browne 1988). Te eforts for ensuring voluntary evacuation also resumed, and the ban on visitors to the coast was re-imposed in April 1942. Tis area of the countryside thus witnessed many changing phases of spatial control and the fow of people during the war years.

3 The Front Line

With the changes in the nature of warfare during the Second World War, there were many senses in which civilians all over the country felt on the front line of war, and the coastal area of Sufolk felt particularly close. In September 1941, a Mass Observation reporter investigated morale in Ipswich, fnding that: “the war has been kept in people’s minds all the time, and they have very much a front line men- tality, with people evacuated, previously unheard-of numbers of troops in the town and surrounding countryside, and bombers passing overhead every night, to the accompaniment of sirens” (MO 884). Indeed, the observer mentions that “I was constantly being asked: ‘What about invasion?’. ‘Do you think he’ll invade?’” (MO 884). Much later, a life- long Orford resident, Charlie Underwood, refected on his wartime teenage years: “After the fall of Dunkirk, the east coast became the front line” (Underwood 2008). A woman from Darsham also remembered: “All the houses … were mainly empty and people went away from here because they were afraid anyway … and all those houses were taken over by the military” (OHT 149). Tis is a reminder that the movement of civilians in and out of Sufolk was intimately linked to the movement of military personnel and to changes in the land for military purposes. 82 S. Davis

As civilians drained out of the coastal area, much of it was appropriated by incoming ground troops, air force men and defence construction workers. In the Defence Area, civilian construction workers built various structures on the beaches, including pillboxes for observation, anti-tank cubes (concrete blocks to prevent tanks moving) and scaf- folding (known locally as “devils teeth”), whilst military troops carried out patrols, coast watches and training exercises. Nationwide, 80,000 pillboxes—reinforced concrete blockhouses—were built between June 1940 and February 1942 (Childs 1998, 68). In this little patch of coastal Sufolk, there were four active military research stations (at Martlesham Heath, Bawdsey Manor, Orford Ness and Shingle Street), with many of the civilian scientists and services staf billeted in the nearby towns and villages. Air force men flled the rapidly multiplying airbases, and local lore held that there was an airstrip every nine miles by the end of the war (Messent 1949). In Sufolk’s coastal towns, access to the waterfront was only given to service personnel, who had their own clubs, canteens and sometimes even cinemas and theatres (Browne 1988). Te Army also requisitioned many of the large houses, village halls and other buildings, and many private homes had soldiers billeted in them. Te front line character was exacerbated by the danger of some of the coastal anti-invasion measures; an Aldeburgh resident recollected “all the way between Aldeburgh and Torpe … there were all these landmines you see, and these soldiers walked on to some of them and they blown ‘em to pieces” (Smith, OHT 498) (Figs. 2 and 3). Adding to these new incomers was the so-called friendly invasion of American servicemen and women, since the vast majority of American airfelds were built in East Anglia. At any one time, there were between 3000 and 4000 Americans on a large base, and there were 122 US airbases in East Anglia at the peak (Gardiner 1992). About three million American service personnel visited Britain between January 1942 and December 1945, with around 426,000 American men and women in East Anglia at one point (Reynolds 2000). In Sufolk in April 1944, the American population was around 71,000, which equated to one GI to every six locals (Reynolds 2000). As Sam Edwards describes in his study of their memorialisation, this produced one of the new psychological challenges of aerial warfare, in that these servicemen shuttled 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 83

Fig. 2 Anti-tank cubes near Bawdsey (Photographs by the author, May 2008) between the confusingly tranquil, pastoral world of East Anglia and the brutal, industrial warfare hundreds of miles away (Edwards 2015, 38). Although eforts were made to ensure that this “occupation” went smoothly, there was a degree of culture shock between representatives of the two nations. Some American servicemen enjoyed their time there, such as John Appleby, who wrote the popular Sufolk Summer in 1948, declaring that he had “known nothing but happiness in Sufolk”. Positive prose was also clear in other accounts (Steinbeck 1942; Arbib 1947), but tensions existed, especially around the diference in rates of pay within the services (Americans received two-thirds more than their British counterparts), and complaints about American relationships with local women. Sometimes overzealous national pride caused difculties, and some East Anglians complained that the Americans were brash and arrogant, whilst some Americans retorted that the British were rude and ungrateful (Reynolds 2000). 84 S. Davis

Fig. 3 Pillbox near Orford (Photographs by the author, May 2008)

Even before the arrival of the Americans, the military infux created mixed responses. Dances became a regular feature in Ipswich, report- edly livening up the local life and bringing a new level of gaiety there (MO 884). Reports from outside the towns were less positive. An August 1940 Mass Observation report noted that on several occasions, there were “distinct signs of a lack of friendliness towards the numer- ous soldiers in the area, and there was somewhat antagonistic talk about them” (MO 372). Te situation was similar a year later, when a Mass Observation reporter in an east Sufolk village found that “Te main grouse seemed to be of a destructive mass of soldiers billeted in the district”. In the words of a civilian resident to whom he spoke: “Tey put them in a nice place and let them spoil it, then they say it’s unft and give them somewhere else to spoil. Tey are cutting down the trees to make way for the guns and digging up for the tank-traps. I’ve never seen such a mess” (MO 703). It is clear that there were tensions between the local inhabitants and those occupied primarily with national concerns. 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 85

As with the freman mentioned above, however, there were also ways in which the military prompted a sense of discovery for local people. A woman living in Darsham, ten miles north of Aldeburgh, recounted in an interview in the 1980s:

Te highlight really during the war was the military you see … Te other thing which fascinated us all which lived here, they had to do all sorts of manoeuvres, training you know. And they would suddenly, the military, whichever regiment was here at the time, build a pontoon bridge down here over the river and by that time I’d got my frst baby. We would go backwards and forwards with our prams, the few people which were here— there was very few apart from military and empty houses. (OHT 149)

Here, we see the unfamiliar way in which the military moved in the landscape being treated as a spectacle. She recalls locals’ fascination with the military’s transitory movements as well as their efect on structures that change the potential for movement in the landscape (the bridge). Along similar lines, a teenage boy evacuated to near Felixstowe described how he and his brother “liked to watch the soldiers going through their drill routines along the seafront” (Rooke-Matthews 92/37/1). Te military’s unfamiliar ways of moving changed how locals perceived their familiar landscape. Te countryside was therefore simultaneously hosted to the enclosure and control of military territoriality and a multiplicity of locals’ reinterpretations, resonating with Tim Cole’s (2010) notion of military landscapes being “hybrid” or layered landscapes, the interconnections between civilian absence and military presence resisting simple delineations like empty or destroyed.

4 Lost Village

Within this hybrid wartime military landscape, I want to zoom into one particular tract of land to examine its changing meanings. Just north of Orford, the villages of Sudbourne and Iken were evacuated in order to create the 9000 acre Orford Battle Training Area for the British Army in the summer of 1942. Villagers were asked to leave their 86 S. Davis homes with only a few weeks’ notice, being promised by the government they would be able to return as soon as the war was over. Tis was repeated in various areas of Britain, and between 1939 and 1945, 11,500,000 acres were occupied, an area amounting to almost 20% of the UK, including the entire coastline (Childs 1998, 193). In some instances, villages were never repopulated despite much protest, as with the “ghost villages” of Tyneham in Dorset (Wright 1996) and Imber in Salisbury Plain (Dudley 2012). Marianna Dudley (2012) has described the environmental history of some of the sites requisitioned for training and weapons testing during this time, examining the tensions between environmentalist and conservation groups attempting to determine the post-war future of such sites, as well as a growing discourse of military environmentalism. At Sudbourne and Iken, the government initially did not return the land after the war, but the ensuing protests paid of, and in 1948, the War Ofce released the area. Standing on top of a platform made from sacks of oats in Sudbourne, the Minister of Home Security, Major-General Anderson, spoke to the gathered villagers on 17 June 1942, explaining that the Army needed to train in conditions approximating as nearly as possible to those of actual warfare (Waddell 2008, 11). As the last residents moved out on 20 July, the Pioneer Corps were already wiring of the area, and its boundary was in place the next day, where wire-topped gates across the road held noticeboards reading “Beyond this boundary fring may be taking place. Persons crossing the boundaries do so at their own risk” (Waddell 2008, 13). Whilst the Defence Area had pushed the Sufolk coast towards territoriality, the region around these villages experienced a more severe version of spatial power (Fig. 4). Little has been published on these events, but some locals’ testimo- nies have reached local history associations, and Orford Museum holds a collection of newspaper articles collected by Geofrey Holmes, a boy at the time of the evacuation. Although the civilian residents experienced the military activity largely only through the sounds it created, there were other forms of contact between the battle training area and its surroundings. Te training soldiers were billeted at Leiston, Torpeness and Aldeburgh in requisitioned schools and at two tented camps in Butley, and the ofcers stayed in larger houses including two 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 87

Fig. 4 Orford Battle Area map (Courtesy of Orford Museum) at Saxmundham. Te men and their equipment travelled daily into the training area, and civilians were used to the sight of their narrow village roads choked with military trafc (Allen 2008). As with other villages around the nation that were evacuated to create military training areas, the eviction was framed by an argument of wartime sacrifce (Dudley 2012). It was presented as necessary for the war efort, with villagers accepting their fate gladly in order to help. Many of the articles also operate emotionally, referencing the school and its children. One sets the scene with “A handwritten notice on the gate of the little school in the village” (Daily Herald, 11 July 1942), whilst another, entitled “Last Days in England’s Most Unhappy Village”, describes “a furniture van outside the red-tiled school”, where men carried out “the little desks”, and “A pink-cheeked doll lay beside a doll’s pram already flled with a teddy bear, waiting for their small owner to come for them” (Bull 1942). Tese articles draw on the poignancy of young lives being uprooted, framing the village in terms of those whose futures the eforts are trying to protect. Te training area was also brought into 88 S. Davis conversation with notions of home and generational time through the shocking ease with which long ties to the place were being broken. One article mentions that “Many of the villagers have lived in the district all their lives” (June 1942), and another broadens its horizons from single lifetimes to several generations: “Many families have lived in the thatched and oaken dwellings of the villages for centuries” (Bull 1942). Tis emphasis on generational time soon began to be displaced, though, as the military succeeded in enrolling others to their characterisation of the area. In an account written by local resident Frank Waddell shortly after the war, reproduced later by his son, he emphasises the agricultural lifestyle of the villagers (“Almost everybody drew their living from the land”), before giving way to military language at the point when the village was handed over to the military: “zero hour” (2008, 12). It is as if the village switched perceptibly from agricultural to military time. Tese changes in the temporality of the landscape were joined by another change, as the familiar place became a space referring to other spaces. At frst, reporters still characterised the land in the language of its former use, as deserted villages and farmlands, and troops’ behaviour was subject to rules linked to village life. After a visit to the training area in September 1942, one journalist noted that “no house could be made an artillery target”, and “no shell must fall within 500 yards of a religious building” (Webb 1942). But slowly the identity of the battle area began to shift. It became a space of “inoculation”; Waddell remembered how two days after the last villager left, “in place of the peaceful country sounds, the rattle of machine guns, the spit of rife fre or the crump of hand grenades told that ‘battle inoculation’ had started” (Waddell 2008, 13). Although flled with this military activity, on another level the space started taking on a sense of emptiness. By November, a Daily Express journalist was writing about “the village that is now part of ‘No Man’s Land’”, where “the ploughing had given place to the crack of rifes, the thud of shells, the rumble of tanks” (Daily Express, 17 November 1942). Te reference to no man’s land occurred in other reports too, and this changed character of the land recalls Jefrey Sasha Davis’ (2007) notion of the erasure involved in militarised landscapes. As prior meanings were cleared or emptied, however, the land began to refer to the spaces of the continent in which real battles would take 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 89 place. Realistic battle practice, and its concomitant requirement for adequate space, had been declared an urgent need in March 1942. Te government authorised the requisition of seven areas in Britain, used to simulate various elements of attack and defence. Among the simulations in Orford Battle Training Area were a 300-yard wall playing the part of the Atlantic Wall stretching from Norway to Spain and the River Alde becoming the Rhine. Tank commander Major-General Sir Percy Hobart devised various attachments for tanks (‘Hobart’s funnies’) to enable them to ford rivers, cross ditches, destroy obstacles and clear paths through minefelds. Early in 1944, a simulated seaborne attack was conducted just south of Aldeburgh on Orford Ness, another enclosed military site, where research was carried out into aeroplane fring and defence, but the two groups were kept completely separate (Allen 2008). Trough this work, places like the Orford Battle Area were made into obligatory passage points for the ground troops and tank operators’ path to the continent. In this space of simulation, new meanings were inscribed onto the emptied land, making a diferent kind of “front line” to the one con- jured earlier. One of the journalists described this “battle zone” or “battlefeld” as “a no man’s land of deserted villages and farmlands”, in which “the men of Britain’s new army are turned into hardened soldiers” during “training under conditions which simulate battle as nearly as possible” (Webb 1942). Te realistic appearance of the battles struck many observers. Tat reporter watched as “Troops went into action as if it were the real thing”, and another reporter described seeing in ten minutes “reproduced all the drama of a battle to which months might be devoted in a war flm” (East Anglian Daily Times [EADT], 8 August 1942). Te flm comparison was elaborated further by the reporter discussing that idea with a young ofcer there who had played a part in the propaganda flm, Next of Kin (1942). Te area’s character of no man’s land derived partly from being halfway to the continental battlefelds, but also from being somewhere between reality and flm-like. As if in response to his disquiet at this not-quite-real quality, the reporter revelled in very physical imagery in his descriptions of the training. Explosions sent up “great showers of earth, to be followed by the rattle of stones descending on the steel helmets of the troops”, and a 90 S. Davis

Bangalore torpedo launched at a “great mass of barbed entanglements”, “hurled heath and wire skywards with a mighty roar” (EADT, 8 August 1942). Te ideas of rehearsal and virtual battle were in fact not limited to the confnes of such training areas, but were widespread around the county. Local “Invasion Committees” were active at the end of 1941, and in many parts of the region, exercises were attempted on increasingly ambitious scales. In October 1941, the Eastern Daily Press reported “thousands of soldiers and armoured vehicles” taking part in “Te greatest and most comprehensive manoeuvres ever held in this county in peace or war”, in which “it was supposed that the Germans had forced a landing in East Anglia and were attacking in the direction of London” (Eastern Daily Press, 8 October 1941). Full-scale “invasion exercises” continued in spring 1942 in every town in the eastern counties, involving the armed services, Home Guard, every branch of civil defence, the police and public services such as transport, communications and hospi- tals. Te battles were judged by “umpires” provided by the services, and light explosives and fares were used to simulate bombs and artillery/ mortar fre (Browne 1988).

5 Militarised Landscapes

Militarisation and countryside became entwined in new ways as the countryside underwent dramatic changes in use during the war, with areas being emptied, enclosed and transformed, as well as infuxes of dif- ferent groups, and the threat and simulation of invasion. As we saw in Chapter 2, countryside writing mobilised particular visions of the countryside as quintessentially English, emphasising themes of timelessness and continuity in the people and landscape. In much wartime writing, the countryside appeared to encapsulate “priorities set by nature rather than current events”, providing an escape from the present (Boyes 1993, 181), although Esty might argue that such writing attempted to revive the insular nation. At the same time, Patrick Deer describes a fully fedged British war culture, ofering a vision of “a fully mobilised island fortress, loyal empire, and modernised war machine” (Deer 2009, 3). 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 91

Fig. 5 Orford castle in the “Invasion Village” series, 1940 (Courtesy of Orford Museum)

Within the “fortress island”, and contrary to the idea of an ideal countryside, the editors of the Manchester Guardian actively decided against the previous war’s idea that readers wanted a “war-free zone” of birds and fowers in the Country Diaries section (Wainwright 2007). In the summer of 1940, for example, a war correspondent described a “strange new countryside, a countryside stripped and armed for defence against the invader” (quoted in Wainwright 2007, 127). Arnold Boyd wrote of the birds seen at the craters of bombs and landmines in December 1942 and described aeroplanes as “big metal hawks”, noting that at some bombing ranges, the lack of fshermen and ramblers were allowing the duck to “enjoy more peace than they have for years” (quoted in Wainwright 2007, 163). Such descriptions ft the harmony between aerial warfare and the pastoral mentioned in Chapter 2. Te timeless rural idyll and militarisation were curiously mixed in Sufolk when Orford village was chosen by the Ministry of Information as the location of a set of propaganda photographs taken in 1940–1941; “Invasion Village” portrayed the positive attitude of residents living on 92 S. Davis

Fig. 6 Orford square in the “Invasion Village” series, 1940 (Courtesy of Orford Museum) the “invasion coast”. Te photographs were taken on a lecture tour of America by Orford resident Sir Henry Bunbury, with the aim of gaining support for an American alliance (Poulter 2008). In the photographs, imagery of ancient Britain was used to show threatened heritage. Te caption to Fig. 5, for example, describes how: “Trough the barbed wire of this war, a sentry stands guard on an edifce that has stood frm through many wars—the village’s Norman Castle. For 700 years it has been a watchtower for invaders from across the North Sea”. Te pairing of sentry and castle featured in several photographs, one referring to the “Modern guard of the ancient guardian”, and another expanding on the castle’s history of “silent watch”: “Te Spanish Armada sailed and was destroyed, Napoleon rose and fell: still the Castle, grim and grey, looked out across the North sea”. Tis strategy of juxtaposing current military features against signs of the deeper past appeared in a many situations. 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 93

Other captions describe “houses that have looked on stage coaches” lining a street down which “rumble Bren gun carriers” and mention how “Te ruins of the ancient part of church look down” on the gun carriers in the market place. Te repetition of this strange pairing amplifed the sense of military threat to Deep England (Fig. 6). From within the war’s rapidly militarising sphere of home life and countryside, some 1940s writing began exploring themes connected to this militarisation. Despite paper rationing, censorship, destruction of libraries and warehouses, publishers found a wartime reading public with a voracious appetite for print (Calder 1969, 501). Te public were particularly interested in popular romance and classic realist books and escapist flms, and novelists found it difcult during wartime to respond to the war, many preferring instead the fragments of poetry (Stewart 2006; Mellor 2011). Many literary works from the 1940s, however, did engage with militarisation beyond ofcial war culture, exploring the contradictions between the state’s panoramic vision and authoritarian behaviour, and the points of view of those living outside the tactical realities of the confict, including using the previous war to work through war’s psychological efects (Stewart 2006; Deer 2009). We already encountered Virginia Woolf’s exploration of aerial warfare’s relationship to the sense of a continuous national history as expressed in the highly local form of a village pageant-play. A range of authors challenged various aspects of war culture, but the writing of Jocelyn Brooke and Rex Warner is particularly relevant for considering representations of the militarised countryside. Temes of military landscapes abound in the literary works of Jocelyn Brooke between 1948 and 1950, in which his Kent landscape is always haunted or enchanted by soldiers. Mark Rawlinson (2001) unpacks the way in which Brooke’s militarised landscape correlates with the formation of sexual identity, the landscape that the soldiers populate becoming deceptive, seductive and terrifying. Of particular interest here is Rawlinson’s argument that Brooke’s military transformation of place is not contingent on wartime activity; rather, the military presence is shown as natural, a core element of English nature in its function as a component of cultural identity. In Te Scapegoat (1948), for example, Brooke described his protagonist, thirteen-year-old Duncan, watching a 94 S. Davis

“column” of soldiers (“raw, meat-red faces surly beneath steel-helmets”) passing heavily down the narrow lane, adding that the soldiers seemed to Duncan “an integral part of the landscape, the indigenous fauna of an unexplored, unfriendly county” (Brooke 1948, 31). Brooke’s writing reveals a complex relationship between ideas of English landscape and fantasies of the military. Although war culture was dominated by the panoramic view of the airman (see Chapter 4), Rex Warner’s extremely successful Te Aerodrome (1941) challenged the all-seeing aerial view (Reeve 1989). In this dystopic allegory, Warner’s protagonist, Roy, leaves the world of his quintessentially muddled, semi-feudal English village for the new aerodrome on the hill, which overlooks but is detached from the village below. Roy is drawn in by the emotionally cold, distancing, disembodied, aerial perspective of the air force. From up in the air, the features on the ground “wholly lost that quality which is perceived by a countryman”, instead appearing “both defenceless and ridiculous” (Warner 1941, 224). Te Air Vice-Marshall wants his airmen to free themselves from earthly bonds, in particular marriage and parenthood, but more generally the ties of time, the weighted thoughts of past and future. But Roy eventually loses faith in the air force. Although the village has proved to be a disorderly web of deception, resentment and confusion, he decides there is more life in that world and sees that the aerodrome is not truly free from it. At the turning point in his thoughts, and as the book closes, Roy reverts to an appreciation of nature and darkness, noticing the budding fowers of spring and remembering “that night as we looked over the valley in the rapidly increasing darkness … I remember the valley itself and how I saw it again as I had seen it in my childhood, heard a redshank whistle from the river” (Warner 1941, 238, 302). Aside from the book’s political interest—in both its exploration of the appeal of fascism and its suggestion of the value of liberal muddle (Hopkins 2006)—its exploration of the meeting of the countryside and aerial warfare is fascinating. Roy rejects the view from the air in favour of the limited perspective of the ground, and the supposed purity and perfection of the air force are brought down when the Air Vice-Marshall is revealed as Roy’s real father and dies in an air crash. Whilst in Jocelyn 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 95

Brooke’s landscape the military emerges as a core part of English nature, in Te Aerodrome the muddled English village is set against the military world, in the end appearing more alive.

6 Reclaiming the Countryside

As the war came to a close, the changes in behaviour and the layer- ing of the land’s meanings did not simply disappear. Te defensive structures—pillboxes, gun batteries and anti-tank cubes—remained on the coast, some of which are still visible today (Newsome 2003). At Orford’s battle area, the War Department held onto the land they had promised to return, and new signs appeared on the roads leading to the training area, declaring: “Keep out. Tere are bombs in here which will kill you”. Compared to the earlier signs (“Beyond this boundary fring may be taking place. Persons crossing the boundaries do so at their own risk”), the message had become much more severe. Te War Department told questioners in the House of Commons that they were deciding the composition of the future services and attempting to cooperate with the other departments. When the site’s future was still unclear, some articles highlighted the area’s “derelict” present state (EADT, 17 May 1946). Others presented it as a “beauty spot” in “danger” and focused on its heritage: “Norman churches, Elizabethan houses and many old monuments” and its “nearly 8,000 acres of the most lovely country in England” (Daily Sketch, 9 April 1945). Framing the site in terms of traditional Englishness was sometimes given a more overtly political tone, as when “the scandal of the Sufolk Battle Area” was linked to protesting against “a Government whose obsession is a planned society” (EADT, 11 May 1946). In addition to English heritage, wartime tensions between town and country were recruited in public debates over the villages’ future. A letter to the East Anglian Daily Times ’s editor in 1946, signed “One of them”, sparked a charged series of responses. Te writer claimed to have spoken to a large number of former residents who were “comforta- bly settled in other districts, with good jobs, good houses, electric light, 96 S. Davis water laid on, good sanitation, and near the bus routes and schools”. Having asked if they would like to go back, he always received the same answer: “Not to that dreary hole, where there’s nothing to do but work, eat and sleep”. He appealed to the EADT readership to let the country train the new army there so that “Our sons and daughters” can “see life and fnd an interesting job, and not be buried in the wilds of Iken and Sudbourne”. Several replies to this letter also claimed to have consulted many of the evicted villagers with the opposite result. “All of them wish to go back” (Chenery 1946), wrote one, whilst another declared: “When asked if they would like to return the answer is always the same—‘Just give us the chance’” (Keer 1946). J. B. Charlesworth had been campaigning for a year with his “fellow exiles” against the continued military occupation and was armed with 87 written assertions of desire to return home and indignation at the delay. Charlesworth dismissed “One of them” as a townsman, lured in by the “chromi- um-plated” pleasure of the cinema and town, and lacking the “inner fund of mental contentment” that enabled one to appreciate “the quiet beauty and serenity of our countryside”. He ended bluntly: “We do not want him at Sudbourne or Iken in this brave new or any other world” (Charlesworth 1946). Clearly, the tensions between town and country ways of life, heightened during the war, were not about to fade into the background. Te training area was eventually released a year later, and villagers began moving back in September 1947, although the area was not declared ofcially safe for return until March 1948 (EADT, 24 February 1948). By early 1949, the return was complete, and many Sudbourne inhabitants came back, although fewer Iken families did. Restoration involved the East Sufolk Committee, a Ministry of Works mobile labour force and the Ministry of Transport, and during that phase, the journalistic reportage was heavily militarised. In one article, the land appears as “shell-torn, littered with tangles of barbed wire, earthworks and tank tracks”, and it was soon pronounced that the felds “have been found to hide buried mines”, hand grenades and mortar bombs. Te East Sufolk Committee turned to the Royal Engineers and their mine detectors, only to fnd that “No charts of the minefelds are apparently in existence” (EADT, 9 April 1947). In addition to this focus 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 97 on destruction, military frameworks were used to describe new events at the site. Te Army went “to battle against rabbits”, as one headline had it, after having “declared war on them”. Tey built “a rabbit-proof fence around the area”, replacing one boundary with another. Te site also continued to evoke a blurred sense of space. A 1947 article talked of “Scenes that recall war-stricken lands of Europe” (EADT, 5 April 1947), and a year later an article titled “Te restoration of Sudbourne” described how “Soldiers and all the machinery of war altered the face of the countryside until it looked like a Continental battlefeld”. With its past evocations of no man’s land and the front line, it seems that the area continued to be perceived as a layered or hybrid landscape for some years after the war had ended.

7 Hidden Military

Beyond the experimental writing of writers like Woolf, Brooke and Warner, and the military pastoral of the Country Diaries, countryside writing featured a notable absence of any military presence. We saw in Chapter 2 that older histories seemed preferable to seeing even traces of the First World War in the countryside, but that a sense of threat, aggression and eeriness crept into representations of some of Sufolk’s defning features, the sea, sky and Martellos. More explicit representation of militarisation did not seem possible to integrate with the 1940s–1950s timeless image of the English countryside. By the 1950s, fctional literature too was shifting away from its explorations of militarism, with both domestic neo-realism and the insular poetry of the Movement claiming “a radical break with wartime culture, and a self-conscious provincialism that turned away from its complexity and implications” (Deer 2009, 235). Te removal of the military from the countryside picture recalls Raphael Samuel’s (1994) point that what memory contrives to forget is as important as what it makes sure to remember. Reviewing anthropological work on militarism, Hugh Gusterton writes that “Mobilisation for war often involves a collective mobilisation of memory about past injuries”, whilst “the end of war involves the selective memorialisation and forgetting of war’s pains” 98 S. Davis

(Gusterton 2007, 60). Following this logic, the wartime militarisation of the preciously English countryside could be read as one of war’s pains that needed to be forgotten. Te discrepancy between mythic and militarised versions of the countryside is well demonstrated in Harry Batsford’s How to See the Country of 1940. Published whilst the East Anglian coast was an inaccessible Defence Area, Batsford declares that: “Te country remains ours to the full, to explore and enjoy in peace and in war. We can still roam its felds and woods in spite of restrictions … No one has yet succeeded in thwarting our access to the hills and valleys of our native land” (Batsford 1940, 3). Many commentators used the wartime meeting of rural and urban worlds to champion the countryside’s connection to good citizenship during this time, and Batsford’s book is an excellent example, aiming to aid evacuated newcomers to the countryside. He writes that the “evacuation vicissitudes have brought to light a large class of town-dwellers who can only exist tolerably in city, suburban or even slum surroundings” (1940, 2). Te book, so popular it was reprinted in 1945 and 1946, continued: “No one is a true Englishman, or has lived a fully-balanced life, if the country has played no part in his development” (1940, 3). Whilst the military mobilised the coast as emptiable, redefnable territory, writers like Batsford mobilised the image of an accessible English countryside. In Sufolk’s rural writing, militarisation had played a diferent role in the interwar period, when Doreen Wallace watched “interesting and beautiful amphibians rise up and circle at all hours of the day” at the “fying station” at Felixstowe (Wallace 1939, 107). Although the interwar period sustained ambivalent attitudes towards aviation, with increasing fears of aerial invasion, Valentine Cunningham notes that in the 1930s, “Tere had never been such an air-minded time in England … Nor had English literature ever been so air-minded” (Cunningham 1989, 168). At Orford in 1929, Hugh Meredith thought the place was “up with the times”, since one’s “musings” on the myths and past gov- ernors of its castle “are shattered on encountering a warning against trespassing in certain areas on the sea-marshes during certain hours when the neighbouring airmen practice bombing!” (Meredith 1929, 61). In fact, this was not bombing practice, but experimental trials in 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 99 the ballistics of dropping bombs, carried out at the research station at Orford Ness in conjunction with the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment a few miles inland at Martlesham Heath (see Chapter 7). What is noteworthy here, though, is that despite the jarring use of “shattered”, Meredith’s jolly tone brings the military harmlessly into view, even calling the airmen “neighbours”. By contrast, in the 1940s–1950s, the militarisation of the countryside was often hidden from view. During wartime, Allan Jobson was writing that in Sufolk, one feels to be on top of a “sleeping, smiling world fanked on the east by a sea … while to the south the great city and wars and rumours; too far away to know or trouble … Here is England of all the years” (Jobson 1944, 28). Tis fts Boyes’ notion of countryside writing as a conceptual retreat from an uncertain wartime present. Similarly, Mee’s Sufolk: Our Farthest East begins by assuring readers that “Te great Motor Age that has shattered so much loveliness in England’s countryside has not destroyed the simple beauty of these eastern villages. Tey remain as they have been for generation after generation, with the glory of their open felds, their wide landscapes enriched by trees, lovely commons golden with gorse, hedgerows flled with loosestrife, and wild fowers in profusion everywhere” (Mee 1941, 2). Wartime readers were thus told to rest assured that the countryside still holds an escape from the anxieties of both modernisation and militarisation, its connection to the past (“generation after generation”) holding it secure. Tis peaceful picture continued in the years after the war. Jobson’s next book, North East Sufolk (1948a), begins with: “It is a curious fact that a county which has been the subject of so many and devastating invasions, and has lived its life under the threat of invasion, should present such a peaceful and undisturbed fruitful appearance to those who pass by”. He continues: “Rural England at its best, and its most picturesque, is here for the fnding” (Jobson 1948a, 1). Te notion of this insular region representing the nation is connected here to an ability to defend itself from threat. Later in the book, Jobson looks with his reader from the tall church at Wickham Market over the land stretching towards Orford Ness. Tis view covers the Orford Battle Area, still not yet re-opened to its former inhabitants. Jobson, however, does not 100 S. Davis see this, merely describing this “hinterland” as a place within which “lies a quiet undisturbed country, now much given over to the Forestry Commission; holding many acres of conifers, adding silence to silence” (Jobson 1948a, 57). Tis quiet picture comes across in Arnott’s writing too, painting Iken as “one of the few remaining corners of Arcadian England” (Arnott 1952, 4). In Addison’s description of Wickham Market in Sufolk, he notes that although the “sleepy little market town has had its moments of excitement in all England’s wars”, “it has always slipped back peacefully to fulfl its proper function as a centre of quiet country life” (Addison 1950, 23). Te reader could hardly guess that at this time, aeroplanes were still frequently fying over exactly this area, on their way to drop large bombs onto the shingle at Orford Ness, which continued to be the country’s main site for bomb testing directly after the Second World War was over (Haezell 2010). Tis was not a place of silence. From the village of Orford, the many buildings on Orford Ness were easily visible, separated only by a narrow river, and aspects of the work there were both visible and extremely audible. When Jobson comes to Orford, though, he describes only a “pleasant hud- dle of houses, tinctured by time’s trickling hand” (Jobson 1948a, 58). A few year later, a book on East Anglia’s birds, Bird Pageant, describes Orford: “Here, as in many places on this dreamy Sufolk coast, the frontiers of past and present drop in a touch; in a world of violent change they preserve an atmosphere that is almost indestructible” (Robertson 1954, 16). History seems erased on this coast, the deeper past eternally present. Likewise, Herbert Tompkins does not see the military anywhere in Sufolk, his Companion into Sufolk (1949) only introducing readers to Orford’s church and Norman castle. Looking towards Bawdsey Manor from across the River Deben, Tompkins tells his readers how conspicuous it is from afar on its commanding promontory, with its turrets, colour, minarets and clustered chimneys (Tompkins 1949, 69). Whilst the house is impressive, what must have been at least as noticeable were the new radar towers erected during the war; the huge Chain Home (CH) and Chain Home Extra Low (CHEL) radar systems then at the manor (see Chapter 4) were each 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 101 mounted on a 200-ft platform on 350-ft transmitter masts. Again, these slipped out of sight. In addition to these larger installations, Bawdsey’s coast retained its wartime pillboxes and anti-tank cubes, but they could also not be part of the view.

8 Looking Back to War

Although the continuing presence of militarisation in the countryside was difcult to see, memories of the war began to appear in post-war narratives of the Sufolk countryside. In such moments in Jobson’s writing, the wartime military presence tends to be aligned with destruction. Tis Sufolk, for example, describes the fint stone walls that are such a “characteristic” feature of his village, adding that “Sad to say, time has eaten into the mortar … while Army lorries have done in an hour what centuries might have failed to accomplish. Tey were of the tradition that built our churches of native and natural materials” (Jobson 1948b, 29). It is clear that “tradition”, “native”, “natural” and “characteristic” are set in opposition with the Army’s presence. A similar story appears in connection with an old trackway across an expanse of common with rare butterfies and purple heather, “sorely torn asunder in these modern days by that engine of war – the tank” (1948b, 31). Finally, in a chapter entirely composed of tales and memories from a local, Reuben Noy, we hear: “Yis, they wur rum owd days; but one thing I can tell yew we did hev peace. None o’ them nasty owd bomb things a dropping about, an’ makin’ sich a dither as never wur” (1948b, 75). Here, the dialect marks an even stronger, older connection to the region, defning militarisation as not belonging in the landscape. Temes of war and memory appeared in Addison’s depiction of the Sufolk coast, which we saw him describing as strange, sinister and foreboding in Chapter 2. Addison writes: “We must concede that the marshes that have saved the Sufolk coast are not to everybody’s taste” (Addison 1950, 129). Te marshes “saved” the coast from roads and development, and Addison’s explanation of their mixed appeal is worth quoting in full: 102 S. Davis

I do not think their beauty can be defned or their appeal explained. It is, I think, a poetic appeal, like the appeal of the moors that stirred the soul of Emily Bronte, or the appeal of the desert that stirred some of our troops in the Second Great War, and which they found so difcult to analyse – like the appeal of the sea itself, for that matter. All these solitary places have one thing in common – they test a man’s private resources. Tey bring also a sense of freedom, and this is particularly true of the marshes. (Addison 1950, 130)

Te marshes and sea are contextualised in relation to both the nation’s literary history and the deserts and troops of the Second World War. We will encounter a fctional story of using these very marshes to deal with wartime, desert memories in Chapter 5. For Addison, this stretch of Sufolk to be a lonely, wild place, and its qualities seem to him both challenging and liberating. In addition to bringing wartime memories into view, contemporary signs of militarisation also began to appear, usually coded in terms of interruption and threat. In Claude Messent’s 1949 Penguin guide, we fnd that “Sufolk, it should be noted, was profoundly afected by the war, of which many traces remain”, and that of the huge number of airfelds: “although many of these are now unoccupied, a number of ancient roadways are still closed”. Messent continues that “Much of the best ‘walker’s country’ in Sufolk—the heathlands skirting the coast— was used as a training military area and is still temporarily closed to the public, like part of the foreshore, because of the danger from unexploded grenades or mines” (Messent 1949, 8). Outstanding here is that the continued military presence comes with the term “danger” and that the military is an inconvenient presence, closing roads and the best walker’s country. Contributing a chapter on East Anglia to A Country Lover’s Companion, John Pennington describes the heathland in east Sufolk as one of “the highlights of Sufolk scenery”, stretching from the edge of Ipswich as far as Woodbridge, “unbroken, unspoilt, until the traveller comes to the aerodrome at Martlesham” (Pennington 1950, 177). Te heathland is unspoiled until it is cut of by the airbase. We already encountered Carter’s use of the “modern weapons” of aeroplanes in Chapter 2, where they cut through his musings and seemed 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 103 to hold symbolic power within his scenes of destruction. Beyond the Martello tower on the spit of Orford Ness, Carter fnds a “sinister, fascinating desert”, a place of “indescribable menace”, where “desolation descends upon one like a physical blow, battering on the consciousness and stunning and bewildering the faculties” (Carter 1951, 57). At the time, Orford Ness was still an active military research site with controlled access, as it had been for over 30 years (see Chapter 7), so Carter must have only walked partway down the northern part of the spit. Te strange qualities of this place afect him strongly: “All initiative seemed sapped from me as I plodded along the almost superheated shingle. I paused for breath, and sat on the rusty, harmless shell of an old mine that had been washed ashore during the war; a little further along was an old forgotten paravane broken adrift and washed ashore from some minesweeper” (1951, 58). In the middle of Carter’s post-apocalyptic scene, the natural shingle expanse appears unnaturally superheated, sinister and menacing. In his drained state, it is the mine shell that appears “harmless” and lets him rest. When Carter reaches the area of the Orford Battle Area, he relates to it as his “happy hunting ground, a desolation which was once a battle school” (1951, 41). Although Carter was living in London, the book is based on a trip around the Sufolk coast of his youth. A year before, Carter and his cousin had apparently “gone on many an illicit expedition for game” in the old battle area: “Picking our way across the soft, sandy soil, stepping warily over unexploded mortar bombs, mines, shells and grenades, we bagged more rabbits, hares, pheasants and partridges than we could carry in one journey” (1951, 41). In Carter’s writing, militarisation appears to have allowed natural species to thrive surprisingly well given the destruction around, a narrative that became increasingly linked to military training areas in later decades (Dudley 2012). Carter describes these sea-plains as holding a “haunting beauty”, before adding that “Tere were other things too, lovely old farm-houses and fne barns … riddled and torn by mortar, machine-gun and shell fre. Woodwork and century-old beams charred and blackened by incendiary missiles. On bullet-riddled doors hung yellowed and stained notices to the efect that the occupants had evacuated their homes as part of their 104 S. Davis war efort, and asking the troops to respect the property!” (Carter 1951, 41). For Carter, the “scars” left by the battle school were “vanishing happily beneath young, green bracken” (Carter 1951, 89), again showing a logic of militarisation serendipitously allowing nature to thrive. Glancing forwards to the 1970s, Derek Wilson’s Short History of Sufolk describes the infuence of the Second World War on the area, when “thousands of productive areas were buried under concrete and tarmac to provide Britain with much needed airfelds. … Nissen huts and hangers studded the landscape. Tousands upon thousands of bombers and fghter support craft stood like strange new crops amid the wheat and beet felds” (Wilson 1977, 160). Te military presence appears at once in opposition to the countryside’s traditional use, burying productive areas, and yet also bizarrely aligned with it, the warplanes appearing as strange new crops. When Norman Scarfe described the “lovely” area between Bawdsey and Southwold as holding some “obstacles” in the “radio research installation” at Orford Ness and Bawdsey, he immediately added that we owe our survival in the Battle of Britain to such places. He suggests we should think of them as “potential buildings of historic and even architectural interest, like Burgh Castle, and Orford Castle, and the Martello Towers put up between Felixstowe and Aldeburgh” (Scarfe 1972, 229). By this time, the military structures were beginning to be incorporated into the sphere of heritage. Later, writing about East Anglia during the war, Michael Bowyer declared that touring the contemporary countryside, “one may occasionally observe a copse nesting in a deep hollow and enjoying the fertility of a misplaced mine” (Bowyer 1986, 17). With enough distance from the war, a military pastoral seems to have again become possible.

9 Imagined Invasions

As wartime militarisation became integrated into the landscape, assuming a role within both heritage and nature, the theme of invasion remained barely under the surface. Although the “island fortress” was never invaded, it seems difcult to let go of the fxation on that 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 105 idea, as if kept alive by its lack of fulflment. In the 1990s, stories of a failed German invasion came to centre on Shingle Street, a string of houses between Orford and Bawdsey. Shingle Street was evacuated in June 1940 as part of the Defence Area, with mines laid along its shore and most of its residents moving to nearby Hollesley, Bawdsey and Alderton (Hayward 2001, 88). Te area was almost derequisitioned in 1943, when the threat of invasion had subsided, but was deemed too dangerous because of the mines in the shifting shingle. It began instead to be used by the Chemical Defence Research Establishment (CDRE) at Porton Down for testing an experimental high explosive/chemical bomb (Haywood 2001, 94). An East Anglian invasion myth developed in autumn 1940 and has drifted in and out of the media in various forms. After a resurgence in 1992, the discussion focused on Shingle Street, resulting in questions being raised in the House of Commons, classifed fles being released early, and the Ministry of Defence deny- ing a cover-up. Newspaper articles appeared with titles like “Further wartime tales of bodies on the beach” and “Attempted German landing claims gain more backing” (Cook 1992a, b). One long newspaper article in 2001 explored diferent theories of the “Mystery hidden in the sands—or shingle—of time”, referring to when the “tranquil” village was “ravaged by horror” (Nicholls 2001). In Te Bodies on the Beach (2001), James Hayward brought a more thorough approach to the story, tracing its origination in propaganda and circulation through the media, but the power of the myth seems too great for it to have been closed, and the stories were revitalised again in Peter Haining’s Where the Eagle Landed (2004). Te invasion rumours represent a continuous reinscribing of wartime into this landscape (Fig. 7). Te rumours began with a few unrelated but closely coinciding events. Firstly, convoys of Army ambulances full of bodies were spot- ted in the narrow lanes of north Norfolk in early September 1940, in fact a result of enemy mines north of Texel, encountered after reports of an enemy force heading towards Britain. Te use of obscure roads was to avoid attracting attention and lowering morale (Hayward 2001, 33). Secondly, the code-word “Cromwell”, which had been designated to mean that imminent invasion was probable, was sent to Eastern and Southern Commands early on 7 September. Tis unleashed widespread 106 S. Davis

Fig. 7 A few hundred metres south of Shingle Street (Photograph by the author, May 2008) panic, as many believed an invasion was actually underway, especially since many church bells were rung: the signal for invasion. A third factor was the many German bodies washed up on the shores of Britain, Belgium and France between late September and mid-October. Te number in Britain was relatively small, spread between Cornwall and Norfolk, and actually resulted from a German battalion conducting invasion training and being found by an RAF raid (Hayward 2001, 40). Finally, when the Royal Navy captured the soldiers on board a German fshing boat (for intelligence purposes), it transpired that they were all from diferent units. Twisting this to Britain’s advantage, an announce- ment was made that ten soldiers from diferent units had been rescued from the sea. Following these episodes, stories began to appear of a failed German invasion attempt, leaping from newspapers in New York and Lisbon to their British counterparts (Hayward 2001, 37). British propagandists, 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 107 political warfare experts and intelligence personnel fabricated and dis- seminated variants of the rumour with great efcacy. Attached variously to MI6, the Petroleum Warfare Department (PWD), the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and the Special Operations Executive, this loose group planted stories in various countries, whose reports were picked up by the British presses. By the end of September, most newspapers in neutral countries were running stories of a failed invasion, suggesting that 30,000–60,000 German troops had been lost on around 16 September due to RAF bombing and a Channel gale. Joining the material from recent events was one fnal element that sealed the impact of the invasion stories: the burning sea myth. Although no coastal fame barrage had been installed, the PWD had conducted experimental trials in setting alight small areas of petroleum on the sea in July and August. As part of the DMI, John Baker White watched one of the PWD’s “burning beach” tests at St Margaret’s Bay. His group delivered propaganda and disinformation to enemy troops, aiming to create a picture of a powerfully armed Britain (White 1955, 13). Te test prompted the sea of fre idea, which the group fed into the “pipe-line” running between hotels in New York, Stockholm, Lisbon, Madrid, Cairo and many other places. Although the rumour initially had little efect, it spread rapidly after the burnt bodies appeared on the North Sea coast, recruiting Norfolk’s truckloads of bodies to create many guises around the country. Mystifed by the extent of its efect, White later admitted that “Te burning sea story was our frst major attempt at a Big Lie, and it proved amazingly successful” (White 1955, 22). Te invasion rumours were fuelled by a variety of publications the next year, appearing in a 1941 HMSO pamphlet, Bomber Command, and a book by James Spaight, Te Battle of Britain 1940. According to Spaight, fre on the sea had merely been due to the RAF catching German soldiers during a “dress rehearsal” for embarkation (Spaight 1941, 95), but a more menacing version of the burning sea story appeared in William Shirer’s Berlin Diary. An American correspondent, Shirer, recorded rumours that the British had used a wireless torpedo that “ignited oil on the water and burned the [German] barges” (Shirer 1941, 397). Another former newsman, Lars Moën, seemed convinced that an invasion had happened, drawing on his own observations in 108 S. Davis

Antwerp of “invasion troops” arriving in great number and leaving suddenly, and hundreds of burned bodies washing up on the coast (Moën 1941, 162). According to stories that Moën heard, invasion troops were forced into the North Sea by British destroyers, whereupon RAF planes dropped oil drums near the barges, “followed with incendiary bombs which turned the whole into a blazing inferno” (Moën 1941, 163). Discussing the half-hearted nature of the invasion attempt, Moën spec- ulated that it was a trial run, but nevertheless presented the burning sea invasion story as unquestionable. After the war, the myth seemed to be exposed, with Clement Attlee explaining that the widespread belief that invasion had been attempted owed simply to the bodies that washed up after the RAF raid and the Cromwell signal. Churchill endorsed that position in Teir Finest Hour (1949), writing that rumours had been allowed to spread freely through the occupied territories. Te “mist of legend” was taken up again in Invasion 1940 by Peter Fleming (1957, 7), a wartime Special Operations Executive and brother of James Bond’s creator, Ian. Although Fleming attempted to debunk the rumours, however, his book provoked fresh interest and debate, being reprinted several times and prompting newspapers to advertise for reminiscences, which produced new evidence of bodies found between Hythe and Hastings. Shingle Street had played no special role in these accounts, but a fresh wave of attention to the story in 1992 saw the national press flled with allegations that a German invading force was burned to death there. Shingle Street had been used in 1943 for CDRE bombing, and the new rumours seemed to mix this with the old elements of the story, as well as a 1944 training disaster at Bawdesy. Te Army had been engaged in a commando-style mock assault of the radar installation at Bawdsey, and an administrative error had resulted in the sentries at Bawdsey not being informed of the attack. Te sentries detonated a series of gasoline-flled drums ofshore from Bawdsey, which were underwater and could be brought to the surface by tracer bullets and ignited (Hayward 2001, 100). Tus, just a few miles from the simulations of Orford’s battle area, the idea of simulation was maintained via a mock-invasion exercise. Te territorialised, militarised countryside seemed to be a space in which the rhythms of the countryside gave 3 Invaded Island: Wartime Enclosures and Post-war Memories 109 way to a new relationship between real and imaginary actions. Shingle Street’s entry into the story established it as a point of intrigue within the local landscape, and the invasion story still holds a certain power, providing an anchor onto which fears could be projected. It is clear that the countryside was recruited in a variety of ways into the war efort, creating various kinds of militarised landscapes, from emptied-out defence areas and new ways of moving around, to the simulated “invasion exercises” across the entire region and simulations with the battle training areas, and the writing in the Guardian Country Diaries. Although represented in countryside writing as accessible, in reality the wartime countryside contained many enclosed or partially enclosed military areas—a series of island-like spaces and a fraught coastline—which seemed alternately emptied, directly on the continent’s front line, as well as still the ahistorical, timeless England. Whilst Sufolk’s countryside writing initially wrote over this militarisation, some writers began to integrate wartime memories into the marshes, constructing a kind of military pastoral by the coast. Te threat of invasion, expressed in 1950s countryside writing in terms of the threatening sea, circled back into human form in the 1990s, as the heritage of the wartime anxieties took another gasp at Shingle Street. Te “island within an island” of Sufolk, representing an older England, seems to still evoke the idea of invasion, even though the increased speed and changed forms of warfare have made such a territorial war unlikely. Despite many of the wartime military enclosures ending soon after the war, a sense of spatial threat seems to linger here.

References

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We have seen that the island has been an appealing form in the English cultural imagination, both at the level of the nation and on the smaller scale of isolated regions. Countryside writing articulated Englishness through a sense of threat and loss, and in Chapter 2, we saw this expressed through the sea and sky. Chapter 3 toured the extensive militarisation of Sufolk during the Second World War, and this chapter adds to these themes a tighter focus on some of the military-scientifc research bases in Sufolk and the skyward gaze. Tree research sites on the Sufolk coast were pivotal in the development of radar, hailed after the Second World War as one of the new scientifc advances that helped win that war. In the stories told about radar and its protection of the island nation, there is an interlacing of the themes of islands, threat and militarism. Tis new wartime technology was harnessed to create a string of watching stations along the British coast, where trained observers watched for airborne incomers. With the coming of air power in the early twentieth century, the phrase “Britain is no longer an island” became well known after newspaper headlines used it to report the frst crossing of the English Channel in 1909 (Clarke 1999). Fears grew after the frst war’s Zeppelin

© Te Author(s) 2020 115 S. Davis, Island Tinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9676-2_4 116 S. Davis attacks, and by the 1930s, the prevailing mood was fear that the next war would bring sudden annihilation from the air, with a mantra of the 1930s being Stanley Baldwin’s comment that the “bomber will always get through” (Caedal 1980; Patterson 2007, 76). Baldwin put it dramatically in the House of Commons on 30 July 1934: “Since the day of the air the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the chalk clifs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. Tat is where our frontier lies”. Te clifs of Dover, as Paul Readman (2014) discusses, functioned as an important symbol of island-nationhood from the mid-eighteenth century to mid-twentieth century, being associated with the national homeland, its heritage and historical continuity over hundreds of years, as well as with national defence and a defant, self-asserted separateness from the rest of Europe. By the end of the 1930s, fear of invasion by parachutists had become acute, and populist, next-war fction from the time often focused on air power, including such works as Ladbroke Black’s Te Poison War (1933), in which London is suddenly bombarded, and Frank McIlraith and Ray Connolly’s Invasion from the Air: A Prophetic Novel (1934) (Searle 2009). In a Penguin Special on Te Air Defence of Britain, Air- Commodore Charlton wrote that although the nation’s geography had spared Britain the unending conficts of the continent, with the coming of the air age: “At one fell swoop the barriers are lowered, the walls are breached, the rivers crossed and the mountains overtopped” (Charlton 1938, 13). In the period when the empire was seeming less certain, and likely to contract, the idea of the physically bounded island nation took up a more prominent and vulnerable place in cultural imaginings. Responding to the sense of imperial contraction and aerial threat, during the Second World War the British propaganda machine battled to keep alive the island form. Churchill’s speeches were full of references to the besieged “island fortress” and our “island nation”, and as part of the ofcial war culture in Britain coordinated by the Ministry of Information such rhetoric held a great deal of power. Te Ministry of Information worked through various channels to create a vision of a fully mobilised island fortress, including propaganda, censorship, flm, speeches, press and radio statements, recruiting materials, training manuals and the work of ofcial war artists (Calder 1969; Deer 2009). 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 117

Beyond the war, Churchill’s many-volume autobiography appeared in the late 1940s and 1950s, which Patrick Deer argues “audaciously abolished the distinction between history and memoir”, giving a decades-long “popular and enduring afterlife” to ofcial war culture (Deer 2009, 236). Fitting with the island fortress discourse, a discourse of isolation also dominates the stories told about radar, presented as having saved the island fortress in the Battle of Britain.

1 Military-Industrial-Academic Context

With anxieties focused attention on the skies, rearmament began in the mid-1930s, particularly including the expansion of the air force, framed as contributing to the collective security of the League of Nations as well as providing a deterrent (Kyba 1983; Kirby and Capey 1997). New ideas were sought to attempt to face the airborne threat, including sound mirrors, death rays and aerial mines. Tese proved infeasible, but after some initial testing, a small team at Orford Ness on the Sufolk coast began to investigate the possibility of locating aircraft by transmit- ting radio waves and detecting their refection. Te research team soon expanded and moved to Bawdsey, collaborating with the aeroplane and armament research station at nearby Martlesham Heath. By 1938, they had hurriedly established fve new “Chain Home” stations along the coast to coordinate detection using the new system of radio direction fnding (RDF, later relabelled radar: radio direction and ranging). By the end of the war, there were 170 Chain Home and Chain Home Low stations, whose reports were combined with those from the Observer Corps, and coordinated into action through a network of operations rooms (Gough 1993, 27). Radar is an excellent example of the development of the military-academic-industrial complex through the Second World War, along with operations research, ballistic missiles and the atomic bomb. Te links between science, industry and warfare had already began to strengthen during the First World War (Kevles 1978; Koistinen 1980) and continued to progress in the interwar years. As the frst of the total wars, in which almost the entire resources of the state were mobilised for 118 S. Davis military purposes, the First World War greatly infuenced science and technology (Roland 1985). Immediately afterwards, in 1918, Britain established a new government Department of Scientifc and Industrial Research (DSIR), under which fell the National Physics Research Laboratory. By the early 1930s, the Air Ministry was the largest single research and development funding organisation in Britain (Edgerton 2006, 118). At that time, the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough had 150 qualifed civilian scientifc and technical staf, and the Research Department at Woolwich had 161 qualifed civilian staf, meaning that each of those sites had around the same number of qualifed staf as there were teachers of science in the whole of the University of Cambridge, and each was at least the size of the largest industrial laboratories (Edgerton 2006, 119). Tere were smaller labs too, including the Chemical Warfare Establishment at Porton Down and the Air Defence Experimental Establishment at Biggin Hill. During the Second World War, the military-academic-industrial complex became much more advanced. Civilian scientists were recruited into warfare on an unprecedented scale, working in their own institutions, with soldiers and scientists intermingling to a much greater degree, and conducting work under secrecy, for which purpose the projects were highly compartmentalised. Scientists also became advisors at the highest levels of policy. Tis history of science and the military infuencing one another is shown in the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb in the United States (Hughes 2003), as well as in the development of radar and operations research in the UK (Kirby 2003). Maurice Capey and Rebecca Kirby argue that there had previously been a cultural divide between scientists and the military despite attempts to bridge it, involving Henry Tizard, A. P. Rowe and Harry Wimperis (Kirby and Capey 1997, 558). Tizard had directed the DSIR since 1927 and chaired the Advisory Committee on Aeronautics from 1933 to 1943. Tizard appointed Wimperis as Director of Scientifc Research for the Air Force in 1925, and as Wimperis’ personal assistant in the mid- 1930s, A. P. Rowe remembered it being difcult to attract scientists to armament research in peacetime, even as late as 1938 (Rowe 1948, 2). Rowe became alarmed about the state of British air defence in 1934 and produced a well-researched report, which in turn prompted Wimperis 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 119 to set up the Committee for the Scientifc Survey of Air Defence with Tizard as chairman. Te Tizard Committee, as this group became known, was instrumental in establishing and guiding the new war technology of radar. Along with the other scientifc achievements of the war, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki convinced many that science had won the war (Roland 1985, 266). Scientifc and technological research and development reached even greater centrality to military aims during the Cold War (Leslie 1993; Agar and Hughes 2002). As the nature of warfare has progressed, the act of perception has become performative, since being able to see an object already changes the relationship between subject and object, as Paul Virilio’s work on speed, perception and military surveillance tells us (Virilio 1989, 2002). Concerning radar in particular, Judd Case discusses radar as a logistical medium, meaning that it concerns the order and arrangement of space frst, and representation second, intruding on our experiences of space and time even as it represents them. Unlike the technologies of surveillance that preceded radar, such as searchlights and lighthouses, radar unfastened seeing from being seen (Case 2010, 126). During the 1940s and the Cold War, the cultural signifcance of military science was also extremely high, exemplifed by the spectacles of missile launches and atomic bomb testing. Fraser MacDonald and Scott Kirsch have discussed such spectacles in terms of the public spectatorship enroled into state displays of military power in the 1950s (Kirsch 1997; MacDonald 2006). Tis chapter is not primarily concerned with the development of radar and the transformation of military perception, but with ways of seeing at a more public level, examining how stories of radar circulated in the years following the war.

2 “Britain an Island Again”

Radar seemed to ft perfectly into mid-twentieth-century island narratives. Late in 1934, Harry Wimperis asked Robert Watson-Watt about the feasibility of a “death ray”, an appealing fantasy in air defence minds of the time. Watson-Watt was then the director of the Radio Research 120 S. Davis

Station at Slough (part of the National Physics Laboratory) and asked Arnold Wilkins at his laboratory to do some calculations. Although a death ray seemed impossible, they suggested that detecting aircraft by radiation might work. According to Wilkins, he mentioned to Watson- Watt that Post Ofce engineers had noticed disturbances to VHF (very high frequency) reception when aircraft were fying near their receivers as early as 1931, and that this phenomenon might be useful for detecting enemy aircraft (Wilkins 1981, 132). In February 1935, Watson-Watt and Wilkins sent the Tizard Committee a memorandum on the “Detection and Location of Aircraft by Radio Methods”. Te Committee included Rowe and Wimperis, as well as two other scientists with military backgrounds, A. V. Hill and P. M. S. Blackett. Faced with few other possibilities, the Tizard Committee gave their backing to the radio direction fnding (RDF) research. Te support of Wimperis, who already knew Watson-Watt, was instrumental in pushing RDF through at this point (Zimmerman 2001). Te new research gained government support, but not without meeting political challenges along the way, as outlined in C. P. Snow’s 1962 book on science and government. Recommendations were made to the Air Council and the Cabinet by both the Tizard Committee and the Air Defence Research Committee (ADRC), set up by Lord Swinton, the Air Minister. As well as Rowe and Tizard, the ADRC included Frederick Lindemann and Winston Churchill, then a backbench MP. Whilst the Tizard Committee engaged in secret deliberations and discussions, Churchill and Lindemann publicly challenged the government’s approach to air defence. Doubting the productivity of the Tizard Committee, and favouring aerial mines over RDF, they contrived for Lindemann to become a member of the Tizard Committee, following which he and Tizard clashed, and Hill and Blackett resigned in protest. Te Committee was reformed shortly afterwards with all of the original members excluding Lindemann (Snow 1962). Te bitter clash between Tizard and Lindemann in 1936 infuenced the technical developments of RDF (Bushby 1973; Hartcup 2000). Nevertheless, with government support granted, Watson-Watt and Wilkins assembled a small research group on Orford Ness. In fact, Tizard, Wimperis and Rowe were already familiar with this spot 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 121 on the Sufolk coast, having all worked on military research projects there. Tizard began at Orford Ness in 1915, later working at nearby Martlesham Heath, Wimperis worked on bombsights at Orford Ness from 1917 before directing research in the Air Ministry, and Rowe worked on bomb ballistics at Orford Ness when based at Martlesham Heath in the early 1930s (Kinsey 1975; Zimmerman 2001; Cocroft and Alexander 2009; Heazell 2010). Tizard was already well trusted by the government, having occupied high-level administrative positions in government science after his wartime military experience (Snow 1962), and he, Rowe and Air Marshal Hugh Dowding were efectively the “senior management team” that oversaw the development of the radar programme (Zimmerman 2001, 94). On Watson-Watt’s request, in the summer of 1936, the Tizard Committee authorised the expansion of research facilities and a new site was purchased: Bawdsey Manor encom- passed a large country house and its estate a few miles south of Orford. Progress was made at Bawdsey Research Station on airborne radar, identifcation of aircraft as friend or foe, and using radar for anti-aircraft guns and ship detection. At the start of the war, Bawdsey was deemed vulnerable to attack and the research group was moved via Dundee and Worth Matravers to Malvern, becoming the Telecommunication Research Establishment (TRE). A number of new radar systems were developed at TRE using centimetric radar, after John Randall and Harry Boot at Birmingham University developed a magnetron valve capable of producing a radically higher frequency than had previously been used (Gough 1993; Latham and Stobbs 1999). Once the initial defensive uses of radar were established, more ofensive uses were developed during the war, after it became evident that there was a drastic lack of accuracy in bombers reaching their targets. In the “Gee” system, a hyperbolic method guided bombers to their targets in low visibility, and the “H2S” system allowed the ground to be scanned showing rough pictures of shapes. Whilst the British focused on defending their island, German systems were more geared towards ofensive applications. In fact, a more technologically sophisticated system of detection by radio waves existed in 1939 in Germany than in Britain, but this was largely ignored in histories and memoirs for decades after the war, sustaining a myth of 122 S. Davis

British primacy (Clark 1997). Recent accounts suggest that the innova- tions in the operations room—collating all of the incoming information together—were more important for Britain than the technology itself (Clark 1997). Troughout the post-war decades, however, radar was mythologised as a British invention that enabled victory in the Battle of Britain. As one Nature article in 1947 had it, the “inventive genius” of Watson-Watt and the combined British efort in establishing radar “frst saved us from aerial destruction and then allowed us to attack the enemy with deadly accuracy” (Weintroub 1948, 907). After rising to fame as the “father” of radar, Watson-Watt wrote an authoritative memoir in 1957, audaciously subtitled A Personal Account by Radar’s Greatest Pioneer. Watson-Watt recounted how the pioneering research team inverted Bleriot’s earlier comment, adopting the slo- gan “Britain an island again” (Watson-Watt 1957, 117). Te appeal of that idea to post-war Britain is clear in the ofcial publication by the Department of Scientifc and Industrial Research, Science at War (1947), where the radar group are portrayed as having succeeded in their job “to make England an island again”, as “the east coast of Britain was surrounded by invisible radio waves” (Crowther and Whiddington 1947, 10). Elsewhere in Watson-Watt’s memoir similar language appears, as for example when he remembers declaring in 1935 that in order to detect the enemy “You must put up a short-wave radio frontier which he must penetrate” (Watson-Watt 1957, 84). In the same year, a biography of the Air Chief Marshal emphasised the point, showing how much the nation’s memory was still fxated on the moment of almost being invaded. His biographer, Basil Collier, writes how in the summer of 1940 “Te Germans sought, by a series of mass attacks designed to crush the air defences of Great Britain, to pave the way for occupation of these islands by their armies” (Collier 1957, 19). Tis was the same year as Fleming’s Invasion 1940, and later in the same book, radar is given great importance in that story: “Of all advances in military science between the frst and second world wars, the coming of radar was the most important to this country” (Collier 1957, 150). Radar was closely tied to the anxious preoccupation with the island’s vulnerable edges. Te same language of physical boundaries was still present 25 years later, when local historian Gordon Kinsey described how “At the 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 123 outbreak of war the East Coast of Britain was protected by an electronic curtain capable of detecting aircraft at heights of up to 15,000 feet and at ranges of more than 100 miles irrespective of weather conditions” (Kinsey 1983, 52). Although the development of radar was closely connected to the idea of the island nation, the nation was not the only island that played a signifcant part in the development and representations of radar. In the ofcial publication Radar: A Report on Science at War (1945), printed in Britain by HMSO, the highlighted island is diferent: “Te frst experimental system was set up in the late spring of 1935 on a small island of the east coast” (1945, 8). Te two main places at which radar was developed, Orford Ness and Bawdsey, were both island-like, even though neither were technically islands, and their island nature was emphasised by many important players in the story.

3 The Islanders

When the small group of scientists and technicians arrived at the village of Orford in May 1935, they must have looked across the river to the vast expanse of marsh and shingle stretching far away beyond. Te 16-km shingle spit of Orford Ness runs alongside the mainland from Aldeburgh, having gradually extended over centuries to trap the port of Orford. Between Orford and the spit, the River Ore is narrow but rushes with dangerous currents to meet the North Sea. Te long spit of shingle makes it difcult to reach the larger area of the Ness from Aldeburgh, and it is usually reached by boat from the village of Orford. Te group made their frst passage across the river with the Air Ministry’s boatman, a reticent Sufolk man who had already been with the Air Ministry for many years (Bowen 1987, 22). Te featureless landscape of Orford Ness, conveniently separated from the mainland, had long been the home of researches into the technologies of aerial warfare (see Chapter 7). Landing on the Ness, the group would have come frst across the old airstrip, created in 1915, and a strip of buildings where the RFC had lived and experimented during the First World War, investigating machine guns sights, bomb ballistics, bombsights, 124 S. Davis aerial photography and other technologies (Kinsey 1981; Cocroft and Alexander 2009). Orford Ness had resumed activity in 1924, after only a brief pause, and bombs again began falling onto the shingle and into the grey sea for their paths to be measured and analysed (Heazell 2010). Te Airplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at nearby Martlesham Heath used the isolated stretch of shingle for studies into the ballistics of dropped bombs, and the squat, fat-roofed Bomb Ballistics Building was built in the early 1930s for observation and analysis of the falling bombs. A black hexagonal timber tower appeared around the same time, housing a rotating-loop beacon. Tis radio compass was ofcially a navigational aid for ships to identify their positions, but was actually intended to aid aircraft navigation (Heazell 2010). In the early months of 1935, the Air Ministry’s Works and Buildings Department began repairing some of the old huts for Watson-Watt’s group, and in May, an RAF work party spent several days moving new equipment onto the Ness (Zimmerman 2001, 82). A new phase of secret work thus began, this time under the guise of being an “Ionospheric Research Station”, a name intended to distract from the base’s connection to war research. Te fat, bleak landscape was perfectly suited to its new use, as the radio waves the group sent out could return with barely any interruption from the surroundings. Not only did the geography of the place conform to the researcher’s needs, but the researchers also seemed to conform to the geography, as the isolation of Orford Ness was mobilised in characterisations of the group. In Watson-Watt’s account, the researchers drove this characterisation process themselves: “none of us who gave ourselves the name of Islanders has ever, before or since, worked on a laboratory site which holds our afection as does the fat, low-toned, wind-swept ‘Island’” (Watson-Watt 1957, 125). Although the group’s main base was at Orford Ness for less than a year, the island identity became central to the radar story. In J. Bushby’s history of British air defence, the idea of the “Islanders” christening themselves appears again (Bushby 1973, 106). Watson-Watt portrayed the group as “incomparably happy in their work and incurably devoted to Te Island” (Watson-Watt 1957, 130) and continued to use “Te Islanders” to refer to members of the 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 125 original team throughout his long book, as had A. P. Rowe before him in One Story of Radar (1948). Having spent many summers working there during the 1930s, Rowe characterised Orford Ness as “surely one of the loveliest places in the world” (Rowe 1948, 12). Explaining their love of the “island”, Watson-Watt declared that the group “could not have been radar pioneers” had they not also been “romanticists away from the laboratory bench” (Watson-Watt 1957, 125). Te characterisation held so strongly that it sometimes appeared inevitable, as if the researchers became their geography. In Science at War, the public read that “Tey became known as the ‘Islanders’, owing to the isolation of the place” (Crowther and Whiddington 1947, 5). Alternatively, historian David Zimmerman roots the island identity in the locals, who have long referred to Orford Ness as the “island” and so soon dubbed the small radar group “Te Islanders” (Zimmerman 2001, 83). Te research group’s experience of Orford Ness was markedly diferent to that of Watson-Watt, although they both propagated a romantic view of the place. Watson-Watt was in fact a somewhat absent father of radar during the Orford Ness phase, present only at weekends in order to devote a large amount of time lobbying for RDF. At Orford Ness, he would host the group at the Crown and Castle hotel in Orford village, taking over the guest sitting room for long, wide-ranging evening talks (Watson-Watt 1957, 129). Te group’s day-to-day work on Orford Ness was led by Arnold Wilkins, who had been in Watson-Watt’s group at Slough. Unlike the previous military users of the Ness, who either lived there in billet huts or visited from Martlesham Heath, the rest of the small group found rooms in the local villages. Some stayed in Orford, including Edward “Tafy” Bowen, the frst university scientist specif- ically recruited for the radio research. Bowen had spent some time at the Radio Research Station during his Ph.D. at King’s College, London, under Edward Appleton, who went on to supply the radar team with a stream of scientists. Others, such as Wilkins, lived in nearby Aldeburgh (Bowen 1987, 16). Te group’s integration into the local area is clear from Bowen’s 1987 memoir, in which he describes some Orford characters: the Brinkleys, who dominated the river; the land- lord of the “most hospitable” Jolly Sailor pub; and the local insurance agent-cum-hairdresser, whose salon functioned like the local 126 S. Davis community club and gossip hub. On six or seven days a week, the group would meet at Orford Quay at 8.30 a.m. and work until 7 p.m., each time being rowed across by the Air Ministry’s boatman, although sometimes they rowed themselves back or camped out next to their equipment (Zimmerman 2001, 82). In contrast to Watson-Watt’s magical picture of a group “incurably devoted to the Island”, Bowen later remembered that it was only the “delightful” village of Orford that made this an “idyllic” time and “one of the happiest periods of my life”. He emphatically excluded from his praise the “very forbidding place” of “freezing winds” and “comfortless huts” at Orford Ness (Bowen 1987, 16–19). Similarly, Robert Hanbury Brown, who arrived in August 1936, looked back on the Ness as a “desolate, forbidding place whose only redeeming features were the birds” (Hanbury Brown 1991, 6). Despite the diferences, these later accounts also propagate the romantic lure of the island, but this time in the form of romantic hardship. It was Rowe’s and Watson-Watt’s more magical vision of the place, however, that dominated the earlier decades of radar stories.

4 Island-Laboratory

Island discourse emerged in the natural sciences in the mid-nineteenth century, where islands were portrayed as full of resourcefulness, diversity, productivity and strangeness. Islands were vital to Darwinism, and from Darwin’s time to the early twentieth century, islands held a prominent role in scientifc discourse, especially in relation to scientifc discovery. As Godfrey Baldacchino argues, a big factor in islands’ lure is how they “suggest themselves as tabulae rasae: potential laboratories for any conceivable human project; in thought or in action” (Baldacchino 2007, 166). Teir key feature in this context is their boundedness; islands echo the space that has been so central to science since the mid-nineteenth century, the laboratory. Inside the laboratory, the usual hierarchy of forces is inverted, since a small factor normally drowned in the multifactorial chaos of the outside world can be isolated and increased until what is otherwise invisible becomes visible 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 127

(Latour 1998). For others to regard knowledge claims as facts rather than as artefacts of the laboratory, however, the claims have to be regarded as applying everywhere outside the laboratory. Te laboratory thus gains its power from its apparent placelessness, as its simplicity, invariability and social homogeneity give the appearance of universality on which others’ trust depends (Livingstone 2003). Te negotiation of this balance between isolation and connection is crucial to the establishment of scientifc knowledge, and essentially involves the forging and maintaining of connections between diferent groups or individuals. Te research stations at Orford Ness and Bawdsey seemed to echo this idea of an island-laboratory. Situated on a promontory where the River Deben opens out to the North Sea, eight miles south of Orford, Bawdsey Manor was much more frmly connected to the mainland than Orford Ness. Like the Ness, though, it was usually reached by river, on a boat from near Felixstowe. Over the water and into the estate of Bawdsey Manor, the contrast to bleak Orford Ness was drastic. Curiously, the Bawdsey estate seemed to ft neatly into another of the classic island tropes: a paradise (Lowenthal 2007). Te extensive grounds included lush lawns large enough for the group to play cricket matches, surrounded by a bewildering variety of gardens, in which grew such delights as peaches and bougainvillea, and the grounds reached right to the clifs and sandy beach below. Rowe depicted Bawdsey as “relatively exotic” (1948, 23), although Watson-Watt liked to think that all of the exotic features could still “not seduce the Islanders from their undying love for the barren shingle” (Watson-Watt 1957, 141). Bawdsey Manor had been extended sporadically since being built in the 1890s, and its medley of architectural styles gave the group a Red Tower and a White Tower in which to create their laboratories. Most of the researchers lived in the Manor, and several of the outer buildings were also used for accommodation, workshops and laboratories. In Hanbury Brown’s recollections, “It was magical. Te Manor was a fairy castle on a distant shore and had the quality of a dream” (Hanbury Brown 1991, 4). Writing of their lives inside the exotic confnes of the Manor, the researchers’ descriptions recall a tropical island. Narratives of the Bawdsey phase create a picture of a distinctive form of community within the self-contained estate. Watson-Watt was now 128 S. Davis living on-site as Superintendent, but spent the frst summer focusing on drawing in many new recruits from academic physics. For the frst six months, the researchers were allowed to keep their own hours, often swimming before lunch and playing cricket before dinner. From within this freedom, and the lack of enforcement of normal Civil Service rules, an egalitarian community emerged, continuing the Orford Ness tradition of continuous “shop talk” that Watson-Watt had referred to as “their own half-secret weapon” (Watson-Watt 1957, 129). Te Bawdsey researchers spent their evenings and Sundays engaged in discussions they called “soviets”, in which everyone had equal rights to contribution. Guerlac’s history of radar, appearing immediately after the war, compared Bawdsey’s atmosphere to an Oxbridge college, which Watson- Watt quoted in his own memoir (Guerlac 1946, 141). Te individuals are also portrayed as very confdent, regarding their work with great importance (Watson-Watt 1957, 129; Fortun and Schweber 2016, 627). Tey frequently stayed at their laboratory benches until well past midnight, and both Watson-Watt and Bowen claim the group self-consciously set themselves the task of saving the country from invasion (Watson-Watt, 156; Bowen 1987, 22). Te community clearly represents itself as distinctive and seems to draw this into line with the research site’s spatial confguration. Te special community at Bawdsey is narrated as central to the work conducted there in early radar stories. In Guerlac’s account, for example, the Bawdsey community appears special: “Despite their lack of routine, or because of it, a great amount of work was accomplished” (Guerlac 1946, 142). Many of the islands of literary works have been the setting for exploring human nature and community formation, the physical space of islands forming a laboratory for human nature. After the frst six months, the Bawdsey group became more connected to the world outside, through increasingly frequent visits from air defence “VIPs”. Rowe became Deputy Superintendent in November 1937 to fx the “administrative chaos” left by Watson-Watt, and he was made Superintendent in July 1938, as Watson-Watt was “promoted” away from Bawdsey to become Director of Communications Development (Zimmerman 2001, 130). Rowe introduced a more hierarchical structure and many disciplinary “Orders”, but the relative containment of 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 129 the site and the legacy of the past conspired to keep the social structure more open than was common at military research centres, and the “soviet” discussions continued for many years (Guerlac 1946, 141; Hanbury Brown 1991, 22). In addition to the special community, the isolation of Bawdsey and Orford Ness was also connected to tales of secrecy. Researchers were hired with only the knowledge that they were signing up for some sort of radio- and government-related work, putting their faith in the senior fgures recruiting them. Only when they arrived were they initiated into the group’s secrets. Watson-Watt wrote of Orford Ness that “For security and secrecy it was almost too obviously right; one could not look out of a window without having Te Riddle of the Sands intrude on the riddle of radar” (Watson-Watt 1957, 126). Tis early spy novel from 1903 concerns a German plot to invade Britain from a group of islands in northern Germany, and the researchers would almost certainly have read it in their childhoods. Countering the myth of secrecy, however, local rumour was abun- dant, especially following the move to Bawdsey, when the scale of research increased dramatically. Te three pairs of 75ft wooden lattice masts at Orford Ness were dwarfed by the new structures at Bawdsey; frst came four 250ft wooden receiver pylons and quickly afterwards four 350ft steel transmitter pylons. Local villagers had found their radio reception was interfered with during the Orford Ness phase (and had simply been advised to buy new sets), and Wilkins described how, during the early Orford Ness work, if anyone asked what the researchers were doing the “reply about ionosphere research seemed to satisfy the questioner” (Wilkins 1981, 149). But at Bawdsey, the interruptions were of a diferent order. Local historian Gordon Kinsey described tales of car engines stopping in the Bawdsey area, and of RAF personnel telling locals that they would be able to proceed again at such and such a time (Kinsey 1975, 54). In Daphne Carne’s account, she described other “hair-raising” stories of the “goings-on”, including talk of death rays (Carne 1960, 23) (Figs. 1 and 2). Adding to this picture, a man who worked on the construction of Chain Home aerials in Darsham (near Aldeburgh) spoke in an oral 130 S. Davis

Fig. 1 Bawdsey’s transmitter masts in the 1940s (Photograph courtesy of the late Gordon Kinsey’s family, originally appearing in his Bawdsey: Birth of the Beam [1983]) history interview about whether he and his fellow workers knew what they were constructing:

Yes we did, but we couldn’t, we were on strict confdential, you see we couldn’t say what they were. And the people … where we were lodging would say ‘what are those things up there for … because they’re stopping cars on the road.’ … Te people tried to get something out of you because I used to go to the pub and you know they asked, well you couldn’t say what these pylons was you see. Tey tried but of course we never told. (OHT 149, 8)

Despite the many secrets of the area, the local residents continued to have an outspokenly inquisitive attitude, and radar contributed new secrets and new opportunities for undermining the restrictions on information. 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 131

Fig. 2 Observation tower and pillbox at Bawdsey (Photograph by the author, May 2008)

In radar’s stories, the sites at Orford Ness and Bawdsey were physically bound, secluded by secrecy and contained their own special communities. Tis island discourse also linked the research sites to concern over the nation’s island status, so that they exemplifed that which they proposed to defend. At the same time, it drew the sites more closely in line with an identity as laboratory-like. Te island-laboratory confguration works to give greater credibility to what was in some ways also feldwork. Tat which was tested lay outside the laboratory; the radio waves had to leave the laboratory and return via transmitter and receiver aerials suspended hundreds of feet above the ground, and much of the important work focused on these outdoor elements. Te RDF research did also resemble laboratory work, since the waves were created at only certain wavelengths, and were brought back inside the laboratory for analysis, and the research was concerned with questions 132 S. Davis of cause and efect rather than the description, classifcation and mapping more common to feldwork. Te research nevertheless spanned the broad and ambiguous border between laboratory and feld (Kohler 2002). Bawdsey’s association with islands’ bounded isolation aligned it with the laboratory model of controlling movement across, and what was contained within its boundaries. As the links between science and the military grew thicker, it was appealing to portray radar research in terms that resonated with the laboratory.

5 Beyond the Walls

Whilst work went into maintaining the island-laboratories’ boundaries, the laboratory simultaneously extended beyond its walls in a variety of ways. As David Lowenthal observes, “Islands convey a false illusion of being easy to tame and domesticate because they are seemingly circum- scribed, containable, securely sited. In actuality, many islands are … notoriously amorphous” (Lowenthal 2007, 206). Tis sense also comes through for Beth Greenhough, writing that those who experiment in island spaces “fnd themselves constantly policing the shores of their island-laboratories” (Greenhough 2006, 226). Te idea of a problematic boundary to an experimental site is relevant to the development of radar at two diferent levels. As mentioned above, Orford Ness and Bawdsey were on the border between feld and laboratory, and the experiments were only limited to those sites in a narrow sense. Secondly, the methods of detection that Watson-Watt’s team were developing could only provide national air defence if they also worked beyond the isolated sites; the nation beyond the island-laboratories must be made to resemble them in certain respects (Latour 1988, 1998). At the level of the experiments, many factors for the research had to be constantly cajoled into cooperation (Callon 1986). Pilots had to be enroled into the experimental programme to register their aeroplanes on the monitoring screens, and radio waves could only count if they left the island-laboratory and travelled many miles before returning again. As Wilkins recollected, the Tizard Committee originally chose Orford Ness “on account of its isolation and also because fying co-operation 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 133 could be readily obtained from the A&AEE at Martlesham and from the MAEE at Felixstowe” (Wilkins 1981, 141, my italics). Te transmitters and receivers were tested by tracking aeroplanes fying in a straight line overhead from Martlesham Heath over Orford Ness and then back again. Twelve miles west of Orford, Martlesham Heath was at this time a large, nationally renowned Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE) with a history of collabora- tions with the Orford Ness research station in which Tizard, Rowe and Wimperis had been personally involved. Te researchers could never take it for granted that the pilots and their planes were completely on board. Hanbury Brown relates wor- rying before demonstrations whether the aircraft might not appear because of bad weather or un-serviceability (Hanbury Brown 1991, 10). After each fight, the Martlesham pilots reported their fight logs to the RDF group, which were then compared with observations from the equipment. Finding fying in a straight line rather boring, the pilots were curious as to its purpose. Tey had been told that the researchers were trying to develop a method of locating aircraft by picking up the radiation from their magnetos, but doubted that explanation’s truth. Wilkins later related how one of the pilots switched of his engine on a return journey, and then asked when he handed over his fight log whether everything had been fne. Assured that it had, he knew the explanation they had been given was false, and was apparently then content with the knowledge of being involved in secret research (Wilkins 1981, 145). In short, negotiations with the pilots and their aircraft were necessary to keep the experiments airborne. As well as having to recruit policy-makers and pilots, the researchers had to interest the radio waves in their problem. Te detection of aeroplanes used many of the same principles as had been used at the Radio Research Station (RRS) for detecting layers within the atmosphere. A transmitter sent a short pulse of radio waves of a known wavelength, and the refected waves were picked up on receivers, and fed into a cathode ray oscilloscope, where they appeared as spikes on a straight line. In detecting small, quickly moving aeroplanes rather than static layers of the atmosphere, however, the researchers were proposing new roles for the radio waves. To protect the vulnerable island nation, the 134 S. Davis emphasis was on detecting planes from as great a distance as possible, and the researchers began with very long wavelengths, partly because they require less power to send further (Kendal 2003, 346). In contrast, and unbeknown to the group, the radio direction fnding system being developed in Germany prioritised accuracy and was using short wavelengths (Clark 1997). As well as attempting to increase the transmission power and improve the performance of the receiver, the group needed to come up with entirely new forms of measurement in addition to the existing technique of measuring the direct distance to the object (the range). Locating an aeroplane for interception required also its height and its bearing (direction). Previous work from the RRS came to hand, as Wilkins proposed a height-fnding system using a method he had pioneered at Slough for measuring the down-coming angle of transatlantic radio signals (Bowen 1987, 5). For the bearing, Watson- Watt thought of an innovative technique using two crossed horizontal half-wave aerials (Watson-Watt 1957, 135). Even aside from these new types of measurement, the more established system of range fnding was not secure. Appearing against a background of noise, the signal was one of many spikes in a jagged line on the cathode ray screen. For a spike to be labelled an aircraft in the early years was a highly interpretative act. Te strength of the signal against its background could be increased by increasing the power of the transmission and by using a longer wavelength, since shorter wavelengths pick out more of the permanent features in the surrounding landscape. Te researchers began with a 50 m wavelength, hoping that this would also produce resonance efects from bombers’ wingspan and that its proximity to radio broadcast wavelengths would provide a cover. Interference from public radio signals, however, attracted more rather than less attention to their activities, and soon they switched to 26 m (Bowen 1987, 31), the drive for secrecy infuencing research in surprisingly direct ways. By late 1936, they had halved the wavelength again for the Chain Home stations. Just as longer wavelengths reduced interference from the surroundings, the landscapes of Orford Ness and Bawdsey helped reduce visual noise in order to focus on the aircraft. Te fat and featureless landscape of Orford Ness, and Bawdsey’s position on a clif top facing out 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 135 to sea gain new importance when viewed in this light. Like the early twentieth-century ecologists who carefully selected sites in which to observe “nature’s experiments”, the RDF researchers attempted to eliminate the element of place from their work in order to make it more laboratory-like. Whereas the natural places of feldwork are particular, variable and beyond human control, the credibility of laboratories relies on their appearance of placelessness: they must be seen as interchangeable. Tere were a number of other ways in which the space surrounding the researchers was disciplined towards laboratory standards. Te selection of long wavelengths could be described as pre-coding, making the landscape what Michael Lynch has called “geometricised” (Lynch 1985, 41). Objects in the surroundings were brought into the mathematised space, such as the Cork Lightship of Felixstowe, the detection of which was used to test new RDF systems. Aeroplanes were fown on fxed, straight routes, ensuring that time and space were routinised. Te pro- to-graphic surroundings were then translated into the two-dimensional space of a real graph, as the cathode ray oscilloscope normalised the properties of all of the events. Te individual aeroplanes therefore became more than they had been, brought from beyond human sight into visibility, and simultaneously also less than they had been, as individual pilots and other features disappeared. Te boundaries of the island-laboratories were “amorphous” in a second sense, as they climbed gradually higher into the sky. Te receiver and transmitter aerials were high up on great masts, which the researchers became adept at scaling, whilst the signals were observed inside the laboratory. At Bawdsey, experiments were set up on the roofs of the Red and White Towers, and even when the Orford Ness research still showed more potential than results, Tizard was putting pressure on the group to pursue airborne RDF. Tizard anticipated that if the RDF early warning chain was successful, bombing attacks would be shifted to night, when the ground-based RDF system would be useless for fghter plane interception. Te problems associated with taking RDF into the air were manifold. Te transmitter at Orford Ness was a whole room full of equipment weighing several tons, and the receiver was a large rack of valves, control knobs and indicators. Wavelengths needed to be shortened further, transmitters needed to be much more powerful and 136 S. Davis the duration of the transmission pulse (pulse-width) needed dramatically decreasing in order to stop the refections from closer objects interfering with waves still being transmitted. Te airborne group was led by Bowen at Bawdsey, but was limited by Watson-Watt’s strategy of recruiting physicists with little practical experience rather than radio engineers, as well as by the team operating in secrecy without collaboration from industry (Hanbury Brown 1991, 13; Fortun and Schweber 2016, 627). Various accounts relate how the Orford Ness group “scavenged” surplus electronic components from the RRS, or how in 1936 the airborne group “stumbled on” a more sensitive EMI receiver for a television service from Alexandra Palace (Zimmerman 2001, 81; Bowen 1987, 32). Te EMI receiver allowed Bowen’s group to move RDF halfway into the cockpit, putting the receiver into a Handley Page Heyford provided by Martlesham Heath, with the receiving aerial strung between the plane wheels (Bowen 1987, 35). Similarly, it was a piece of technology acquired from the Radio Corporation of America (miniaturised “door knob” valves) that enabled the team to build a smaller transmitter operating at a wavelength of 1.5 m (200 MHz). By September 1937, the new, entirely airborne transmitter-and-receiver system was used to spot the Courageous aircraft carrier and Southampton cruiser in the North Sea during an exercise being carried out by Coastal Command (Bowen 1987, 43; Hanbury Brown 1991, 20). Tus, unknowingly, industrial frms participated in making radar airborne. As the laboratory extended into the sky, in mid-1937 the group were given independent control of two Avro Anson planes, based at Martlesham Heath, complete with fying ofcers and ground crew. Whereas the pilots in the Chain Home tests were part of what the researchers recorded, these pilots were now on the other end of the experimental system. Te detection system was now airborne and moving, whilst the targets were at ground level and almost stationary, since the group focused frst on detecting ships (ASV, Air to Surface Vessel), aiming to progress later to aerial interception (AI). In the 1947 Science at War publication, the AI sets appear as having “won” the “night battle of 1940-41” (Crowther and Whiddington 1947, 28). In the research, the boundary between pilot and scientist was also blurred, as much 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 137 of the fying and observation was shared between Bowen and two of his research team, Keith Wood and Gerald Touch. Te desire to align observation work with laboratory science can be seen in Science at War, where the pilots and observers conducting aerial interception are “more like men working in a laboratory than ordinary air crews operating standard equipment” (Crowther and Whiddington 1947, 29). Tis description was of the functional system, long after the experimental phase, and shows the appeal of portraying the work as scientifc. Te laboratory walls seemed to have extended outwards and upwards, and the boundaries demarcating those who counted as researchers also shifted. Whilst accounts of radar seem enchanted by the island-like nature of its early research stations, the island-laboratories were simultaneously extended beyond their confnes.

6 Becoming Bawdsey

Te isolated world of Bawdsey was extended much further than into the sea around it and the cockpits of aeroplanes. Already in Watson- Watt’s 1935 memorandum, he suggested a series of stations along the coast, since a single station would give barely any protection. In order for the new RDF techniques to be useful, they must function not just at Bawdsey, but anywhere in the country. Tis is the case for any scientifc development attempting to establish itself as fact, but the way that Watson-Watt presented this stresses that radar “was not a gadget, an equipment, a technique, a scientifc novelty. For me, at all signifcant times, it had no worthwhile meaning unless it was a military system” (Watson-Watt 1957, 124). Whilst a scientifc advance would be a mere “novelty”, the real value was in forming a “military system”. In the 1938 air defence exercise to test the fve new Chain Home stations around the Tames Estuary, operators telephoned reports of Bomber Command’s incoming planes to the flter room at Bawdsey Manor, where plots were made and sent on to Fighter Command Headquarters at Stanmore. Tere they were combined with reports from the Observer Corps, who tracked the raids once they moved inland from the coast, and Stanmore then contacted individual air 138 S. Davis stations, whose operations rooms coordinated fghter plane interception. Te success and efciency of the entire exercise were analysed by a team of observers, recording every aspect of the flter rooms operations (Zimmerman 2001, 160). Tis network anchored points in the sky to a multitude of others on the ground, bringing increased connectivity to the island-like laboratories. Beyond Bawdsey, elements of the normalisation process extended around the coast in the creation of the Chain Home system. Following the 1937 Air Exercises, the decision was made to extend the chain to cover the entire coastline from the Isle of Wight to the Tay, close enough together to create “a gapless RDF frontier at thirty miles from the coast” (Wilkins 1983, 22). By 1939, there were 25 stations, and this had risen to 52 by the Battle of Britain and again to 170 by the end of the war (Gough 1993, 26). Wilkins managed the construction of this chain and was in charge of site selection. Te stations were made to be like Bawdsey in important ways. Bawdsey workers were responsible for building and installing equipment for the new stations, because everything had been built from scratch and there was no standardisation (Wilkins 1981, 14). Te sites were as high as possible above sea level, with a fat landscape on the seaward side, just as Bawdsey Manor was perched on the soft clifs so distinctive on the otherwise almost entirely clifess Sufolk coast. Tis was necessary for the height-fnding technique, designed at Orford Ness and requiring completely fat ground, since radio waves were transmitted from diferent heights on the mast for the amplitudes of the echo returns to be compared. Given that fat surroundings were never possible, the RDF set had to be calibrated for the ground around the masts of the new stations by Bawdsey scientists before it could function with any accuracy. Although collaboration with commercial frms began, secrecy requirements resulted in diferent frms making diferent parts of the system, leaving the Bawdsey researchers to write equipment specifcations, conduct site selection, oversee manufac- ture, and install and calibrate equipment. Bawdsey was not only necessary for siting and building the stations, but also an obligatory passage point for their operation (Callon 1986), as only those who had been trained at Bawdsey could gain authenticity. Squadron Leader Raymond Hart arrived in July 1936 to train air 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 139 force personnel to read and make measurements from the screens. Teir vision thus disciplined, these men and women carried the laboratory further afeld. By April 1939, it was estimated that 1200 personnel would be required to operate the stations at home and overseas (Zimmerman 2001, 167). One of the women trained at Bawdsey, Daphne Carne, wrote about her experiences, describing being told that the stations they would be sent to would be small, “isolated places”, but that “from you stems the life-blood of the whole warning system—take away the Chain and all these highly organised Operations Rooms are useless” (Carne 1960, 20, 26). In the stories of radar, a series of islands thus appear connected in a chain, calibrated to Bawdsey. As the network became more established, the isolated station at Bawdsey that had brought it together faded into the background without afecting RDF’s credibility. Te system continued to grow in its organisational sophistication, being conceptualised in terms of the fow of incoming and outgoing information, and used to guide fghter aircraft, searchlights, anti-aircraft batteries, barrage balloons and passive defences such as air-raid warning, decoy fres and radio countermeas- ures. Developing from this complex system was the new science of operations research, which used quantitative principles to analyse the processes involved in military operations. At its beginnings at Biggin Hill in 1936, a team of RAF ofcers investigated operational fghter interception with a scientifc ofcer, and the analytical work begun there was continued at Bawdsey from 1937 (Kirby and Capey 1997, 561; McCloskey 1987, 146). In the 1938 summer Air Exercises, Edmund Dixon and a team of observers recorded every aspect of the flter room operations, fnding many problems in the system, including information overloading and the inability to detect low-fying planes or to identify friend from foe. By mid-1938, Dixon was directing communications research at Bawdsey and wrote a seminal report for the developing feld. A year later, Rowe and Air Marshal Dowding agreed for some of Rowe’s scientists to transfer to Stanmore, and their work established operations research as essential, subsequently spreading to all of the services. Te island-laboratory at Bawdsey was mobilised in the depiction of a new connection between science and the military in the post-war 140 S. Davis picture of the Second World War being won partly by science. Tis connection reached far beyond Bawdsey to wider research programs and operational defensive activity. In 1962, Ronald Clark’s Rise of the Bofns declared that “most of those things which had helped to trans- form war in less than a generation could be traced back to the same starting point”, referencing the Tizard Committee, and its role in radar and operations research (Clark 1962, xvii). A few years before, Watson- Watt wrote a piece on the “natural history of the bofn”, characterising the kind of researcher that emerged at Bawdsey, where the term is claimed to have originated. For Watson-Watt, the bofn is a scientist who “has learned that a device of great technical elegance … is not necessarily a good weapon of war” (Watson-Watt 1953, 1699). Rendering the entire issue in naturalist’s terms, Watson-Watt describes the “Bofn bird” as having the indispensable quality of gossiping around in diferent contexts, and discussing why his black boxes are unftted for use by their users. It is therefore useful if his “plumage” is of “drab and uni- form civilian grey” so that he fts in with all people regardless of rank (Watson-Watt 1953, 1699). Among other features, “Te Bofn bird has a long bill with two special functions: poking into other people’s business, and puncturing the more highly-coloured and ornate eggs of the ‘Lesser Back Room bird’, which are quite inappropriate to the military scene”. Finally, he must have “long legs and a long neck, for while his head must sometimes be in the clouds, his feet must always be frmly on the ground” (1953, 1699). Watson-Watt’s naturalisation of military science here mirrors the militarisation of nature barely a few miles away, as we will see in the next chapter on avocets. Despite there being a precedent for military-scientifc work, the Second World War evidenced a dramatic shift in the relationship between those realms, and radar’s island-laboratories are an excellent example of that connection.

7 Wartime Visions

Radar reafrmed the borders around the island of Britain in post- war narratives, and this was often coded in terms of perception. A good example is a 1952 Time magazine article describing how “When 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 141

German bombers attacked Britain, the bombers found the island ringed with radar eyes that picked up the planes” (Time magazine, 28 January 1952). In order to consider how this wartime technology existed in wartime and post-war imaginations, we must pause to consider the meanings of sight in wartime Britain. Te night-time blackout had been rigidly enforced from early in the war, making moving around after dark a strange experience. In some places, white lines were drawn along the kerbs, around obstacles and on vehicles’ bumpers to reduce the acci- dent rate (Reynolds 2000, 45). At home, hidden behind the blackout curtains, the radio and newspapers ofered only a limited window outside, as both were censored to try to sustain morale. Te Ministry of Information suppressed news and views which should not be known, released or invented news which should be, and gave certain writers special facilities to report what was happening (Calder 1969). Petrol- rationing limited travel, and the war artists employed in the Recording Britain project found sentries barring their access to the places they wanted to paint (Palmer 1947, 49). Using the telephone was discour- aged, and taking photographs of defence subjects was a fneable ofence, over which many cameras and flms were confscated (Browne 1981, 81). Refecting on the early war years in 1957, Peter Fleming described a shrunken world lacking the normal benefts of insight or oversight, where most people lived “like small children, in a small world. … Like a child who is excluded from the confdence of the grown-ups, [the aver- age citizen] accepted the existence of a sphere of knowledge into which he could not expect to be admitted, even though within it his own des- tination were being decided; and like a child he tended afterwards to remember events without a full understanding of their signifcance” (Fleming 1957, 7). In blackout, darkness, that old enemy of the child, accentuated the sense of feeling powerless and lost. Blackout was not only limiting, however. R. D. Browne’s study of wartime East Anglia observes how in the blackout conditions “people talked more freely … Even among pedestrians in the streets one moved after dark through a steady murmur of voices, often of people who could not be seen” (Browne 1986, 59). Collecting traces of this aston- ishing proliferation of rumour was the Mass Observation project, in which designated “observers” spent time in towns and villages reporting 142 S. Davis on public mood, opinion and behaviour, and members of the public volunteered as diarists to write and submit accounts of their own lives (Madge and Harrison 1940). In ofcial war culture, electric light was used in art as a symbol of order in chaos (Weight 1987). An undercurrent to the dominant imagery of war culture also concerned the experience of sight on the ground under blackout (Lant 1991). In the literary works of the period, there is sense of blackout’s liberation, and Patrick Deer (2009) notes the sexual license and illicit pleasures aforded to life in the shadows. In Elizabeth Bowen’s Te Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945), for example, everyone seems to be under surveillance, and “Te blackout ofers a refuge, not merely from the bomb-sights of enemy aircraft, but also from the disciplinary gaze of those watching over the island fortress” (Deer 2009, 181). Concern over increasing domestic surveillance can also be seen in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- four (1948), where Orwell expressed his alarm at the extensive control of Churchill’s wartime Britain through his futurist dystopia of Britain under totalitarianism, exploring the fate of an individual in a society that has already accepted military authority as normal. From within the culture of controlled vision, other vantage points were also available. Although petrol rationing had practically emptied the roads, the sky was relatively full. Tere were so many aerodromes in East Anglia that people would anxiously watch the sky, awaiting the return of the plane they saw leave hours before, and you could watch fghter planes in battles or bombers passing to the industrial heartland, before returning to work in a factory, feld or ofce (Bowyer 1986; Browne 1986, 1988; Reynolds 2000). In the summer of 1940, newspapers published outline diagrams and basic information about the Luftwafe aircraft, and by the end of the war, many people had become extremely adept at aircraft recognition (Browne 1981, 107). Added to this kind of sky watching, the Observer Corps and Home Guard were composed of vast numbers of volunteers, also gazing skywards. Te Observer Corps tracked planes fying overhead from inside simple huts—improvised from wood, corrugated iron and concrete—and telephoned their reports to Fighter Command (Wood 1976; Browne 1981). Meanwhile, the Home Guard carried out many coastal defence duties, including stafng hundreds of observation posts and pillboxes: 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 143 anti-invasion bunkers (Wills 1985). In short, the limits on light, sight and information made a small island out of people’s surroundings, whilst gazing at the sky formed a link to the world beyond. Interacting with the visual cultures of wartime blackout and sky watching was the mythology of the airman’s panoramic, commanding gaze that was celebrated in propaganda. With the advent of aerial warfare in the First World War, the airman was imagined as a romantic survivor from an era of war where chivalry, individualism and heroics were still possible (Leed 1979; Edgerton 1991; Grufudd 1991; Deer 2009). With his commanding view, the airman was mobile enough to keep open the possibility of escape, unlike the soldier who lacked perspective from the mud of the trenches. As David Edgerton (1991) shows, the airman was also associated with the ofcer class, and Stephen Kern argues that the aeroplane’s early cultural impact was “ultimately defned by deeply rooted values associated with the up–down axis”, with low signifying immorality, vulgarity, poverty and deceit, and high representing the direction of growth and hope (Kern 1983, 242). Despite the anti-heroic mood of the years after the frst war, the fgure of the airman remained appealing (Cunningham 1988, 168). Air-mindedness grew in the 1930s, aggressively exploited by the RAF’s publicity machine through such strategies as the tremendously successful Hendon Air Pageant, watched by many thousands of spectators (Omissi 1992). Flying was a persistent theme of the 1930s literature, especially in the Auden circle, and tended to be associated with speed, heroism, a superiority of position and often quite explicitly fascism (Cunningham 1988). Te public’s relationship to air power, though, was ambivalent and troubled, due to the widespread fear of aerial bombardment. Cognisant of this ambivalence, ofcial culture of the Second World War attempted to fx public mood and opinion on air power. Te infuential wartime discourse of “the few” propagated the strategic fantasy of a totally mobile, panoramic gaze from which exact targets could be located (Deer 2009, 81). As N. H. Reeve observes, the heroism of the solo fyer had faded by the late 1930s, leaving instead the appeal of the uniformed organisation, but the Battle of Britain restored the appeal of the fghter airman (Reeve 1989, 75). Aerial warfare’s “new kind of war”, in Churchillian rhetoric, was promoted by the RAF’s 144 S. Davis public relations in such best-selling ofcial publications as Bomber Command and Battle of Britain, and in the propaganda documentaries the RAF collaborated in making, such as 49th Parallel. Obscured in ofcial war culture were the horrifc realities underlying the myth of this controlled gaze, namely the destruction wrought by area bombing of German cities. Whilst those at home experienced blackout, the ofcial imagery associated with the war in the air was used to inspire hope on the home front.

8 The Magic Eye

Radar was brought in line with these loaded ideas of vision and warfare as it gradually emerged from its place of secrecy. Te radar display captured people’s attention with its apparently immediate readabil- ity. In Science at War, radar was described as “an extension of seeing” (Crowther and Whiddington 1947, 1), and in Clark’s bofn book, it was a “magic eye” (Clark 1962, 12). Te language of magical vision had already appeared in a 1943 article in Popular Science on the “magic eye that spots enemy planes”, and showed up again in a 1945 article in the same magazine on the “magic eye that sees the invisible” (Peck 1945), and a 1945 article in Popular Mechanics about the “seeing eye of the night fghter and the artilleryman, the navigator of ship and plane”. In some of these accounts, radar sees all on its own (a magic eye), whereas in others the technology and its human users appear bound in a perfectly linked system, as when it was an extension of the senses or the seeing eye of the night fghters. Te most common manifestation of this idea was the popular expression that radar was “the eyes of the RAF”. In a twist of that expression, a book on the female operators of Chain Home stations was named Te Eyes of the Few (Carne 1960), fusing operators, technology and heroic discourse. Daphne Carne describes “an unbroken chain from the Orkneys to the Isle of White, twenty all-seeing eyes watching the enemy aircraft approaching our shores” (Carne 1960, 27), thus using the smaller islands at the chain’s limits to bring the island nation together. 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 145

Te appeal of this language is clear from its continued circulation. Local historian Gordon Kinsey later wrote about Bawdsey in terms of the “all-seeing eye of the Chain Home stations” that “carried on their endless vigil” (Kinsey 1983, 52). In Robert Hanbury Brown’s 1991 memoir, the system still appeared as “a magical extension of our senses”, and senior fgures in air defence that were invited to Orford Ness and Bawdsey appear as being so entranced that the researchers had difculty getting them away from the cathode ray tube (Hanbury Brown 1991, 9, 10). Remembering his time on Orford Ness, Hanbury Brown writes that he “never got tired of watching the radar echo from an aircraft” as the plane came nearer, and marvelled at “Tis strange new power to ‘see’ things at great distances, through clouds or darkness” (1991, 9). Te appeal of radar’s new form of perception is clear and fts with discourse of the airman’s gaze. Even operations research could be drawn into bodily metaphors, as in Scientists and War when Solly Zuckerman described operations research as “a necessary corollary to the development of radar from a laboratory phenomenon to the sensory system on which a modern air force relies” (Zuckerman 1966, 17). Radar was now conceptualised no longer merely as an extension of a human operator’s sight, but as an entire sensory system, incorporating technology and humans working together at many diferent levels. In a practical application of this, Dowding concluded from operations research that Observer Corps reports should only be used for raids that had already been identifed by radar (Zimmerman 2001, 173). Human eyes could only see when the radar system allowed them to. In fact, when the Observer Corps tried to convince Fighter Command HQ that they could reliably identify planes fying in cloud cover from the sound of their engines, they were denied permission to do so. After the failure of the sound mirrors in the early 1930s, aural information no longer held authority; there was only a place for what could pass as visual information. Looking more closely at the visual radar discourse, in Britain’s ofcial publication on Science at War, planes appear as a “smudge on the face of the screen (which is in efect a map of the sky for miles around the Radar tower) on which aircraft automatically mark their presence” 146 S. Davis

(Crowther and Whiddington 1947, 30). Te idea that the aircraft appear automatically, without mediation, is an important signifer that radar had passed into the realm of an unquestionable, magical, black- boxed technology. In other words, all of the negotiations in the early phases at Orford Ness and Bawdsey Manor have become invisible. Following the simple cathode ray tube set-up of the early days, later wartime work developed PPI (plan position indicator) screens, and it was these that reached a much wider audience. Te earlier system sent radio waves out to a large, 100 degree portion of the sky and translated the refections into a single horizontal line with vertical spikes representing refected waves. By 1940, a new system had been developed in which a narrower rotating beam swept around a full circle, and a cathode ray screen with a radial time base showed aeroplanes as bright spots, which phosphors gave the quality of an “afterglow”. Trough the new imaging system, radar could appear as a “map of the sky”, and so was brought into line with the narratives of authoritative vision associated with aerial warfare. In the ofcial US publication on radar from 1945, immediately reprinted in Britain, readers were told that with PPI: “Te radar operator could imagine himself suspended high above the set … looking down on the scene spread out below … Te whole picture is there” (United States JBSIP 1945, 3). Te same phrase also appeared in the magazine Popular Mechanics in the same year, in an article entitled “Radar Sees the Unseen”. Radar’s elevated “sight” gained further legitimation through reference to more traditional forms of defence. In one of the earliest public descriptions, Lord Beaverbrook (the Minister of Aircraft Production) announced that “Tis war has brought a new science into existence—the science of radi- olocation”, in order to fnd “an enemy who cannot be seen. What men cannot see they seek out by other devices—the waves in the sky. For the sky is our watch-tower. Tere we keep our vigil always. In the darkness and the fog our watch-tower detects the presence of the enemy” (Te Times, 18 June 1941). Te image of the sky as a watchtower is striking, bringing air power into the realm of traditional naval warfare, where a tower can give sufcient warning before an attack. Tere is also a strong sense in which it nationalises airspace. In line with this, an article on the same day described RDF as “a system of sending out far beyond our 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 147 shores ether waves which are unafected by cloud, fog or darkness” (Te Times, 18 June 1941, my italics). Te idea of a radio “lighthouse”, a term used popularised in Watson-Watt’s account, becomes more signifcant when combined with such imagery (Watson-Watt 1957, 171). Te mobilisation of naval imagery helped keep the new technology in line with old forms of warfare, the slower warfare of movement, even as radar helped revolutionise warfare into ever-faster forms. Te desire to appeal to sight and tradition is perhaps most clear in Science at War, where PPI “presents the military commander with a moving picture of units in combat perhaps a hundred miles away. Once more, like the ancient heroes, the commander is able to see something of the situation at a glance, and act directly on his personal judgement” (Crowther and Whiddington 1947, 30). Radar seemed to ft perfectly the myth of the airman’s privileged gaze whilst at the same time allowing echoes of older types of warfare, slotting neatly into essential myths of national defence.

9 Creating Visibility

Te analogy of radar with vision slips over the negotiations and constructions involved in creating the image. As part of Watson-Watt’s attempts to get the “air defence VIPs” on board, he invited a stream of these men to watch demonstrations of the RDF technique right from the beginning. Wilkins refected that Watson-Watt repeatedly invited guests long before the equipment’s performance had been reliably established, which sometimes jeopardised the project’s credibility and future (Wilkins 1981, 145). Te failure of one of the early demonstrations at Orford Ness was excused by storm activity (Guerlac 1987, 136), and in an early demonstration at Bawdsey, before the equipment had even been calibrated, the bombers could be heard overhead before any signals could be seen on screen (Hanbury Brown 1991, 14). At these tests, Watson-Watt made claims about signals that others could not see (Wilkins 1983, 17; Bowen 1987, 15), even though it was vital that the researchers did not appear to be merely seeing things. After the failure of the display in that Bawdsey demonstration, a new measure seemed necessary to keep the air defence “VIPs” enroled 148 S. Davis in the technology. Tizard had begun losing patience with Watson- Watt, and the Cambridge physicist, Edward Appleton, who had already made fve visits to Bawdsey, began mediating between Bawdsey and the Tizard Committee. University physicists had been involved in the radar research from the beginning, but Appleton’s role marked a new type of involvement for university scientists in this military technology (McCloskey 1987, 147). Appleton assured Tizard that the failure was due to the staf splitting their time between planning the chain of stations and making Bawdsey operational. When problems at Bawdsey persisted into 1937, Tizard became more anxious. Appleton was sure the problem lay with Watson-Watt, who rapidly switched researchers between projects and seemed always to be at the Air Ministry determin- ing radar policy (Zimmerman 2001, 120). Appleton’s mediation helped keep the Tizard Committee on board until the next major demonstration in April 1937, which was deemed successful, and prompted the Air Staf to permit 18 more stations (Guerlac 1946, 143). Shortly afterwards, Rowe was brought to Bawdsey, and Watson-Watt was “promoted” away to London. In addition to these social processes involved in establishing RDF, the development of technologies of display played a key role. As has been well established in studies in the history of science, there is no simple act of observation, and scientifc representations depend heavily on the theories that infuence their creation, as well as on the people and processes drawn into alignment to bring them into being (Rudwick 1976; Lynch and Edgerton 1988; Knorr-Cetina and Amann 1990; Schafer 1998). Earlier I described factors like long wavelengths and fat landscapes being part of an attempt to normalise and geometrise the space around, reducing the background “noise” interfering with being able to detect a clear signal. Such strategies attempted to take away the particularities of place, making the landscape disappear. Tis balance between planes’ and landscapes’ visibility shifted as new radar technologies were developed. Already at Orford Ness and Bawdsey, the research group were imagining radical changes to the method of display, discussing a range of ideas. One of the earliest of these was what the group called an RDF “lighthouse”, as opposed to the existing “foodlight” system, which was 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 149 only accurate to a couple of kilometres. In the foodlight system, the bearing (direction) of the target was calculated separately to the range (distance) and the height, and the measurements could be plotted against one another on a chart in order to fnd the target’s position. Te lighthouse idea envisaged a much narrower beam of waves that rotated, fnding the target both more accurately and with only one measurement. Tis required a new form of display, however, such that the base- line of the cathode ray tube would rotate in synchrony with the aerial around a central point on the screen, with a bright spot instead of a spike marking the echoes in a 2D representation of the space around the aerial. With the defensive chain guarding the island as the main priority, the technical challenges involved in the lighthouse idea seemed too great in the early days. Most obviously, it was not feasible to rotate the huge early antenna arrays, strung as they were between enormous masts. Te alternative imaging technique was eventually built in June 1940, named the plan position indicator (PPI). By this time, the group had moved away from Bawdsey, but many of the important steps were already made there. Te developments that led to the new imaging technique in fact came from a prioritisation of movement rather than vision. Te Chain Home project focused on identifcation, but left the task of interception to others. Independent of that project, two other strands of research at Bawdsey worked towards a much closer integration of identifcation and interception, and contributed to the development of PPI. Tese were the airborne group, who wanted to put radar technology inside the fghter planes, and the Bawdsey War Ofce (army) group, who wanted radar technology to guide searchlights and anti-aircraft fre. Te focus on movement over visualisation is clear in some of the airborne group’s early experiments. As we saw earlier, Bowen’s airborne RDF group reduced the wavelength to 1.5 m in 1937 in order to take their aerials into the air. Te shorter wavelength and smaller aerials were more suitable for using a narrow, rotating beam, but the group did not have a new way to display the results, and a rotating beam system seemed too infeasible. After some unsuccessful attempts to solve these problems, Bowen remained enthusiastic, writing a memorandum for Rowe entitled “RDF Lighthouse” in July 1938. Te group also experimented with 150 S. Davis a second form of visualisation at this time. Using the beams to detect shapes on the ground, they found they were able to identify towns, and used the refections from nearby features of the landscape as radar targets, such as the wharves and cranes at Harwich (Bowen 1987, 48). In 1939, they made long fights using only a modifed 1.5 m AI system whose readings were compared with a map by navigators in the back of the plane, and as early as December 1937, a memorandum from Hanbury Brown suggested that airborne radar could be used to observe towns, villages and even hedges, trees, railways and power lines (Hanbury Brown 1991). Whereas initially the landscape had been interference that researchers tried to eliminate, the airborne group, with their sharper beams, began to treat it as valuable feedback. Despite producing reports on their activities, however, the group’s developments in visualisation were not pursued (Lovell and Hurst 1988, 470). Various members of the group report feeling somewhat sidelined from the main Bawdsey research, especially after they moved their base to Martlesham Heath (Bowen 1987; Hanbury Brown 1991; Lovell 1991). By the time Rowe held a meeting to discuss using radar to aid bombers in late 1941, after Lindemann had reported to Churchill the extremely low accuracy and success rates of the current bomber ofensive, most of Bowen’s original airborne radar group had been dispersed, and none who knew of the early pioneering work were present at the meeting (Lovell 1991, 86). A second group at Bawdsey was interested in a diferent form of interception, after the War Ofce sent Dr. Talbot Paris in early 1936 to investigate the RDF’s use for the army. Paris reported that the techniques could be used in mobile units and in anti-aircraft searchlights and guns, and was transferred to Bawdsey to head a small army research group. Like the airborne radar group, anti-aircraft work also required the higher resolution of narrower beams. When Bowen’s group had increased the range of their 1.5 m system sufciently that they could detect the Cork Lightship from the roof of the White Tower, the army contingent became interested enough to start using it. One of Bowen’s team, Bill Eastwood, also moved to the Coastal Defence (CD) project under Butement (Bowen 1987, 50). Using the 1.5 m wavelength equipment, Butement introduced a new antenna with a powerful narrow 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 151 beam that could be rotated through 360 degrees. Although it had only half the range of the Chain Home system, this new system had much higher accuracy and a surprising beneft. At this time, in 1939, the long wavelengths of the Chain Home system would refect from the earth’s surface and interfere with the directly transmitted waves. At certain points above the surface, the refected and directly transmitted waves would cancel each other out, resulting in “gaps” in the radar coverage, the largest one being along the earth’s surface, allowing low-fying planes to pass completely unnoticed. On Watson-Watt’s recommendation, the 1.5 m CD sets were added to many of the Chain Home stations to cover the area of the sky just above the horizon, becoming known as Chain Home Low (CHL) stations. Highlighting their greater motility and controlled capacity to detect enemy vessels, Science at War described them as “a kind of radio search- light scanning the horizon” (Crowther and Whiddington 1947, 27). Unlike the searchlights that announced where enemy guns should be aimed, however, radar unfastened seeing from being seen. Te stimulus to couple these technological developments in beams and aerials with a new mode of display came from a shift in the geometry of interception. After the airborne group had worked to develop airborne coordination of fghter plane interception, researchers began attempting to achieve this more remotely, moving the control of movement from the air back down to the ground. Tis initiative was pushed by members of the airborne radar group, but was not carried through by them. When the frst aerial interception (AI) sets were introduced in October 1939, Robert Hanbury Brown (of the airborne group) went to live with the user squadron in Northolt to study and improve the performance of equipment, a move that embodied the new operations research approach. Whilst at Northolt, Hanbury Brown real- ised that AI was only half the solution to guiding a fghter to a bomber in the dark, since it operated at only very close range. He concluded that a completely new system was necessary to guide the fghters, suggesting ground control of fghter planes from a controller supplied continuously with information from the CH/CHL stations, and a new method of presenting it: essentially the earlier “lighthouse” idea (Watson-Watt 1957, 266). Watson-Watt decided the idea should fnally 152 S. Davis be approached, but by this time the research establishment had been moved to Dundee, and Bowen’s airborne group’s outsider position was further entrenched as they were stationed 30 miles away nearby at Perth airport. After a series of shifts in the confgurations of personnel and place, Bowen’s group being moved further away to South Wales and working mainly on AI installation with little time for research, their gradual ostracism provoked Bowen to leave; in August 1940, he joined the Tizard mission to America (Bowen 1987, 135; Lovell 1991, 21). Rather than the airborne group, it was therefore under the guidance of W. B. Lewis that a practical Ground Controlled Interception (GCI) system with plan position indicator (PPI) was developed. Lewis came from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory to be Rowe’s new deputy after the move to Dundee, and the frst cathode ray screens with a radial time base were designed and built there in autumn 1939 (McKinney 2006, 76). Te PPI–GCI system was developed with CHL equipment on 1.5 m wavelength after the group moved to the new Telecommunication Research Establishment at Worth Matravers, and in October 1940, the frst GCI night fghter controlled operations took place. Writing directly after the war’s end, Guerlac claimed that the importance of PPI for warning and control systems “cannot be exaggerated”, and the Luftwafe’s night attacks only slowed after the introduction of CGI (Guerlac 1946, 155; Brown 1999). Developments in navigation and visualisation are clearly intertwined in radar’s history. Te PPI took radar into a blind bombing system, H2S, where it was used to show the landscape and built environment when normal vision was prevented by night or cloud. Te visualisation of H2S did not progress linearly from the Bawdsey airborne group’s work, but somewhat indirectly. Bernard Lovell joined Bowen’s airborne group in Dundee and moved with them to St Athan, Wales. At Worth Matravers, the St Athan team became part of the large group of university research physicists that Lewis amassed, of which I. P. Dee emerged as the leader. One of the main research priorities was developing AI at centimetric wavelengths, which they managed with the new resonant cavity magnetron from Birmingham University’s J. T. Randall and H. A. H. Boot in July 1940. A month later, Lovell and his small group had used a magnetron and new aerial system to observe 4 Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories 153 an aircraft in fight. Lovell was not present at the meeting in October 1941 in which Lindemann insisted that a self-contained bombing navigation system was required, but Dee was. He remembered that Lovell’s centimetric tests had also picked up individual buildings and the nearby town, and several centimetric AI systems were airborne by this point, on which coastlines were well defned (Lovell 1991, 91). Dee assigned two researchers to set up the experimental AI in a Blenheim at a constant depression of 10 degrees from horizontal, and a few days later, they photographed the cathode ray tube during the fights, showing the towns of Salisbury and Warminster and nearby military camps. Dee showed the prints to Rowe, who later declared it the “turning point of the war”, quickly presenting them to the Secretary of State for Air (Rowe 1948, 117). Rowe then switched Lovell to direct research into blind navigation. Immense political pressure backed the new research after Lindemann presented Churchill with a report advocating the use of area bombing in Germany to reduce morale, despite resistance from Blackett, Tizard and others (Zuckerman 1975, 471). With the centimetric radio waves, it was possible to map the ground. Cities showed up as bright masses, and riverbanks and coastlines gave returns. Te initial radar work had created a coastal chain of stations facing only out to sea, but radar was now being used to represent land in any direction, transforming landscapes from unwanted interference to valuable feedback. Tese developments required nonlinear paths with heterogeneous social and technological engineering (MacKenzie 1990). Trough them, radar shifted from being a means of visualisation into a coordinator of movement. Following the initial defensive early warning system, the new radar displays steered the bombing aids Oboe (using CHL stations as master-and-slave stations emitting signals) and Gee (hyperbolic navigation), and air trafc control systems. Judd Case (2010) discusses radar as a logistical medium, defned as primarily concerned with order and arrangement, and only secondarily with representation. He argues that it was a feedback system that extended nation states’ remote control, helping them identify and coordinate movements from a distance: their own and that of their enemies. Fitting this argument, the gradual 154 S. Davis development of the PPI screen came from research initiatives aimed at coordinated interception rather than only identifcation. Despite radar’s primary concern with order and arrangement, it was its visual components that dominated the stories told about it. Trough an isolation myth, radar’s research sites in coastal Sufolk became attached to contemporary iconography of the island nation. Te island myth also linked to the idea of the special communities there. Like laboratories, the isolated research sites were able to make the world outside resemble that inside them, and so coordinate a network of other people, places and equipment. Te importance of vision is clear in the narratives linking radar to the authoritative gaze of the airman and the “hero’s war”, and in the idea of the island fortress. In post-war stories, radar could write over the disempowering wartime experience of blackout with its promise of extended sight.

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From the theme of invasion threats, this chapter weaves a diferent intruder into the region’s story, in the form of a bird. In 1947, avocets (Recurvirostra avosetta ) began breeding in two areas of Sufolk that had been fooded for war-related reasons, creating an ideal environment for this wading bird. Havergate Island is between Bawdsey and Orford, and Minsmere is a few miles further north. Te birds came from their war-disturbed range in Holland following a hundred-year absence from Britain and were initially guarded and kept secret by former servicemen. Even when they were brought to the public’s attention, their exact location was hidden for another two years. Te birds then came under the care of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), who created new nature reserves at those sites. Te avocets’ protection came at a key time in the development of nature conservation in Britain, and indeed the success of the RSPB’s nature reserves at Minsmere and Havergate prompted the RSPB to make the bird their logo. Within this story, the themes of enclosure and Englishness multiply within coastal Sufolk. We have seen how this region was

© Te Author(s) 2020 161 S. Davis, Island Tinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9676-2_5 162 S. Davis extensively militarised during the Second World War, as it became normal for patches of the countryside to be closed of from the public, and through their bounded isolation made to relate to national issues. We have also encountered the drive towards representing the countryside as particularly English in this isolated, insular region. In a nation increasingly full of birdwatchers, the avocet story captured the public imagination, continuing the wartime themes of watching and guarding. Rather than a story of protecting a British bird, however, it could be framed as one of making a bird British. Tis chapter attends to the cultures of nature made visible through the avocet, tracing contemporary concerns in the dozen years that followed the birds’ arrival (Davis 2011). Te birds became a vehicle for formulations of national identity and ideas of England as a home to which to return and belong: important themes in the post-war period, as Britain slumped economically and spiritually after victory and tried to rebuild itself. Te cultures of nature at work here also revolve around both the naturalisation of the military and the militarisation of wildlife. Protecting birds appeared in post-war fction as a way for returning servicemen to recover, where nature appeared both as intrinsically militarised and simultaneously as a refuge from war: the Britain they had been fghting for (Figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1 RSPB logo from 1970 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 163

Fig. 2 Photograph of avocets by Eric Hosking, appearing in The Times, 1950 (Courtesy of the Eric Hosking Trust, www.erichoskingtrust.com)

1 British Birds

During the (re)discovery of the English countryside in the 1930s, the popularity of birdwatching increased immensely, fuelled by the formation of organisations like the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in 1933, who collated observations from a nationwide network of amateurs. Indeed, the other 1930s national network of citizen scientists, Mass Observation, characterised birdwatching as an expression of the “popular unconscious” (Madge and Harrison 1937, 41). Birdwatching had considerable cultural prominence by the early 1950s, with a growing publishing record including hundreds of books, a popular magazine and feld guides (Macdonald 2002). In a 1950 book review, David Skinner described the steady stream of books on the English countryside that began appearing in 1940, adding: “Te British have always been fond of their birds, and thousands of people who do not pretend to be skilled ornithologists take an interest in the birds of their own 164 S. Davis gardens … During the war their afection grew to remarkable pro- portions … Birds are an inseparable part of the countryside” (Skinner 1950). Te memberships of the BTO and the RSPB rose signifcantly during and after the war, with many recruits from the services. Refecting on this, the BTO’s Nicholas Hammond ofered the explanation that town-dwellers who were posted to remote radar stations, far from pubs and dancehalls, found themselves with little in which to take an interest beyond birds (Hammond 1983). In parallel, birds also gained greater cultural signifcance. We saw in Chapter 2 how Englishness was located in visions of the countryside, and in 1940, James Fisher described birds as “the heritage we are fghting for” (Fisher 1953, 3). Early in the war, the immensely popular Julian Huxley described birds on one of his radio programmes as “expressions” of the nation, portraying the birdwatcher as better able to be close to their country through knowledge of its birds (Huxley 1949). If we return to Jed Esty’s notion of the “anthropological turn” in the shrinking empire, birdwatching seems to have been coded as part of the resurgent concept of national culture in the insular nation. Within this context, birds themselves were used to articulate a range of social concerns. A wartime Country Diary, “Menace of the sparrows”, for example, described sparrows sitting “chirping” and “squabbling” harmlessly, before warning that when they migrate from the towns to the cornfelds they constitute a menace to agriculture (Adams 1942). We encountered the tensions between town and country in Chapter 3, and this article enrols the birds to express concern that townsfolk were uncivilised (Matless 1998). Wartime fears about social disorder were also formulated through birds, as certain species’ new habits of pecking through milk bottle tops and tearing of strips of wallpaper were frequently and portentously remarked upon. Te projection of human issues onto birds was widespread and varied. During the post-war years, there was a surge in interest in bird migration, the imaginative appeal of which to a post-war nation is suggested in E. A. R. Ennion’s book on Te Story of Migration, where we read that “Nearly all birds migrate to some extent. Teir comings and goings, their ranges and tracks, interweave and overlap, with no respect whatever for our neat divisions on the map” (Ennion 1947, 87). 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 165

To aid migration studies, a chain of coastal bird observatories were established in the years immediately following the war, in a curious echo of the wartime Chain Home radar stations. By 1960, there were over 20 observatories, with a vast increase in numbers of papers on migration in the 1950s and 1960s in British Birds and Bird Study (Greenwood 2009). Te observatories relied on voluntary work from amateurs, building on the strong base of amateur naturalists and their local natural history societies and promoting the values of citizen scientists. Ronald Lockley had set up Britain’s frst bird observatory on the Pembrokeshire island of Skokholm in 1933, using techniques of bird trapping and bird ringing learned from Heligoland. Tis was followed a year later by an observatory on the Isle of May in Scotland, and one of the Edinburgh naturalists involved in that observatory, George Waterston, happened to be in the same prisoner-of-war camp as Lockley’s brother-in-law, John Buxton. From inside the camp, Waterston and Buxton, joined by Peter Condor and John Barrett, made plans to encourage more observatories to be established (Niemann 2012). In one of Buxton’s poems from 1940, entitled “Te Prisoner of the Singing Bird”, we glimpse the birds’ symbolism for him:

Sing on, sing on beyond the walls Tat I within know Spring is in the woods again Where you may go Sing on, sing on; then in my cage I shall delight to hear Tat you are glad and free out there So near, so near! (Maclean 1994, 21)

Buxton worked his wartime observations of the redstart into a book in 1950, which James Fisher introduced as Buxton having “broken the bars of secrecy behind which the secrets of the redstart’s life lay hidden. It was, we suspect, a way of breaking his own prison bars” (Fisher 1950, xi). Te bird observatories’ confnement echoed the space of prison, perhaps providing a way to reorientate oneself to the British countryside in places that related to landscapes of war. 166 S. Davis

Arriving into this context, the avocet captured public attention, creating enough excitement to provoke sarcasm from across the Atlantic. In May 1950, an American newspaper article opened with “Englishmen fascinate me to death”, continuing:

With the cold war going on, the H-bomb discussion at its height … what do you think is the hottest topic of discussion in England today? Stalin? No. Te Marshall Plan? No, again. … It is the avocet. What do you sup- pose the avocet it? It is a bird. … this country is as full of bird watchers as heaven is of angels. (McLemore 1950)

Following the bird’s arrival in 1947, in 1949 the RSPB bought the two sites where they had appeared, Minsmere Level and Havergate Island on the Sufolk coast. After being approved in 1955 as a symbol on the RSPB’s new tie, the avocet was eventually made their logo in 1970: a symbol of their success in protection. By 1954, a newspaper article could mention that: “It is perhaps almost unnecessary in these days to explain that Havergate Island is the scene of the welcome return, as a British breeding species, of the elegant, long-legged, black and white wading bird, the avocet” (Te Times, 10 March 1954). Te bird’s return appeared as “Among the chief ornithological events of the postwar years” in William Payn’s book on Sufolk’s birds (Payn 1962, 128), and in 1966 the RSPB’s Secretary, Philip Brown, noted it as “a sensational post-war scoop which hit the headlines with a vengeance” (Brown 1966, 47). It is clear that birds held a degree of cultural signifcance during these years, and in this chapter, I use the avocet story to unfold particular animal geographies or cultures of nature in the region (Matless 2000; Lorimer 2000).

2 Returning Home

Te frst level to consider in the avocet stories is representations of the bird itself. Te avocet seemed to charm observers, appearing as “that dainty thing in porcelain black and white” (Te Times, 24 February 1948), the newspapers ringing with the “charming” avocet’s “beauty and grace” (Te Times, 21 March 1949). One remarkable formulation of this image 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 167 comes in a long account of a guided visit to Havergate Island in Te Times in 1953, where the writer saw “avocets stepping delicately over the ooze on their blue stilts, scooping the mud with their incredibly slender, up-curved bills, or preening their snow-white plumage so beautifully pat- terned with black”. Following these long descriptions, the author suddenly exclaims: “Ballet! Tere I have it. Tat pinpoints the beauty and grace of the avocets” (Te Times, 2 June 1953). Aligning the birds with a human activity, or what Kay Milton (2002) has termed “personhood”, precipi- tates here a relieved feeling of comprehension to the author. Jamie Lorimer (2007) describes “aesthetic charisma” as the aesthetic characteristics of a species’ behaviour that trigger strong emotional responses in humans, and although some locate this in characteristics like the human face or hand, Milton’s broader concept of personhood or “human extensionism” seems more ftting here. Within this framing, the choice of ballet is revealing. Going to watch the ballet was hardly a working-class activity, and this class implication was strengthened when the writer closed his article adding that he watched “with a seat in a box, too”. Exposure to ballet was not strictly limited by class, occupying the central theme of Powell and Pressburger’s flm, Te Red Shoes (1948), but the Havergate journalist is referring specifcally to going to the ballet. In Te Times, with its upper-class readership, the observation hide on Havergate becomes a means for a birdwatcher to reaf- frm the class in which he is fxed. A similar idea appeared a decade later, when the RSPB’s Philip Brown retold the story with the avocet’s poised slender body, elegant legs and delicate up-turned bill all combining “to give it the air of an aristocrat” (Brown and Waterston 1962, 188). In other words, the avocet was coded through an elegance that was bound to class. Tis graceful image gains signifcance when we realise that it was not the only possibility, since a counter-current of aggression also appeared on occasion. Te birds’ violent streak came through largely in Brown’s longer pieces on avocet behaviour. Brown was the RSPB’s head of sanctuaries when the avocets frst arrived and was one of the frst to see them. In a British Birds article (1949) and in his book, Avocets in England (1950), he describes behaviour that prompted him to deny Julian Huxley’s (1925) earlier assertion that avocets are “a singularly peaceable” species, including communal fghting and “dive-bombing” other species. In the former, between four and nine male and female birds suddenly 168 S. Davis gather in a tight circle, bow and pipe intensely for a couple of minutes and then break of into twos to spring, peck and fap at one another with their wings, before dispersing as rapidly as they came together. Te popular, peaceful image was actively policed by writers like the ballet-preoccupied columnist. After mentioning that “Now two or three avocets are dive-bombing the sitting gulls”, he immediately smooths over the inci- dent, which “amounts to nothing more than wing-bufeting, and on the whole the birds seem neighbourly enough” (Te Times, 2 June 1953). On going nearer to the nests, the chicks froze motionless and the parents “few around, yelping musically but anxiously”, and although the warden, Reg Partridge, tells him this is a “distraction display”, he dismisses that explanation: “I preferred to think of ballet dancing”. Feigned injury and distraction display are reminders of the more savage side of nature, red in tooth and claw, but the author frames such cries as musical, insist- ing on dressing the avocets in tutus and showing a remarkable capacity to cover over any behaviour relating to aggression. Te appeal of graceful personhood has a broader context here, relating to the contemporary tension between sentimental and scientifc modes of seeing birds. Countering a sentimental approach to nature, there emerged in the 1930s a new type of natural history that presented itself as studying nature in a more detached, scientifc way. In the 1940s, these “new naturalists” pushed successfully for the establishment of national nature reserves: places in which nature was closed of from normal public access and regarded as an “outdoor laboratory” for ecologists. As Helen Macdonald (2002) shows, opposition between organ- icist, sentimental birdwatchers and scientifc observers became marked in the 1930s, refected at an institutional level in the RSPB and BTO, respectively, and the tension continued through to the 1950s. In 1948, for example, ornithologist Stuart Smith hesitated to join the RSBP after receiving several letters from RSPB members, “who, after reading my ‘How to Study Birds’, accused me of destroying the souls of bird lovers” (Smith to Brown, 25 September 1948). Te emphasis on the bird’s elegance seems to fall more in line with sentimental seeing at this point. A second function of the graceful image relates to contemporary moral codes of Englishness (Matless et al. 2005). In post-war Britain, violence and barbaric behaviour were associated with black “immigrants”, and 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 169 not with the white English (Webster 1998). Tis can be seen in City of Spades, published in 1957, where Ian MacInnes’s character, Montgomery Pew, is drawn into a black male world characterised by prostitution, illicit drinking, gambling, drugs and violence. With violence coded as anti-Eng- lish, it could not ft into the picture of this returning British bird. Te Britishness of these birds was, however, somewhat problematic. Te avocet arrived in the country after its presence as a breeding species had fallen out of living memory. Its status as a native bird was questionable, but commentators pre-emptively defected any doubt over this, narrating the past and the birds’ absence to reconstruct it as British. In early reports of the avocet’s arrival, we hear of “the return of a ‘lost’ British bird” (Te Times, 24 February 1948), and that the avocet had been “lost for a century as a breeding bird in England” (Te Times, 3 March 1950). A newspaper article by Philip Brown continued this formulation, refecting on how recently “this lovely bird had to be numbered among our ‘lost’ breeding species” (Te Times, 10 January 1950). In this phraseology, the function of the term “lost” is ambiguous. Although it appears to be England that had lost a breeding bird, there is also a strong sense in which the bird appears as having lost its way. Trough this connotation, the nation appears somehow essential to the avocets; they had been disori- ented, lacking something, and now have regained it. Te birds’ Britishness or Englishness was also established through defning them in terms of how long they had been away, emphasising that avocets were former habitants of the nation. Two descriptions from 1949 and 1950, for example, describe the avocet as “a bird extinct in this country for about a century” and a bird “unknown in England for a century” (Te Times, 21 March 1949; 16 January 1950). Turning this to further advantage, Philip Brown ofered that: “It is difcult to say at exactly what period in the nineteenth century the avocet ceased to breed in Britain” (Te Times, 10 January 1950) and detailed their infrequent visits in the intervening period (Brown 1950). In such descriptions, a sense of continuity is generated by blurring the date of the avocet’s departure from the country and flling the period of absence with a chain of visits linking past to present. Making history continuous in this way opens up the conceptual space for the avocet’s Britishness to have a developing history. Exactly this notion appeared in an article entitled 170 S. Davis

“Man and the Birds”, in which the author discusses egg collecting and then avocets, declaring: “It is all the more unfortunate that this rob- bing of nests should persist at a time when a number of species are at a very critical stage in their history as British birds ” (Te Times, 21 March 1949, my italics). Indeed, the avocet’s status as a British bird required many years of sustained work. Brown in particular continued to stress the avocet’s native status, describing Havergate Island for a local hotel’s publicity as the summer “home” of avocets, but only a winter “feeding ground and resting ground” for ducks and waders (Brown to Philips, 11 August 1954). By the early 1960s, he was still writing that “Te avocet is a true native of Britain” (Brown and Waterston 1962, 189). His laboured explicitness suggests a remaining anxiety about nativity. When we consider the post-war period in terms of both the shrinking empire’s insular revival of Englishness and the previous two decades’ heightened invasion anxieties, the narratives surrounding this avian “expression” of the nation gain particular interest (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Nesting avocets as pictured in Brown’s Avocets in England (1950) (Courtesy of the RSPB) 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 171

3 Aerial Invaders

Te juxtaposed themes of invaders and returning natives seem to have been at once uncomfortable and fascinating in contemporary commentaries, paralleling cultural identity processes. In one of the frst newspaper articles to report the events, in the Daily Mail, the themes of military- and nature-watching are clearly intertwined:

In a suite of old-fashioned ofces … a group of men are anxiously waiting to hear of an air invasion of Britain. Te news will come to them from watchers along the East Anglian coast, who are keeping as alert a look-out as they did in 1940 for the Germans. But this time, instead of looking for aircraft with black markings, they are hoping to see streamlined recurvirostra avosetta, which have white, as well as black, markings. Unlike the Luftwafe, these invaders will be most welcome. (Humphreys 1948)

Tis strange desire to picture the birds as invaders sits, unexplained, alongside the narrative of a returning native, this piece being titled “Is the avocet home to stay?” Te heavily worked-out metaphor in this description recalls Helen Macdonald’s (2002) discussion of the similar- ities between 1940s aeroplane spotting and birdwatching, in terms of image conventions, identifcation practices and observational language. Tere seems to be both an appeal and discomfort in seeing the birds as foreign visitors. Te discomfort is also suggested by the way that the Netherlands was mostly absent from the story’s frst few decades, despite the birds having come over from there. Rather, early accounts give the impression that the birds come to Britain from nowhere, “like a bolt out of the blue” (Brown 1950, 8). Brown indicated the possibility of a connection to Holland in 1950, conceding only that “Perhaps the surprising thing is that throughout this period [of absence from Britain] the birds continued to fourish in the breeding-colonies in Holland, only a little over one hundred miles across the North Sea from East Anglia” (Brown 1950, 8). Te sense of shock here is ambiguously located, at once in the geographical closeness of the other avocets and in the fact that they nested in the Netherlands at all. It seems as though England has simply been unlucky, obfuscating the avocet’s absence from Britain. 172 S. Davis

Brown lists the factors to which the avocet’s nineteenth-century disappearance is commonly attributed (habitat drainage, egg collecting and shooting), before giving a counter-argument for each, suggesting “there was probably some other major factor which adversely afected the species. We shall never know” (Brown 1950, 7). Making mysterious their disappearance, he preserves the avocet’s status as belonging rightfully in England. By contrast, the connection between the two countries birds later became commonplace. A 1973 study of rare British breeding birds observed that the recolonisation followed a marked increase in numbers in the Netherlands (Sharrock and Ferguson-Lees 1973, 15). An added dimension to the birds’ movement appeared in Brown’s 1962 book, which notes that during the war there was “no embargo on avocets, some of which may well have been so badly disturbed on their nesting-grounds in the Netherlands that they ventured across the North Sea to East Anglia” (Brown and Waterston 1962, 191). Herbert Axell also later suggested that the avocets came from war-disturbed Holland, adding “A nice twist of fate if so, and the thought that they might have lent us a few of their avocets to re-establish the British breeding stock has given pleasure to our kindly Dutch colleagues” (Axell and Hosking 1977, 176). Tis kind of bird-facilitated international relations was not present in late 1940s and 1950s reporting, when the notion of home seemed more precariously balanced. Te emphasis on the birds’ nativity—and lack of emphasis on their Dutch origin—is also at odds with a wartime narrative of ofering safety to bird-immigrants in Tawny Pipit (1944). In Bernard Miles’ light-hearted flm, a pair of pipits are found nesting for only the second time in England by a recovering, wounded airman and his nurse. Finding the birds in a feld near the village Lipsbury Lea, they enlist the help of the old Colonel and village vicar, two boys and the nurse’s ornithologist-uncle, soon recruiting the backing of the whole local community as well as a troop of bird enthusiasts from the Association of British Ornithologists. Acting together to protect the birds, the new group overcome several threats, including the County War Agricultural Committee demanding the nesting-feld be ploughed, a tank regiment attempting to carry out a training exercise through the feld and an egg 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 173 collector trying to rob the nest. Te theme of welcoming foreign visitors operates on many levels in Tawny Pipit, its symbolic value in the birds most evident in the Colonel’s speech to the gathered country folk. He declares to rapt applause: “Tis love of animals and of nature has always been part and parcel of the British way of life and it’s going to go on being”, adding that “we welcome to our country thousands of foreigners at one time or another—French, Dutch, Poles, Czechs and so on—and a lot of them are jolly decent people. Well that’s what these little pipits are, you see, and we’re jolly well going to see to it that they’re going to get fair play or we shall want to know the reason why!” Te Colonel may well be a laudable eccentric (Matless 1998) delivering a “ragbag of clichés”, “strung together with a knowing acknowledgement of their absurdity” (Murphy 2000, 171). Nevertheless, the speech is shown as positively received by the villagers, and a contemporary newspaper review stated that some of the characters “may have their characteristics heightened to draw an easy laugh, but their roots are in the soil” (Te Times, 13 May 1944). Interpreted as a “what we are fghting for” flm, it was taken to present Britain’s core values as a traditional version of rural life: a “portrait of an English village … conceived in lines of benevo- lent caricature” (Te Times, 13 May 1944). In Tawny Pipit, welcoming foreign birds appears as fundamentally English. Te visitor theme is echoed in human as well as avian form in Tawny Pipit, for example when a female Russian sniper is welcomed to the village and presented with the Colonel’s old rife, greeted with admiration and applause. Te two young boys, often pictured with the nurse and airman, are yet another form of visitor: evacuees from the city. Having originally tried to steal the eggs from the nest, they are taught country values by the airman and nurse, relating again to the urban–rural theme. Children’s activities feature prominently in the flm, the younger generation symbolising the mood of looking ahead with optimism to post-war reconstruction. With its many forms of visitor, the flm fts with a peak in inclusiveness in wartime narratives in British media. Wendy Webster (2005) shows that this inclusiveness faded from view in the 1950s, as home front civilians, women and non-white members of the British empire were eclipsed in narratives looking back at the war 174 S. Davis that transformed the “people’s war” into a “hero’s war” dominated by martial masculinity and heroism. We saw in Chapter 2 that post-war countryside writing looked for the heritage of Deep England whilst reading threat into elements of the countryside, and Chapters 3 and 4 built enduring invasion anxieties and a fxation on the nation’s edge into this picture. As the declining empire highlighted the nation’s insular integrity, post-war immigration provoked new anxieties. Tis could be projected into the deeper past, as for example when Rex Weldon Finn’s Te English Heritage came out in a revised version in 1948, declaring that “Britain indeed attracts the primitive immigrant”, since “there are few obstacles to an easy landing on her shores” in the south and east. He adds, ominously, that “the immigrant fnds it possible, even easy, to penetrate the hinterland” (Weldon Finn 1948, 22). According to polling data, the British public were frmly against Commonwealth migration to Britain for the frst three post-war decades (Hansen 2000). A range of empire flms in the 1950s depicted British order and domestication in the colonies, contrasting with native violence and savagery, for example in Te Planter’s Wife (1952) set in Malaya, where homes and gardens symbolise embattled Englishness, and in Simba (1955) set in Kenya, in which England is imagined as a domestic sanctuary. As the empire was dismantled and colonial wars continued in those and other countries, the notion of British decline was countered by these kinds of racialised images, and British reporting of the colonial wars abroad greatly infuenced British views of immigrants from the colonies, fuelling fears centred on violence and encroachment (Webster 2005). Tis was also the time when interest in bird migration soared, and bird observatories were established along the coast in another parallel with watching the skies for “invaders”. Trapping began on Fair Isle in 1948, and observatories began just north of Sufolk at Cley in Norfolk and Gibraltar Point in Lincolnshire in 1949, and just south of Sufolk in Dungeness and further south in Hastings in 1952. Tere were 12 observatories by 1954, with amateur naturalists keen to devote their time to recording birds crossing over the island’s edges. Te interest in birds’ migratory paths was not limited to Britain, but Britain was often described as at a migratory “crossroads”, and the fourishing 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 175 observatories populated by amateurs shows a remarkable interest in both natural history and the aerial connection of the shrinking island to the rest of the world. Whereas birds symbolised foreigners to be welcomed in the “people’s war” of Tawny Pipit, in the early post-war years they hovered between symbolising free movement and threatening invaders. In Daphne Du Maurier’s extremely successful horror story, Te Birds (1952), birds of all kinds turn on and destroy the country’s human inhabitants, massing on the water during the day and raiding in huge volume during the night. Te story is narrated from the perspective of a former serviceman, Nat Hocken, as the birds attack him and his children in their home at night time. On the frst night, Nat thinks the birds are merely seeking shelter from an easterly wind, having wondered earlier in the day that they seemed more restless than usual this autumn. Te following day, however, Nat experiences the scale of the situation in this striking passage:

He walked down the path, halfway to the beach, and then he stopped. He could see the tide had turned. Te rock that had shown in mid-morning was now covered, but it was not the sea that held his eyes. Te gulls had risen. Tey were circling, hundreds of them, thousands of them, lifting their wings against the wind. It was the gulls that made the darkening of the sky. And they were silent. Tey made not a sound. Tey just went on soaring and circling, rising, falling, trying their strength against the wind. Nat turned. He ran up the path, back to the cottage. (Du Maurier 1977, 20)

A national emergency is declared, and Nat and his small family board themselves up in their small country cottage and attempt to weather the attacks. Te intense feeling of claustrophobia within the enclosed world of the boarded-up family clearly resonated with the recent British experience of wartime aerial bombing. Indeed, Nat repeatedly refects on wartime experiences whilst processing the events: “We’re snug and tight, like an air-raid shelter” (Du Maurier 1977, 27). Te story’s apocalypticism and paranoia also functioned as a parable for the Cold War’s atmosphere of fear, such as when Nat’s neighbour tells him of rumours in town that “the Russians have done it. Te Russians have poisoned 176 S. Davis the birds” (Du Maurier 1977, 24). Other readings suggest that Du Maurier’s writing exposes the darker side contained within us, which we must understand in order to avoid being destroyed (Wisker 2004). Te use of invading birds for a narrative fts with David Mellor’s (1987) portrayal of the Neo-Romanticism of the 1930s–1950s, one aspect of which was a more savage, existential model of nature. Returning from Te Birds to the Luftwafe quote at the start of this section, the avocet episode could easily be drawn into depictions of wartime invasion, and there existed a tension between this savage image of nature and the theme of peaceable natives returning home.

4 Birds and Servicemen

Just as the theme of aerial invaders represented a militarisation of the birds, so could the theme of returning natives, making a curious parallel with the contemporary fgure of the returning serviceman. Whereas the interest in bird migration connected England to the rest of the world, this was also a time of reorientation towards the island’s interior. We have already encountered wounded, returned servicemen in Tawny Pipit and Te Birds, and indeed this fgure began appearing in medi- cal journal articles, feature flms and literary works even before the war was over, as in J. B. Priestley’s Tree Men in New Suits (1945). With recurring themes of the problems in psychological and social readjust- ment, these men’s relationship to Britain was under question (Mengham and Reeve 2001). Te paths of the returning men and birds intersected in ways that illuminate wider issues facing both, as the birds and their environments took on a recuperative role for the servicemen. In fact, the avocet story was linked to the military on many levels. Te main actors were all war veterans, as the birds were frst seen by Lieutenant-Colonel J. K. Stanford and Brigadier H. N. Stanford at Minsmere, and the watch to guard the birds was then led by Captain Stuart Ogilvie, the owner of the Minsmere estate, and Major E. Lynn- Allen of nearby Scott’s Hall. Te perceived importance of the key players being from the ofcer class was indicated by R. S. R. Fitter when he described the return of the avocet, osprey and godwit, extending 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 177 military identities to everyone involved: “Te preservation of these birds has been the joint achievement of a legion of birdwatchers and local residents, but it is the privilege of the commanding ofcers to be decorated for the valour of their troops” (Fitter 1962, 9). Here the birds stand for the nation-to-be-defended, whilst birdwatchers become the army. A second level of militarisation concerned the land, since the avocet’s return hinged on the physical efects of war. Tey settled frst at Minsmere in a battle training area that had been fooded as an anti-invasion measure and soon after at Havergate Island, where a stray bomb from the practice bombing range had damaged one of the sluices, again causing fooding. Te birds’ continued presence was also aided by the wartime exclusion of civilians from the coast. Te links between military themes and returning servicemen come through particularly strongly in the fctional writing of J. K. Stanford, whose story based on the events originally appeared in the conservative Blackwood’s Magazine as “Bledgrave Hall” in 1948 and was then published in England (1950) and in America as Te Awl-Birds (1949). After serving in the First World War, J. K. Stanford had spent his interwar years with the Indian Civil Service, largely in Burma, about whose birdlife he published many popular and scholarly articles. He retired after spending the Second World War in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, embodying the shift from the colonies back to the island, and continued writing books on country sports and ornithology. In Awl- Birds, ex-sapper Derick Gloyne returns from war to buy his uncle’s old home on the Sufolk coast, where he had spent much of his childhood. Stanford spent much of his own childhood in a large country house near Minsmere and had seen the avocets when staying at his brother’s house there. Te house in the Awl-Birds, Bledgrave Hall, was practically ruined after the area had been used for military training, but Gloyne slowly repairs parts of it and spends most of his time outside watching birds. Discovering avocets nesting in the marshes, he keeps secret their existence during a three-week, dawn-to-dusk watch, but a chain of coincidences lead a committed egg collector to fnd out about them and hunt them down. Gloyne chases him away, and the book reaches an extraordinary climax of patriotic, vicarious murder when Gloyne pur- posefully holds back from warning the feeing egg collector as he runs 178 S. Davis towards the minefelds of Bledgrave’s marshes. Te book received positive reviews, appearing as “worthy of comparison with Te Snow-Goose ” (Te Times, 30 November 1950), a highly successful 1941 story about the growth of a friendship through nursing a lost, wounded bird back to life, set against the backdrop of war. Te Awl-Birds story is shot through with militarism. In some pas- sages, Gloyne intermingles wartime memories of the minefelds he laid in Libya with his present-day view of the mine-ridden marshes of Bledgrave’s estate, the two blurring into one another in his descriptions. Bomb craters and mines feature prominently in Stanford’s non-fction too. In his introduction to Brown’s Avocets in England (1950), he recalled the initial discovery when “I could not believe my ears and could, indeed, hardly believe my eyes, when I had waded out myself knee- deep through that shallow water which was still pocked with the mortar-bomb craters of a war-time battle school” (Stanford 1950, 3). Te battle school here is Orford Battle Area, which we met in Chapter 3. It is also the mines that save the avocet eggs conclusively when “From up the heath came a heavy detonation followed quickly by two more”, as the egg collector perished (Stanford 1949, 86). Te marshland in Stanford’s writing functions as a continuation of his experience of land in war; it is both metonym and metaphor of the war. Gloyne’s way of being also appears deeply militarised, such as when “his sapper’s brain was busy with calculations” as he runs after the egg collector (Stanford 1949, 78). Similarly, when he lets the empty-handed egg collector run towards the northern minefeld, he “looked at his watch mechanically” listening for the explosions (1949, 85). Tis militarisation of land and man extended also to the birds: “Tere was no place so wild and desolate that birds could not colonise and beautify it, but they were always at war” (1949, 71). Nature and the military are intertwined in the narrative, with Stanford’s protagonist fghting for his country, symbolised by the avocets. In a counter-current in the narrative, Bledgrave was also Gloyne’s sanctuary or refuge from war. It was the marshes that “his whole being had yearned for during those years in London and the desert and in for- lorn prison-hutments” (1949, 23). Te war “had driven him blindly to Bledgrave for peace and quiet and now he found more peace among the 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 179 ruins than when it had been a thriving farm” (1949, 40). Living alone in ruins created by military battlefeld simulation, it is as though Gloyne is one of the only survivors in a place wrecked by war. It is his place in which to repair from the damage induced by war, both physically and emotionally. Early on, Gloyne’s estate agent thinks to himself that he “Must be cracked slightly like so many of these sappers” (1949, 14), and as the book progresses, Gloyne’s tendency to “fy of the handle” diminishes and his hand no longer shakes, suggesting a mental and emotional recovery (1949, 19). Tere is a continuing tension between these two aspects of Bledgrave—a continued military zone and a sanctuary from such places—for both Gloyne and the birds. Te theme of birds and landscape being sought out by returning serviceman recurred in another semi-autobiographical story the same year. Kenneth Allsop’s Adventure Lit Teir Star won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize with its narration of the little ringed plover’s post-war colonisation of Britain, and it resonated with the Awl-Birds on many levels. Its protagonist, Richard Locke, is an injured serviceman who is slowly recovering from tuberculosis after years of fying planes for Coastal Command. Allsop himself had sustained an RAF assault course injury that led to one of his legs being amputated due to tuberculosis in 1945, a source of suf- fering for the rest of his life. Like Gloyne in the Awl-Birds, Locke keeps vigil over the birds. Te birds also nest in a de-requisitioned military site, which had been taken over by the Petroleum Warfare Board in 1941, after which “the birds were the only unauthorised beings to see the strange scenes enacted in the secrecy of the basin, for it was barred to all except the men engaged on the secret experiments with mobile fame-throwers” (Allsop 1949, 145). Both landscape and birds hold recuperative qualities in Adventure and Awl-Birds, the landscapes’ crucial features being their emptiness and militarised nature. Finally, the birds are again the victims of an attempted raid by an egg collector (Figs. 4 and 5). Te value of the birds to Gloyne in the Awl-Birds is indicated predominantly by his actions, but Allsop reaches beneath this level. Allsop was greatly infuenced by his long and troubled friendship with writer Henry Williamson, who had found it difcult to adjust to post- war conditions after the First World War (Andresen 2005). Williamson had moved to remote Devon to write Tarka the Otter (1927), his 180 S. Davis

Fig. 4 Illustrations from Allsop’s Adventure Lit Their Star, by Anthony Smith (Courtesy of Tristan Allsop) 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 181

Fig. 5 Illustrations from Adventure Lit Their Star, by Anthony Smith (Courtesy of Tristan Allsop) 182 S. Davis best-selling work, in which natural historical observations are mixed with animals’ emotional responses (Williamson 1995). In Adventure, too, the birds’ emotional responses receive a lot of attention, at least half of the book being devoid of human characters, devoted to the events befalling the birds, and their interactions with other species. Allsop’s regular column in the Daily Mail about his life in an old Dorset mill- house was unashamedly anthropocentric and showed his interest in the human-made landscape as a makeshift natural habitat (Moran 2014). His attention to the internal world of the birds is paralleled by his descriptions of Locke’s own psychological landscape, making it clear that the birds’ lives give purpose and meaning to his own during his slow process of healing. Tis becomes particularly evident when the story reaches its peak, as Locke waits in the dark with his trap for the egg collector:

A loneliness stole upon him … and his mind returned to scenes and faces of other years. Tey foated up hauntingly through the night, and for the frst time for months he knew a deep and aching nostalgia for the war, for the knowledge of purpose and immediacy that had gone. He lost value of time and place … In some way the little ringed plovers reached him, soaring high to meet him in the stellar space, and he saw them no longer as jerking shapes held briefy in the lenses, but near and real, the breath of those wings crossed his brow and whose eyes were bright and alive, whose presence was companionship in his solitariness in the black hollowness of dream-like infnity. (Allsop 1949, 216)

In this extraordinary passage, Locke imagines himself into a state where he becomes one of the birds and through them is fnally able to re-visit his wartime memories. A similar process occurs less explicitly in the Awl-Birds. Gloyne shares with Locke a prophetic dream of the birds in trouble, and we hear it would “break his heart if anything came to spoil their chances” (Stanford 1949, 68). Te two writers touch on what Jamie Lorimer describes “becoming-animal”, a moment of “epiphany” in which a person is reterritorialised, discovering a new relationship to the land (Lorimer 2007, 921). In these stories, a connection to the birds ofers the former servicemen a way to make sense of both their wartime experiences and militarised landscapes, afar and at home, promising 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 183 the potential of processing the traumas of war and reconnecting to the landscape. As Awl-Birds ends, Gloyne’s fnal view of the land is that “Strangers had come to disturb the peace of Bledgrave and Bledgrave had swallowed them as it had swallowed so many earth-shaking events in the last four hundred years. Wars came and went but Bledgrave remained” (Stanford 1949, 217). Whilst the birds would remain “always at war”, in Gloyne’s avocet-aided reorientation to the land, the continuity of Deep England triumphs over militarisation. Whereas contemporary countryside writing found it difcult to integrate militarisation into views of the countryside, the focus on birds fnding a home in the landscape in these stories allowed a way to process militarisation.

5 Guarded Secrets

In addition to the fgure of the returning servicemen, the theme of militarised nature appears in the tropes of secrecy and guarding in the avocet story. J. K. Stanford later described how “Tose in the know referred to them confdentially as ‘zebras’, for avocets are dazzling birds striped most neatly in black and white, and the second war had produced a welter of code names” (Stanford 1954, 198). When Philip Brown (head of the RSPB’s sanctuaries) and Gwen Davies (editor of the RSPB’s publications) heard of the avocets at Havergate Island, they immediately took steps to ensure that the news was kept secret by the island’s cus- todian, Teo Harvey (Davies 1962, 164). In the frst nesting year, two groups of local bird enthusiasts kept a constant watch over the birds at Minsmere Level and Havergate Island, but the groups did not know of each other; allegedly the only person who knew the secrets of both sites was Geofrey Dent, chairman of the RSPB’s Watchers’ Committee (Axell and Hosking 1977, 177). Avocet articles in the frst two years in both British Birds and the press gave the location simply as East Anglia, and only after the third nesting season was over in 1950, did the RSPB publicise Havergate Island. Te identity of a third breeding site at Orford Ness was not revealed publicly until 1966 (Brown 1966, 50). Even when the secret was out, physical access to the breeding grounds remained guarded and limited, as was access to information. 184 S. Davis

Te secrecy was primarily aimed at egg collectors, which hobby was still popular at the time. Te Association of Bird Wardens and Watchers (ABWW) had been established in 1937, to “put a stop to the evil” of egg collecting (Te Times, 26 November 1937), setting up a nest adoption scheme, and beginning to forge links with the egg collectors’ British Oological Association (BOA), since the two societies knew what damage they could infict on one another. War prevented them from making a lasting settlement, however, and by 1954, the situation was still so bad that the BTO broke their normal strategy of staying away from controversial subjects and outlined a policy on egg collecting, which had increasingly hindered scientifc research (Evans 1992). In May 1955, Reg Partridge, the warden for Havergate Island, was still writing in his weekly update to Brown that he would go to check for human footprints because of recent nest losses (Partridge to Brown, 22 May 1955). Treat and suspicion were clearly still evident, and early newspaper articles linked the avocet’s secrecy with the threat of egg collecting, relating how “Te nests were guarded day and night”, with assurances that the “eggs will be protected” (Te Times, 24 February 1948; “Secret Home”, 14 February 1948). With the avocets being made to relate to ideas of Englishness, the egg collector was formulated as anti-English, coded in military terms. In Stanford’s Awl-Birds, the egg collector, with his “pursed lips” and “beady rat’s eyes”, had “scofed at the proposal made by the War Ofce in 1940 that owners of valuable binoculars should lend them for the use of the rude soldiery in the desert” (Stanford 1949, 57, 59, 66). Te egg collector thus declines to help soldiers like Gloyne, laying mines in Libya. Te relationship between the nation and birds is clear, since it was “his kind whose private greed had brought so many lovely birds in England to the verge of extinction”, making him “one of the King’s enemies” (1949, 83, 84). Both the birds and the act of protecting them are a crucial part of Englishness. In a more extreme formulation of this, the egg collector appears as “vermin, a menace not only to his beloved Bledgrave but to England. He was as much a saboteur as any Hun in the war” (Stanford 1949, 83). Stanford’s egg collector comes across as like the ffth columnists about whom there was such disquiet and suspicion in wartime. Like the task of protecting a nation, protecting the 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 185 eggs leant itself to violence, especially in the worlds of the Awl-Birds and Adventure. Te two stories share an exhilarating chase, resulting in the egg collector either dying or becoming seriously injured. Te agency is one step removed from the protagonist, however, the egg collector slip- ping and falling down a slope in Adventure, and being left to the mines in Awl-Birds—Gloyne’s revenge, perhaps, for him not helping the desert mine-layers with his binoculars. In early factual accounts of the avocet events, the distance between protectors and egg collectors was even more pronounced. A long feature article by Philip Brown describes how in the beginning: “A group of local enthusiasts maintained a careful and unremitting watch during the next few critical weeks to keep out chance intruders. Te only villain to break the cordon was a carrion crow” (Te Times, 10 January 1950). Despite the threat residing in collectors who plan carefully, Brown hides their identity under the more innocent “chance intruders”. Te morally weighted term “villain” is given only to an animal, and elsewhere in the article Brown referred to the need to “combat the rats”. Te notion of villains and combat could be expressed concerning animals, but is cloaked by talk only of watching when it relates to humans. Whereas J. K. Stanford’s fction portrayed an obviously anti-patriotic egg collector, factual accounts were not so explicit. Brown’s early writing on the avocets did not label egg collectors as a threat, despite his private letters referring to the “bloody-minded egg-collector” (Brown to Tucker, 29 September 1947). After the Sufolk Naturalists published an article about the avocets, J. K. Stanford wrote to Brown complaining that “Te bit I dislike the most is the bit about the oologists, as if to imply that even if anyone does take the eggs he is only obeying a law of nature” (Stanford to Brown, 18 February 1948). It seems that the initial protective strategy was simply to avoid mentioning egg collecting, but as the avocets came out of their place of secrecy in the 1950s, the egg collector appeared in Stanford’s factual accounts. In his Bewilderment of Birds (1954), Stanford described his frst night as a watcher at Havergate in 1948, where: “Keyed up by the general air of secrecy, we sat till long after dusk, prepared for anything, even an amphibious raid by armed oologists” (Stanford 1954, 200). As in his fctional writing, military imagery and violence are associated with the egg collector. Where the 186 S. Davis continued militarisation of both landscape and birds ofered a way for the returning serviceman to reorientate to home, the idea of the egg collector represents a focal point for a continuation of military behaviour, in the form of guarding, protecting and anticipating attack.

6 The Secret-Keepers

Although protective behaviours focused on egg collectors, the sense of secrecy and enclosed territory extended further in the cultures of nature surrounding the avocet, since in the early years, most members of the RSPB were also shut out. As we saw in Chapters 3 and 4, secrecy and limited access was not new to this landscape, having been present on airbases, battle training areas and research sites, despite Harry Batsford’s wartime idea that “Te country remains ours to the full, to explore and enjoy in peace and in war” (Batsford 1940, 3). With their close proximity and shared sense of secrecy, the avocet story and local military research sites were imaginatively linked in two mid-1950s children’s stories. In Spades and Feathers, a children’s adventure story by Tyler Whittle (1955), a group of children care for avocets, joined by eccentric older ornithologists and local “expert naturalists”. Te following year, the same children become preoccupied with the “secret naval establishment” at Orford Ness in Te Runners of Orford (Whittle 1956). At the time, the atomic weapons research at Orford Ness was well underway (see Chapter 7), and whilst the same ornithologist, Uncle Bertie, is engrossed by local avocets, the children follow suspected Russian spies and watch a strange, glowing ship from the naval establishment, which they suspect is a secret weapon. After the frst breeding season, Brown discussed publishing the news with R. Preston Donaldson (secretary of the RSPB) and Bernard Tucker (editor of British Birds ), as well as with the Minsmere landowners, Ogilvie and Lynn-Allen. Brown and Donaldson drove forward the position that a publication should be in a scientifc journal (British Birds ) rather than the RSPB’s journal, Bird Notes. As Donaldson told Tucker, an article in Bird Notes “would at once attract a food of enquiries from over-enthusiastic bird watchers” (Donaldson to Tucker, 3 September 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 187

1947), and Brown echoed this sentiment, saying that they “do not wish to give publicity to these birds which will result in a whole crowd of ‘tally-ho’ bird-watchers arriving to view them” (Brown to Tucker, 29 September 1947). When the story did reach the national newspapers, this distrust of the crowd continued. One article declared that the RSPB “appeals to bird lovers not to let their curiosity outstrip their interest”, and another reported the RSPB “is fearful that bird-lovers and the curious may unintentionally disturb the avocets and send them once more into exile” (“Secret Home”, 14 February 1948; Humphreys 1948). Te term “exile” here is a loaded one in the early post-war years, bringing an added emotional weight to the appeal to limit access to this portion of the country. In addition to over-keen birdwatchers, the avocet protectors were anxious about rumouring locals, whose knowledge was difcult to control. Brown worried that “a good many local people appear to know all about” the site of the colonies (Brown to Tucker, 29 September 1947). Te article by the Sufolk Naturalists Society in early 1948 caused J. K. Stanford great distress that they had “blown the guf badly about the avocets” (Stanford to Brown, 18 February 1948), and Brown was still marking certain letters as confdential in 1949, because “as it stands it would give away quite a lot of information to a local person”. Sounding slightly paranoid, he explained that he was “never certain in my own mind that some of the rumours spread around about our treatment of the avocets are not started intentionally with an idea of getting information about the sites” (Brown to Smith, 27 January 1949). As this indicates, although the avocets’ location was the key piece of information being protected, the rumours also concerned activity within the guarded space. Like the mysterious “goings on” at Bawdsey Manor, Orford Ness and Shingle Street, the secrecy surrounding the avocets at Havergate Island attracted rumour. Whereas the contents of the military places were imagined with grandeur, from repelling an invasion to inventing a death ray, these enclosed spaces were viewed with cynicism. Rumours portrayed the RSPB as incapable or inefective in their management of bird protection. Stuart Smith, highly esteemed for his work on bird display, quipped to Brown that he hoped the RSPB had “burnt that 188 S. Davis marquee with which you scared the pants of them last year!” (Smith to Brown, 16 January 1949). Smith attributed this idea to two East Anglian birders who claimed that RSPB watchers had pitched a large tent among the avocets “just as they were choosing territories and that they promptly went elsewhere” (Smith to Brown, 20 January 1949). Easily incited to defensive sarcasm, Brown told Smith he had so far “only” been accused of “eliminating the Avocets by (a) allowing so many people to see them that they were scared away, and (b) catching them all in rat-traps which were never put down. Tis year I intend to simplify the whole thing by simply shooting them” (Brown to Smith, 18 January 1949). To another well-respected ornithologist, G. K. Yeates, Brown mentioned that “it has been suggested that the RSPB were having pic- nic parties [on Havergate] complete with cocktails!” (Brown to Yeates, 17 October 1949). Tese rumours, which Brown found “tiresome” and “maddening” (Brown to Smith, 24 January 1949), highlight the gap between the avocet’s protectors and the communities of local residents and birdwatchers. Te separation of the birds’ protectors from the birdwatching and local resident communities was in fact a major source of contention during a crucial transition period in the development of British nature conservation as well as ornithology. Te protectors were, like the birds, outsiders. It was an outsider from Chelmsford in Essex, Mrs. Rainer, who frst found the avocet chicks on Havergate Island in July 1947, and in the observation notes that she sent to Brown, she added that “the ‘natives’ know of the birds but not of the nests” (Rainer to Brown, 11 January 1949). J. K. Stanford and Brown were both visitors to the area, and H. N. Stanford and Stuart Ogilvie (the owner of the Minsmere estate) stood removed from the other locals in their large country houses. Captain Ogilvie blamed the Southwold Ornithological Society for the avocets being such an “open secret” (Donaldson to Ogilvie, 15 August 1947), but he in fact only found out that the birds’ nesting was so “well known” when Donaldson discussed the frst British Birds publication with him, revealing his disconnection from the circulation of local information (Ogilvie to Donaldson, 16 August 1947). After the frst two years of the avocet nesting, Brown recognised that the RSPB needed to work with the locals, but this proved difcult. 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 189

In the summer of 1949, he managed to smooth over a “possibility of a serious misunderstanding with the locals” (Stanford to Brown, 29 May 1949) only with what he described as a “red hot whizzbang” of a letter from J. K. Stanford (Brown to Stanford, 20 July 1949). Te elitism of the outsider, self-designated wardens was not received passively by others. Whereas the self-designated, often ex-military wardens made the avocets private, birdwatching had been becoming an increasingly cooperative activity from the mid-1930s, carried out by communicating groups of amateurs as well as professionals. By the mid-1950s, amateurs were contributing around 40% of publications to the BTO’s journal Bird Study (Bibby 2003, 201). Tis cooperativeness was formalised for the Sufolk area in 1950 through the frst publication of the Sufolk Bird Reports as part of the Transactions of the Sufolk Naturalists’ Society. As the RSPB came more ofcially into the care of the avocets in the late 1940s, struggling with its funds and paid for by subscribing members, it was under pressure to present its protective work as benefcial to this community. Trying to balance these factors, Brown wrote in a newspaper article that “the RSPB is anxious that people who wish to see them should be able to do so” (Te Times, 10 January 1950), but in reality only a small number of people could visit Havergate; for most of the 1950s, only six permits could be issued on four days per week. In September 1949, the well-respected ornithologist and bird photographer, G. K. Yeates, wrote to the RSPB’s Gwen Davies expressing concern that the RSPB would “keep [the avocets] in a sort of privileged zoo for the next few decades”, mentioning that friends in East Anglia told him the avocets were totally “fenced in” by the RSPB (Yeates to Davies, 13 October 1949; 23 September 1949). Yeates feared the avocet case was symptomatic of a more general trend, since “Te protection of birds by means of the sanctuary and the reserve inevitably leads to the creation of a sort of ‘privileged class’”. He recalled the kites in Wales, which seemed to have been seen by only a special few over the last forty years. Two years earlier, James Fisher had reminded Bird Notes readers that the kite is “one of the touchiest birds there is and is extremely likely to desert its nest or even its young”, asking RSPB members “most emphatically and specifcally to STAY AWAY from the Kite country” (Fisher 1947). Yeates disliked this elitism and felt that RSPB 190 S. Davis supporters should have more access: “One does get the feeling—perhaps wrongly—that unless we are among a certain band of elite, we are not very welcome” (Yeates to Davies, 13 October 1949). Yeates’ standing in the ornithological community brought him special treatment; Brown immediately invited him to talk on the birds of Iceland at the RSPB’s next annual general meeting and gave a detailed account of the events at Havergate, explaining that ensuring the conditions for successful recolonisation (such as water level) took priority over providing facilities for seeing the birds (Brown to Yeates, 17 October 1949). Yeates warmed to the account and praised the RSPB, but it is likely that his initial perception of and distaste about elitism were shared by other birdwatchers. Within the contemporary developments in British nature conservation, J. K. Stanford’s attitude to bird protection was well known as being “the old-fashioned one, that secrecy is better than publicity” (Meiklejohn 1971, 276). In the Awl-Birds, when Gloyne discovered the avocets, he trembled with excitement at the thought of the natural historical community’s recognition of his discovery, but immediately thought how “Some Society would get hold of it and want to send down watchers or observers”, prompting “All sorts of people” to “peer around and disturb not only his peace, but the whole of Bledgrave. … All the secret individualist in Derick Gloyne revolted. It was far better to keep this secret of his ‘under his hat’” (Stanford 1949, 50). As we saw earlier, the privacy of the man, landscape and birds is imaginatively interlinked. Te importance of the land also came through elsewhere in Stanford’s writing, when he claimed bird protection should be “not a matter of Acts of Parliament and schedules hung on police- station walls, but a combined efort by people living in their own countryside to save … some portion of the beauty in our marshlands which our forefathers too often allowed to perish” (Stanford 1950, 4). As the national nature conservation movement was picking up speed within government bodies, and the post-war Labour government was national- ising key industries and utilities, one of the key protagonists in the early days of the avocet story clearly related to the local countryside in a more individualistic way. Further linking the countryside and the individual, Stanford’s fctional protagonist keeps his land to himself by clearing only a narrow 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 191 path through the mines on his land, feeling “that the privacy for which he had yearned for so many years was almost inviolate” (Stanford 1949, 38). Stanford openly admits the same drive in his factual account: “All I wanted to do was get away swiftly and leave the birds in peace” (Stanford 1954, 193). From the mid-1940s through the 1950s, it was feared that the intense co-operation of wartime would give way to extreme selfshness and individualism in returning servicemen. Tis can be seen in a number of feature flms, from the hero turned psychotic by war experience in Mine Own Executioner (1947) to the reckless ex-fyer in Tey Made me a Fugitive (1947), and the nightmarish, wrecked ex-soldiers in Tiger in the Smoke (1956). Gloyne’s need for seclusion could be read along these lines, but it was expressed through a desire for the birds’ solitude and a localised view of the countryside. Te older model of protectionism, exemplifed by Stanford, was deeply connected to military experience and perception of landscape. Tis is a quite diferent picture to that appropriate for the RSPB, as Stanford well knew. He wrote privately to Brown excusing Gloyne as “an obviously half-cracked individualist” (Stanford to Brown, 1 November 1948). Clearly relieved, Brown was “glad you feel that Derick Gloyne was a bit hard on the RSPB!! After all, the chap nearly lost the lot by trying to work single-handed. If only he had asked J.K.S., P.E.B. and R.W. to lend a hand” (Brown to Stanford, 3 November 1948). Te initials here refer to J. K. Stanford, Philip E. Brown and Richard (Dick) Wolfendale, the three that spent most of the second season, 1948, watching over the birds at Havergate. Tis small group is still a long way short of the community acting together in Tawny Pipit, but Brown’s stance is more communal than Stanford’s. Whilst Brown, Donaldson and Tucker discussed publication of the new arriv- als, Stanford privately strongly urged Tucker not to publish anything at all until after the next season (Tucker to Brown, 8 October 1947). For Tucker, the editor of British Birds, this urge for secrecy was countered more strongly by his “inclination as a scientist” that “it is a great pity if so interesting an event cannot be recorded” (Tucker to Brown, 11 September 1947). As views like Stanford’s were pushed out, they interacted with the newer emphasis on access, for both the advancement of science and personal enjoyment. 192 S. Davis

Te avocet events that so captured the public imagination reveal cultures of nature connected to ideas of landscape and identity. As eforts were made to present the avocets as returning British or English birds, they were aligned with the image of British order as opposed to aggression. Te idea of a returning native jostled alongside that of avian invaders within a period of growing interest in bird migration, betray- ing a post-war anxiety over native nature and its relationship to the world beyond. Avocets and other birds were drawn into relation with the fgure of the returning servicemen, particularly in fction, where the identity of man, birds and landscape appear as mutually dependent. Te militarisation of nature in those stories clearly marked the actual unfolding of the avocet story, in the way that notions of secrecy and protection were understood. As time went on, the secrecy and privacy connected to the avocets changed in form, through the development of bird sanctuaries and nature reserves, allowing another angle on the sense of enclosure in post-war Britain.

References

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Brown, Philip, and George Waterston. 1962. Te Return of the Osprey. London: Collins. Brown, Philip to Bernard Tucker. 29 September 1947. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Brown, Philip to G. K. Yeates. 17 October 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Brown, Philip to J. K. Stanford. 3 November 1948. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. ———. 20 July 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Brown, Philip to M. G. Philips. 11 August 1954. In “General Correspondence 1953–6,” in “Havergate Island,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Brown, Philip to Stuart Smith. 18 January 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. ———. 24 January 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. ———. 27 January 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Buxton, John. 1950. Te Redstart. London: Collins. Davies, Gwen. 1962. “Te Return of the Avocet.” In Te Return of the Osprey, by Philip Brown and George Waterston. London: Collins. Davis, Sophia. 2011. “Militarised Natural History: Tales of the Avocet’s Return to Post-War Britain.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42: 226–232. Donaldson, R. P. to Basil Tucker. 3 September 1947. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Donaldson, R. P. to Captain Stuart Ogilvie. 15 August 1947. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Du Maurier, Daphne. 1977. Te Birds and Other Stories. London: Pan Books Ltd. First published 1952. Ennion, E. A. R. 1947. Te Story of Migration. London: Harrap. Evans, David. 1992. A History of Nature Conservation in Britain. London: Routledge. Fisher, James. 1947. “Te Kite Problem.” Bird Notes 23: 10–11. ———. 1950. “Editorial.” In Te Redstart, by John Buxton. London: Collins. 194 S. Davis

———. 1953. Watching Birds. London: Penguin. First published 1940. Fitter, R. S. R. 1962. “Introduction.” In Te Return of the Osprey, by Philip Brown and George Waterston. London: Collins. Greenwood, Jeremy J. D. 2009. “100 Years of Ringing in Britain and Ireland.” Ringing & Migration 24: 147–153. Hammond, Nicholas. 1983. “Conservation and Sister Organisations.” In Enjoying Ornithology: A Celebration of Fifty Years of the British Trust for Ornithology, 1933–1983, edited by Ronald Hickling, 160–172. London: Poyser. Hansen, Randall. 2000. Citizenship and Immigration in Postwar Britain: Te Institutional Origins of a Multicultural Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Humphreys, A. 1948. “Is the Avocet Home to Stay?” Daily Mail, 13 February. Huxley, Julian. 1925. “Te Absence of ‘Courtship’ in the Avocet.” British Birds 29: 88–93. ———. 1949. Bird Watching and Bird Behaviour. London: Denis Dobson. Lorimer, Hayden. 2000. “Guns, Game and the Grandee: Te Cultural Politics of Deerstalking in the Scottish Highlands.” Cultural Geographies 7: 403–431. Lorimer, James. 2007. “Nonhuman Charisma.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25: 911–932. Macdonald, Helen. 2002. “‘What Makes You a Scientist Is the Way You Look at Tings’: Ornithology and the Observer 1930–1955.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33: 53–77. MacInnes, Colin. 1957. City of Spades. London: MacGibbon & Kee. Maclean, Murray. 1994. Five Years to Liberty: Te War Poems of John Buxton 1940–45. Durham: Pentland Press. Madge, Charles, and Tom Harrison. 1937. Mass Observation. London: Frederick Muller. Matless, David. 1998. Landscape and Englishness. London: Reaktion Books. ———. 2000. “Versions of Animal–Human: Broadland, c.1945–1970.” In Animal Spaces, Beastly Places, edited by Chris Philo and C. Wilbert. London: Routledge. Matless, David, Philip Merchant, and Chris Watkins, 2005. “Animal Landscapes: Otters and Wildfowl in England 1945–1970.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geography 30: 191–205. McLemore, H. 1950. “Avocet Captures England’s Attention.” Newspaper article from Rhode Island, USA, sent with letter, J. K. Stanford to P. E. Brown, 15 May 1950. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 195

Meiklejohn, M. F. M. 1971. “Obituary: Lt.-Col. J.K. Stanford, OBE, MCE.” Ibis 114: 276–277. Mellor, David. 1987. A Paradise Lost: Te Neo-Romantic Imagination in Britain 1935–55. London: Lund Humphries. Mengham, R., and N. H. Reeve. 2001. Te Fiction of the 1940s: Stories of Survival. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Milton, Kay. 2002. Loving Nature: Towards an Ecology of Emotion. London: Routledge. Moran, Joe. 2014. “A Cultural History of the New Nature Writing.” Literature & History 23 (1): 49–63. Murphy, Rober. 2000. British Cinema and the Second World War. London: Continuum. Niemann, Derek. 2012. Birds in a Cage: Germany, 1941. Four POW Birdwatchers. Te Unlikely Beginning of British Wildlife Conservation. London: Short Books. Ogilvie, Captain Stuart to R. P. Donaldson. 16 August 1947. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Partridge, Reg to Philip Brown. 22 May 1955. In “General Correspondence 1953–6,” in “Havergate Island,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Payn, W. H. 1962. Te Birds of Sufolk. London: Barrie & Rocklif. Priestley, J. B. 1945. Tree Men in New Suits. London: W. Heinemann. Rainer, I. to Philip Brown. 11 January 1949. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. “Secret Home Awaits Tis Visitor.” 14 February 1948. Unknown Author. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Sharrock, J. T. R., I. J. Ferguson-Lees, and the Rare Birds Breeding Panel. 1973. “Rare Breeding Birds in the United Kingdom in 1973.” Rare Breeding Birds Report: 5–23. Skinner, David. 1950. “Some Books for the Naturalist.” In Church of England Newspaper and the Record, 17 November 1950. File “Buxton 7: 42–318”. Held in Alexander Library, Oxford. Smith, Stuart to Philip Brown. 25 September 1948. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. ———. 16 January 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. ———. 20 January 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. 196 S. Davis

Stanford, J. K. 1949. Te Awl-Birds. New York: Devin-Adair. First published as “Bledgrave Hall” in Blackwood’s Magazine. ———. 1950. “Foreword.” In Avocets in England: A Joint Enterprise of Birds and Men, by Philip Brown, 3–5. London: RSPB. ———. 1954. A Bewilderment of Birds. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. Stanford, J. K. to Philip Brown. 18 February 1948. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. ———. 1 November 1948. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. ———. 29 May 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Te Times. “Saving British Birds: Limitation of Egg Collecting.” 26 November 1937. ———. “Tawny Pipit: A Film of Village Life.” 13 May 1944. ———. “Te Course of Nature: Te Return of ‘Lost’ Birds.” 24 February 1948. ———. “Man and the Birds.” 21 March 1949. ———. “Te Return of the Avocet: Breeding-Grounds in East Anglia After a Hundred Years.” 10 January 1950. ———. “Picture Gallery.” 16 January 1950. ———. “Protection of Birds.” 3 March 1950. ———. “Book Reviews.” 30 November 1950. ———. “Te Avocets at Home: Birds Trive After the Floods.” 2 June 1953. ———. “7 More Nature Reserves. Avocets: Breeding Ground, Study of Change in Coastlines.” 10 March 1954. Tucker, Bernard to Philip Brown. 11 September 1947. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. ———. 8 October 1947. In “Bird Species Avocet,” fle 05.02.40. Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. Webster, Wendy. 1998. Imagining Home: Gender, ‘Race’ and National Identity, 1945–1964. London: Routledge. ———. 2005. Englishness and Empire 1939–1965. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weldon Finn, Rex. 1948. Te English Heritage. London: MacDonald. Whittle, Tyler. 1955. Spades and Feathers. London: Te Children’s Book Club. ———. 1956. Te Runners of Orford. London: Te Children’s Book Club. Williamson, Anne. 1995. Henry Williamson: Tarka and the Last Romantic. London: Sutton Publishing. 5 Birds and Belonging: The Return of the Avocet, 1947–1969 197

Wisker, Gina. 2004. “Demisting the Mirror: Contemporary British Women’s Horror.” In Contemporary British Women Writers, edited by Emma Parker. Martlesham, Sufolk: D.S. Brewer. Yeates, G. K. to Gwen Davies. 23 September 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. ———. 13 October 1949. In “General Correspondence 1949–1952,” in “Havergate Species,” fle 01.05.20 (H1). Held at Te Lodge, RSPB Sandy. 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation

Te previous chapters have demonstrated a concern with looking upwards and outwards to what was approaching the nation’s edge, from aeroplanes to birds. In parallel with this period’s inwards shift towards cultural revival within the core of a disintegrating empire, this chapter moves from looking outwards to inwards. In the Sufolk of preserved pasts and enclosed military territories, the avocet episode prompted a new form of enclosed, separate spaces, in the form of nature conservation areas. Te RSPB’s management of Havergate and Minsmere nature reserves was both pioneering and crucial in the development of British nature reserves, making them excellent places to investigate exactly which nature was seen as in need of enclosing and conserving in post- war Britain. Minsmere was key to a new phase in British nature conservation in the late 1950s, in which the survival of wild places was seen to need much more active interference, and during the 1960s, bulldozers created new feeding areas, and screened walkways and observation hides both orchestrated and hid the movement of visitors. Havergate Island and the neighbouring stretch of Orford Ness were bought by the new Nature Conservancy (NC), which had been created in 1948 and was strongly aligned with the science of ecology. Te NC bought

© Te Author(s) 2020 199 S. Davis, Island Tinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9676-2_6 200 S. Davis the sites in 1954 after the RSPB ran into fnancial difculty with the cost of food-damage prevention and repair after the massive foods of 1953. Te RSPB and NC then proceeded to co-manage the sites, thus bringing the avocet’s secrecy and privacy further into conversation with a newer, self-consciously scientifc strand in the changing attitudes towards nature. Te avocets were also key to the development of the RSPB’s flm unit in the mid-1950s, with the birds thus becoming visible not only to the reserve’s visitors but also to people attending public lectures and watching televisions.

1 Conserving Nature

To look at the avocet story’s role in the context of the enclosed spaces of nature reserves, we must frst consider the development of nature conservation in Britain. Early campaigning for nature reserves was led by Nathaniel Rothschild, who set up the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR) in 1912. His original aim was to compile information on areas of UK retaining “primitive” conditions, to present a “shopping list” to the National Trust (NT, established 1895), since up until then the Trust’s purchases had been somewhat haphazard and focused more on buildings than landscapes. But the budding conservation movement sufered under the discontent, apathy and infation in the years after the First World War. Wildlife legislation received more attention than nature reserves in the interwar period, as the idea of reserves remained esoteric in the 1930s, viewed by most naturalists as a costly last resort (Evans 1992). A small number of reserves were purchased by the National Trust, however, including Stonehenge Down in 1927. Te Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) announced their frst reserve in 1930, Romney Marsh, followed by Dungeness and East Wood reserves in 1932. At a more local level, S. H. Long and others formed the Norfolk Naturalists’ Trust (NNT) in 1926, who bought Cley marshes in their frst year, and were managing 15 reserves by 1941. Te county trust movement developed slowly though; it took until the late 1940s for a handful of others to be established, and only in the late 1950s did a larger number follow suit. 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 201

Contemporaneous with nature conservationists’ lack of interest in creating enclosed spaces, attention from many quarters focused on the lack of open space in the countryside available to the public. Access to the countryside became the clarion call of the 1930s, with the amenity lobby even organising mass-trespass hikes (Evans 1992, 58). Te Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE, established 1925) began pressurising the government to create national parks, although this resulted in only a series of false starts from 1929 until after the Second World War. Momentum for nature conservation built up considerably during the war years. In 1940, a small committee within the RSPB carried out a survey of areas and species requiring special protection, resulting in a memorandum outlining the functions of bird sanctuaries and the need for government help (Sheail 1995a, 269). Spurred on by the RSPB’s work, the secretary of the SPNR, G. F. Herbert Smith, convinced them to convene a conference in 1941 on “Nature preservation in post-war reconstruction”, involving over 30 voluntary bodies. From this conference was born the Nature Reserves Investigation Committee (NRIC), who in 1943 published Nature Conservation in Great Britain, listing 61 existing reserves and distin- guishing habitat, species, amenity and educational reserves. Te CPRE’s progress had been hampered by coming into confict with local authorities over the allocation of power, and so the developing nature conservation movement attempted to avoid these problems by breaking away from the amenity lobby, emphasising instead the scientifc aspects of conservation. Just a month before the NRIC came into being, the British Ecological Society (BES) formed their own Nature Reserves Special Committee, chaired by the renowned ecologist, Arthur Tansley. Drawing from Tansley’s great work, Te British Isles and Teir Vegetation (1939), this committee put forward places suitable for preservation. Te two groups obviously overlapped, and Tansley’s Committee began to collaborate with the NRIC and was infuential for the list the NRIC published in 1945. In this were suggested 55 nature reserves and 25 conservation areas, amounting to an area roughly 3% of England and Wales. Te work of these committees eventually made their way into the government. Previously, the Scott Report (1942) on national parks 202 S. Davis and nature reserves had recommended that reserves would be best placed within parks, and John Dower, reviewing the practicalities of the Scott Report in 1945, had promoted the joint consideration of landscape beauty, public access, building, wildlife protection and farming. After the NRIC’s report, however, the paths of nature reserves and national parks diverged. Te NRIC’s report had an ecological tone, emphasising the conservation of representative areas of types of habitat and ecosystem. Te government responded to that report by creating another review committee, under Sir Arthur Hobhouse, which split into two subcommit- tees dealing separately with national parks and wildlife conservation. Te subcommittee on nature reserves, the Wild Life Conservation Special Committee, was chaired initially by the well-known naturalist, Julian Huxley, but was soon taken over by Tansley. It was Tansley’s far-reaching sympathy that brought together the parochialism of naturalists from diferent specialisms, and the subcommittee’s report again described reserves as representative samples of fora and fauna, to be considered as a single system (Evans 1992, 71). In Tansley’s Our Heritage of Wild Nature (1945), the closest he comes to a full exposition of his views, he referred to the NRIC’s idea of having “species reserves” as well as “habitat reserves” and then argued that all reserves should be considered as habitat reserves, because habitats are essential for species’ survival (Tansley 1945, 40). Te wildlife subcommittee was responsible for the 1947 report, Conservation of Nature in England and Wales, which recommended that a biological service should be established, responsible for selecting, acquiring and managing nature reserves, and for carrying out the survey and research work required (Sheail 1995a, 279). Sitting as an ornithologist on that subcommittee was Max Nicholson, who around the same time became part of Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison’s Scientifc Advisory Committee. Another member of Morrison’s committee, John Fryer, also emphasised the close interde- pendence of nature conservation and the scientifc study of biology in a note for Morrison on “Nature conservation and research on the British terrestrial fora and fauna” (Sheail 1998, 28). Impressed by the concur- rence of his own committee and the Huxley report, in 1948 Morrison brought into being a new government body, the Nature Conservancy. 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 203

Te world’s frst statutory, non-voluntary conservation body, the NC began with Tansley as chair and was initially directed by Cyril Diver, who had been president of the BES for 1940–1942 and had sat on the NRIC. Te Conservancy’s duties were to provide scientifc advice on conservation and control of the natural fora and fauna of Britain; to establish, maintain and manage nature reserves in Britain, including physical features of scientifc interest; to organise and develop research and scientifc services related thereto; and to notify local planning authorities on Sites of Special Scientifc Interest (SSSIs). It operated entirely independently from the creation of National Parks by County Councils: the result of the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. Nicholson replaced Diver as the Conservancy’s director-general in 1952, his prior efectiveness in government positions giving the NC the credibility and assertiveness it needed to operate in the unfavourable surroundings of a Conservative government keen to cut funds (Sheail 1998). Nicholson successfully promoted the NC’s standing and by 1957 there were over 50 National Nature Reserves, covering around 122,000 acres, and by 1973 there were 135 sites over 280,000 acres. Te RSPB’s reserves also grew dramatically during this period, from 4200 acres in 1950, to 12,000 acres in 1970 and up to 183,000 in 1990 (Nicholson 1957; Dufy 1973; Chapman and Haw 1990).

2 Ecologists’ Laboratories and Propaganda Reserves

Te avocet story adds another dimension to this institutional history of nature conservation, providing a window into what kind of nature was seen to be placed in reserve in the shrinking island nation, which has helped shape current attitudes towards nature. In the discussions and documents leading to the establishment of the NC, the concept of a reserve was largely construed according to the view of ecologists. Indeed, post-war nature conservation drew power from its association with the science of ecology (Adams 1997), and ecology in turn gained from the connection with conservation, presenting itself as socially 204 S. Davis useful. At this time, ecologists were still striving for recognition from their peers in the biological sciences, and their infuence on the NC brought them higher standing through the “outdoor laboratories” of nature reserves (Bocking 1993; Sheail 1995b). Historian John Sheail even refers to the Nature Conservancy as an ecological research council in all but name (Sheail 1995b, 960). Te NC was in charge of creating and maintaining nature reserves, and organising and developing scientifc research related to them. After its directorship passed in 1952 to Max Nicholson, the NC purchased Havergate Island and part of Orford Ness, and so became involved in the avocet story. Ecologists tried to gather public support through the popular appeal of the scientifc approach. Tey portrayed nature conservation and nature reserves as ftting the progressive mood for planned, regu- lated post-war reconstruction, in contrast with nature preservation, which came to be seen as backward-looking, although the distinction between the terms was never made explicit (Sheail 1995a, 276). Te Nature Conservancy’s ofcial stance was that reserves had a two-fold purpose, as “open-air laboratories for research and observation” and as “living museums for the preservation of areas important either as examples of characteristic types of plant and animal communities, or for their geological or physiographical features” (Te Times, 21 August 1954; Nicholson 1957). Te Sufolk coast reserves ftted especially well the new requirements of nature reserves, on account of exactly the quality that had drawn the various military-scientifc researchers there. As Nicholson put it, the Havergate–Orford Ness reserve “is very inaccessible for the ordinary holidaymaker and has few attractions. It is, therefore, a very suitable area to use for scientifc and conservation work which requires complete absence of disturbance by the public” (Nicholson 1957, 68). Te laboratory function of the reserves was concerned with process, with observations of changes in vegetation over time, as in Godwin and Tansley’s studies at Wicken Fen in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In contrast, the other purpose of the NC’s reserves—as “living museums”—required them to show ecological succession artifcially halted at a certain point, therefore, representing places out of time. Te appeal of a place caught in time also resonated strongly with this corner of England. 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 205

Te display of avocets and their marshes at Havergate and Minsmere played a central role in shaping ideas of what kind of nature should be put in reserve. At the time of the NRIC’s report in 1945, the RSPB’s Geofrey Dent protested that the ecological approach had been “over- done”. Dent argued the case of “propaganda reserves” created for specifc birds and mammals in order to foster public support, having previously stressed the importance of popular appeal for securing government aid (Sheail 1995a, 275). Te only role Dent has played in my avocet stories so far is as the sole person to know of the avocets at both Havergate and Minsmere in the frst year they nested. Little has been written of Geofrey Dent or his propaganda reserves idea, but it was in fact Dent who had initiated the 1940s surveys that led to the formation of the NRIC. After two years on the RSPB Watchers’ Committee and Council, in 1940 he pressed for the RSPB to work out a nature preservation policy. He then chaired a small RSPB committee that produced a memorandum on the functions of bird sanctuaries, supplemented by a list of rare birds and areas where protection was urgently required. Tis initiative spurred Herbert Smith, secretary of the SPNR, into action, leading to the SPNR convening the important 1941 conference on “Nature preservation in post-war reconstruction” (Sheail 1995a, 269). Dent then became one of the eight biologists in the nine-man NRIC. Whilst Geofrey Dent was clearly a key player in the developments leading to the creation of the Nature Conservancy, his earlier ideas were overshadowed in the NC by the dominating ecologists. By 1950, when Dent wrote on “Te problem of protection” in Bird Notes, he was foregrounding the NRIC’s selection of areas of scientifc importance and advising that a strong lead from the NC was needed, “in conjunction with the RSPB” (Dent 1950, 81). Dent backed the NC when writing for a popular audience because of his belief that central direction and coordination were necessary for conservation to succeed. Outside of such publications, however, he was not so frmly on board with the NC’s scientifc emphasis. From around the time of his “propaganda reserves” comment, Dent started negotiating with Captain Ogilvie for the RSPB’s purchase of Minsmere Level. He was the frst to notice Minsmere’s potential as a bird sanctuary after the wartime fooding of the marshes there, before the avocets had yet arrived. By the 206 S. Davis time the avocets entered the scene, he was Chairman of the Watchers’ Committee in the RSPB, wielding signifcant power in that organisation. He also played a major role in securing Havergate Island as a reserve for avocets, “a move requiring courage as well as vision” (HRK 1958, 344). Te sanctuaries that the RSPB created at Havergate and Minsmere fulflled Dent’s propaganda idea as the society’s fagship reserves, which received a great deal of space in the society’s publication, Bird Notes. Te RSPB’s reserves were understood to be a diferent kind of entity to those of the NC. Reporting on the NC’s purchase of Havergate and Orford Ness in 1954, a Times journalist protested against the Conservancy’s approach to nature reserves. Giving the avocet, “that lovely wading bird”, as an example, the journalist complained that the Nature Conservancy left the preservation of rare or beautiful species as secondary to the preservation of an area that makes their existence possible (Te Times, 21 August 1954). When Nature reported the Conservancy’s purchase and agreement with the RSPB, Havergate was described simply as having “become famous for the postwar establishment of a successful breeding colony of avocets” (Nature 1954, 717). Tis contrasts with the other acquired areas announced at the same time, described with a more dominant sense of animal and plant variety and physiographic features. Te existence and popularity of the RSPB’s reserves provided the space for the avocet to become an iconic species, well before the 1970s focus on endangered species made icons of other animals like the polar bear and panda, although it was only in 1970 that the RSPB ofcially made the avocet its logo.

3 Managing Nature

Te Nature Conservancy and the RSPB difered in their conceptualis- ation of the nature in their reserves, but both were literally constructing nature there anew. Wanting to reach a wider audience than the NC’s annual reports, in 1957 Max Nicholson wrote Britain’s Nature Reserves, telling his readers that “Paradoxically we can ensure the survival of wild places of Britain only by fnding out what happens when 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 207 we interfere with them” (Nicholson 1957, 26, my italics). Tat par- adox has persisted, so that a recent RSPB appraisal of nature reserves described them as “places where people can enjoy wild birds in natural surroundings and at the same time appreciate what the society is doing for bird conservation by protecting and managing a whole range of habitats” (Chapman and Haw 1990, 74, my italics). Prior to the Second World War, minimal control had been exerted over protected areas according to the prevalent idea that it was better to put up a fence and let nature “run wild” (Cooper 2000, 1136). As the idea of reserve management began to be explored in the 1940s and 1950s, the nature conservation movement encountered the difculty of managing the balance between nature and artifce. In order to produce credible and authoritative knowledge claims, an experimenter must alter natural conditions, but must not appear to have altered them so much that the experiment shows merely an artefact of the laboratory. Te same feat now had to be achieved in the new reserves. By the early 1940s, ecologists had concluded that most British plant and animal communities had been afected by human activities (Bocking 1993, 98). In Tansley’s popular writing in 1945, he described the mixture of natural, “semi-natural” and deliberately created environments in Britain, and distinguished between wild and “half-wild” country (Tansley 1945, 1). Including human activity in ecosystems, ecologists allowed for the idea that human intervention or management is necessary to sustain ecosystems. Tey then positioned themselves as the experts on the dynamics of ecological systems, and thus as the ones to carry out such management. As ecologists became more central to the nature conservation movement, these ideas were formalised in the NC’s Royal Charter in 1949. Te NC was to provide scientifc advice on the conservation and control of Britain’s fora and fauna and to establish, manage and maintain nature reserves as well as organise and develop research related to them. Following these developments, the 1950s realisation that the Norfolk Broads were in fact fooded medieval peat-workings showed that even the most nationally cher- ished landscapes could have an “artifcial” origin (Matless 2014). Since the early 1940s, various leading fgures in ecology had pronounced boldly on complex ecological issues in which they had little experience 208 S. Davis or full understanding of the practical implications, and the Nature Conservancy made slow progress in the 1950s–1960s in developing practical techniques of reserve management (Bocking 1993; Sheail 1995a). It was the RSPB who led the way in this regard. Te RSPB began experimenting with habitat management at Havergate in the late 1940s to control salinity concentrations and water levels around the island, since the avocets lay their eggs only a few inches above the water level. Te wartime fooding caused by the bomb-damaged sluice had afected the southern part of the island, and the RSPB then deliberately fooded the main area of the island with salt water in 1948. Tey put in new sluices to regulate the new lagoons’ water levels and the amount of sea and fresh water contributing to them (RSPB 1952a). Te RSPB publicised their very active management of Havergate in Bird Notes and elsewhere, and produced a guidebook for Havergate in 1952, which was intended to be read at home, lacking a guide to the island’s physical layout. Te booklet described the purpose of the 1948 fooding frankly: “to make a very much larger area of ground suitable for the avocets” (RSPB 1952a, 7). In the appeal for funds to repair food damage in 1953, the RSPB told its members: “It would be a disaster if we cannot maintain this [marshy area] for the birds to enjoy” (Davies 1953, 276). Following this publicity, the idea spread that the RSPB’s activ ities concerning water regulation were responsible for the colony’s survival. A 1950 newspaper article on the avocets attributed their success to “the repairs done by the society to the sea wall of the island” (Te Times, 13 September 1950), and Nicholson praised the RSPB on “providing the right feeding conditions” after noting the “peculiar saline conditions” required by the bird (Nicholson 1957, 68). When A. W. P. Robertson wrote of the avocets in his book, Bird Pageant, he called the control of water level and salinity by sluices the “one truly vital factor” at Havergate, adding that “Te real success of any sanctuary depends not on barbed wire, but on hard, slogging work” (Robertson 1954, 27). Te Times article reporting the NC’s purchase of Havergate similarly observed that “Merely to declare an area a reserve, and to leave it to itself, would be fatal, particularly in a country in which the balance of nature has already been interfered with, at almost every point, 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 209 by man or his domesticated animals … Tere must be some control of animal and plant life” (Te Times, 21 August 1954). It is clear that the old model of reserves was strongly challenged by a new appreciation of managed control. Supplementing their environmental management, the RSPB also began to interfere with other species. A sizeable colony of black-headed gulls developed alongside the avocets at Havergate, and from 1954 the gull colony continued to grow whilst the avocets began to decline. Some gulls were seen killing small avocet chicks, whilst other avocets were picked up in an emaciated condition from starvation. Since the black-headed gull is very common in Britain, in 1958 the decision was made to prick a percentage of their eggs each year (Davies 1959, 442; Brown 1966, 104). Like the water management, the gull control was duly reported in Bird Notes ’ regular updates on the reserve. In short, the RSPB was seen to work hard to keep the ecosystem at Havergate in a particular stage of ecological succession. Despite all of the intervention, though, Havergate Island appeared as especially natural. As William Payn wrote in Te Birds of Sufolk, “wartime neglect had resulted in the island reverting to saltings and muddy lagoons” after its prior use for grazing and gravel extraction (Payn 1962, 7, my italics). As a state of nature to return to, marshland and its lagoons appear primeval, a symbol of nature without man. Te RSPB’s warden and voluntary watchers at Havergate maintained that state, and so slipped into the role of keeping Havergate “wild”. Adding to this efect, biblical language was brought into association with the place. In the second season, there had been a “plague of rats” and in the third, in 1949, there was a “natural catastrophe”: a great food (Te Times, 10 January 1950). Te massive foods of 1953 were eagerly fed into the story, so that a newspaper article carrying the subtitle “Birds thrive after the foods” talked of “the lagoons and mudfats of Havergate, so recently risen from the foods” (Te Times, 2 June 1953). Havergate appears as if restored to a pure, cleansed state. A comparable efect occurred at Minsmere, where Payn described how the pre-war grazing marsh was “fooded for defence purposes and quickly reverted to its former condition of fen and lagoon” (Payn 1962, 7). Te RSPB guidebook for Minsmere (1952) also noted that the area was “originally true fenland” 210 S. Davis

Fig. 1 Bulldozer transporting soil at Minsmere in October 1969 (RSPB 1976) (Courtesy of the RSPB) but had been drained in 1813, and that the defensive fooding caused “a reversion to something approaching the original state” (RSPB 1952b, 4). Te RSPB was of course not deliberately trying to mislead anyone. Writing on bird conservation in the 1960s, Brown happily admitted that species-oriented conservation strategies, like culling the gulls at Havergate, were “Highly artifcial, of course, but … in a world which we have made largely synthetic, we can no longer expect to have it otherwise” (Brown 1966, 101). Te particular kind of nature being synthesised, however, bears analysis (Fig. 1).

4 Spatial Control

In addition to controlling water and gulls, the RSPB pioneered a new level of spatial control, encompassing visitors’ movement as well as that of various birds. At Havergate, sea banks doubled as screened walkways to link the hides, so that visitors’ movements around the reserve were 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 211 prescribed by the RSPB. Both spatial and environmental controls were taken even further at Minsmere in the 1950s and 1960s, centring on the idea of the artifcially created environment. Bulldozers frst came to Minsmere in 1955 to clear an area of the heath to try to draw back the stone curlew (Davies 1958, 279). Rough treatment by the tanks of the battle training area had been benefcial to that bird, but since the war, heather had taken over the more suitable, clearer areas (Brown 1966, 108). Te warden at this time was Dick Wolfendale, who had played an active role in the frst years of avocet-watching at Havergate. When Wolfendale retired in 1959, Bert Axell transferred from Dungeness to fnd that Minsmere’s wader pools had shrunk almost out of recognition and that the public were spreading over the beaches and marshes—a consequence of increased leisure time and the interest in wildlife encouraged by television and radio programmes. Axell decided new measures were required to separate physically the birds and their habitat from the people, and late in 1962 the bulldozer returned, with a Sufolk countryman, Joe Black, at its helm. Slowly, he carved out a shallow, brackish lake with small islands, which came to be known as “the Scrape”. Avocets had not bred at Minsmere since the year they had frst arrived, 1947, but they came back the season immediately after the Scrape was begun, along with many other bird species. Black and his bulldozer returned year on year for the next 12 years, and local volunteer groups came to help with the construction of the small islands as the Scrape grew to ffty acres (Axell and Hosking 1977, 36). Sluices were placed at strategic points, and the Scrape became nationally signif- icant in its development of principles of scientifc site management and environmental control. Te Scrape controlled space as well as the ecosystem. As it progressed, observation hides were built around its edge, connected by walkways that were partially screened by reeds and other materials, keeping the public in their allotted, separate spaces. Whilst Wolfendale had been warden, all visitors to Minsmere had been led around the site by him, but the walkways now added an extra step between the RSPB and the visitor. As visitors began exploring the reserves without a warden, it was easy to imagine themselves as unguided and their experience unmediated. In addition to the control of people’s movement, the hides were 212 S. Davis carefully placed beside the new freshwater inlets, which brought insect and crustacean food, so that the birds were attracted to feed there. Brought in this way closer to the visitors, the movements of birds, as well as people, were orchestrated by the RSPB. From this pioneering work in habitat manipulation, the creation of these “honeypot situations” became standard in the wetlands of RSPB reserves (Chapman and Haw 1990, 75). As Brown later wrote, the problem of how to let more people onto a reserve could usually be solved by having “recognised routes and preferably with suitable hides provided. It is not so much the numbers of people who may come along, but the control of them once they are there. Birds, at any rate, get extremely used to people if they regularly appear at a certain spot” (Brown 1966, 109). By the early 1960s, according to nature conservation historian John Sheail, “the reserves had come to assume a symbolic value as places of ‘purity’ in their purpose and management” (Sheail 1996, 52). Te signifcance of Havergate is indicated by the fact that James Fisher used the examples of Havergate and Grassholm in his 1953 version of Watching Birds to illustrate that the RSPB was steadily improving its sanctuaries. In 1966, Brown described Havergate as one of the RSPB’s most important reserves (Brown 1966, 51). After holding only 4200 acres of reserves in 1950, the RSPB’s total reserve area fgure climbed slowly until 1970 and then rose more rapidly to 184,600 acres in 1990. Te 1990 RSPB report, from which these fgures are taken, argues that reserves were an important factor in the rise in RSPB membership since the 1950s (Chapman and Haw 1990, 74). Having crept up only mar- ginally in the 1950s, membership started an almost exponential climb in the mid-1960s and is only just starting to plateau after reaching a million in 2000 (Bibby 2003, 202). As the power and resources available to conservation organisations grew, the idea of nature as reserved in physically separate places became entrenched, along with the idea of separation and control operating inside the reserves. Te nature reserves were viewed as outdoor laboratories only by the NC and ecologists. To the RSPB, who actually pioneered habitat management, the notion of the reserve as a scientifc laboratory was not so central. Te RSPB’s rise in popularity, along with the joint NC–RSPB management of Havergate, meant that perceptions of nature reserves 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 213 were increasingly not centred only on their role for ecologists. Despite these intentions, the parallel between the RSPB’s reserves and laboratories was strong. Tis was particularly the case at the RSPB’s two major reserves in the 1950s and 1960s, Havergate and Minsmere. First of all, access to the sites was highly controlled, with only small numbers of visitors allowed in by permit on certain days of the week. Secondly, scales were shifted inside the reserves, so that many birds appeared all together in “honey-pot” situations. Tey appeared larger than before to the visitor, who was hidden with binoculars in closely positioned hides.

5 Watching Birds

Te spatial control at the reserves was linked to shifting practices in observation there, which in turn related to the changing identities of ornithologists and ethologists. Te “new naturalism” of the 1950s emphasised a reserved mode of watching and listening, replacing the practice of shooting (Matless 2000). Havergate and Minsmere pioneered in providing the visiting public with observation hides, which previously had been more the province of shooting men and bird photographers (Ryan 2000). Te primacy of visual themes in the discourse surrounding the avocet is evident in stories of the birds’ arrival. In Philip Brown’s 1950 version of the story, he begins by noting how the war had put “all the eastern coastal area of England ‘out of bounds’”, so that “Isolated breeding-pairs of Avocets (or even a small colony) might well have passed unnoticed” (Brown 1950, 8). In this description, what assumes primary importance about the wartime conditions was their provision of invisibility to the birds. Tat efect is strengthened elsewhere in the book, such as when “It was almost inconceivable how the whole matter was kept comparatively dark” (Brown 1950, 8). Later on, when Payn told the story in Te Birds of Sufolk, we see a similar pat- tern, as he relates that the war meant “much of the coast was banned to the public and many marshes were fooded for defence purposes, all of which created conditions amid which the breeding pair or two of avocets could well have passed unnoticed” (Payn 1962, 129). Again, the fooding of the marshes created a hiding place rather than a habitat. 214 S. Davis

In contrast, by the late 1970s, the visual had faded from prominence. In an account by Herbert Axell, the warden at Minsmere for many years, the physical and military elements are credited more directly: he writes for instance that the “return of avocets to breed in Britain was a spin-of from the Second World War”, since “suitable conditions were accidentally re-established after the wartime fooding of part of Minsmere Level”. He adds that “Te advent of wartime restrictions on public access to the coast … was just what was required” for the birds to be left undisturbed (Axell and Hosking 1977, 176, 181). In this construction, the land has passed from being conceived in visual to physical terms. By the late 1970s, the power and resources available to and wielded by conservation organisations like the RSPB were much greater than in earlier decades. Nature reserves were well established as physically separate places all around the country, with separation also operating inside them, as visitors were channelled along specifed walkways and into observation hides. In the diferent way of thinking about the land when Axell wrote this account, conservationists no longer required visual secrecy to protect an area of land and its inhabitants. In parallel with this shift in visual coding, practices of observation were being contested and negotiated in various natural historical dis- ciplines, and the avocet was drawn into these negotiations. When J. K. Stanford wrote of the avocet, “there is no bird on the British list which as well repays watching”, his main reason was that it “is so conspicuous that you do not need to worry, as with so many birds, what it is doing. You can see for yourself” (Stanford 1950, 4). We have seen that Stanford’s attitude towards bird protection was a traditional one and his approach to ornithology was too. He wrote extensively on the birdlife of Burma (e.g. Stanford and Ticehurst 1935, 1939), and after the Second World War he travelled to Libya in 1952 to collect local birds, funded by the Bird Exploration Fund, which was formed in 1950 in connection with the natural history museum to fll the gap left by the dwindling of privately funded expeditions to collect bird specimens (Nature 1951, 898). He was an imperial ornithologist ftting the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries mould of collecting data and specimens of birds from diferent parts of the world. 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 215

By the 1940s, however, a new generation of naturalists was establishing their biological, behavioural and ecological approaches to ornithology. Ornithologists like David Lack appropriated the term “scientifc ornithology” for their studies, which were oriented towards explana- tions and theories rather than descriptions. Such an approach had been regarded as unscientifc philosophical speculation by the previous generation, epitomised by Claude Ticehurst, editor of the journal Ibis from 1931 to 1941 (Johnson 2004). Stanford was clearly at odds with this new trend, and he expressed this in terms of observation. In his autobiographical book on a lifetime of bird study, Stanford (1954) complains about the puzzling jargon of the new scientifc ornithology, seeming to be particularly fxated on the new modes of observation. Poking fun at the new style, Stanford asks whether the observer does “more than guess” when he says “the pseudo-sleeping attitude occurred in much the same kind of psychological state as is described by Makkink, although in these cases its status is clearly that of a distraction, not an aposematic display” (Stanford 1954, 15). But his derision rapidly becomes a plea that he simply did not understand their claims, since “Almost any wild bird I watch can leave me guessing if it tries” (1954, 15). Finally, he appears exasperatedly confused. Having watched two avocets in a pairing ceremony, his observations were questioned by his companion, who pointed out that reversed coition has been noted in several bird species. Poor Stanford was shocked: “I bowed my head. It was a practice which I had never suspected in birds. I had felt sure enough of what I saw at the time, but now … I can only write down what I think I have seen” (1954, 16). Te new observations drew avocets away from being the birds Stanford felt he could so refreshingly easily see and understand. One of the strands feeding into the new scientifc approach was ethology, the study of animal behaviour in the wild. Ethology had emerged in the 1920s, mainly from Holland, its pioneers seeing it as a corrective to laboratory-based experimental psychology. Ethologists diferentiated themselves from amateurs through practices of observation that demonstrated their professional expertise and therefore established their scientifc authority (Macdonald 2002; Burkhardt 2005). One of the results of this new observation concerned the violent side 216 S. Davis of avocets, which we saw in Chapter 5 to be suppressed in the popular image of the avocet. In Brown’s more extended, behavioural studies, he mentioned that communal fghting had already been well described by G. F. Makkink in 1936 (Brown 1949). Based on research in Vlieland in Holland, Makkink’s comprehensive avocet ethogram (behavioural study) had been published in Ardea, the journal of the Netherlands Ornithologists’ Union. In addition to appearing in Brown’s published work, Makkink is present at the level of observation of the English avocets, with the Havergate logbooks often putting “c.f. Makkink” in brackets after an observation (e.g. Havergate Log Book, 19 April 1950). In other words, prior knowledge of Makkink’s claims informed the seemingly direct act of looking at the avocet. Given Makkink’s well-established position with respect to avocet behaviour, we might ask why Brown felt it necessary to re-describe the avocets at Havergate at all—as if they might have been diferent in their British home, or needed to be described within the British landscape to be established as British birds. Brown was also writing for a diferent audience. Makkink’s 1936 paper was widely cited in ethological literature, both in bird and in animal behavioural studies, which adopted his concept of “sparking over”. Tis concept explained the avocet’s use of its gull-cry (the cry made when attacking gulls) in a range of situations where gulls and/or attack were absent. Tis usually occurred during the incubation period, and Makkink argued that the “deep emotion” involved in a gull attack may “spark over” when the bird is incubating, into a second outlet for emotion (Makkink 1936, 53). Makkink collaborated occasionally with one of the leaders in the feld of ethology, Niko Tinbergen, and Tinbergen used this concept in his more general behavioural theory in 1948. Tinbergen was working on “displacement reactions”: actions that are irrelevant to the present situation, which he argued are the outlet of a powerful urge that the animal is somehow prevented from expressing in the appropriate way. Here, again, avocets contributed to the discussion, this time in the form of their occasional adoption of the sleeping attitude when fghting. As displacement activities continued to be discussed in the following years, Makkink’s avocets continued to be called upon, but Brown’s behavioural study received no comment (e.g. Bastock et al. 1953, 78). Although Brown’s study was 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 217 less thorough than Makkink’s, his exclusion was also rooted in his lower position of scientifc authority. Te 1953 paper above was written by three researchers at Oxford, where Tinbergen had arrived in 1949 to lead a research group in the Oxford Zoology Department. Before the Second World War, ethologists had been mostly amateurs, and ornithology was a distinct and more successful discipline than animal behaviour research. Afterwards, however, ethologists rapidly became professionals, linked to the Cold War-driven funding for scientifc research, and ethology became a university-based discipline (Burkhardt 2005). Modern behavioural ecology was infuenced by Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz’s work on instinct, as well as by scientifc ornithology (Grifths 2008, 130). Scientifc ornithology was well established by the early 1940s, confrmed by the appointment of David Lack as the director of the British Trust for Ornithology’s (BTO) Edward Grey Institute in Oxford in 1945. As Paul Grifths notes, Lack’s focus on the ecological functions of bird behaviour was soon apparent in the Tinbergen group’s work. Philip Brown, on the other hand, was frmly rooted in the RSPB, outside of such groups. Although the RSPB was being dragged into alignment with a more scientifc approach to birdwatching, this took time. Te division between the BTO and the RSPB had been great enough in the 1930s that the respective members were barely on speaking terms (Brown 1966, 45). Changes began in 1936, as the RSPB underwent a hostile takeover led by Julian Huxley and changed the format of its journal, Bird Notes, after the war. Tese changes aimed to reorientate the organisation away from sentimental “bird lovers” and towards scientifc observers (Macdonald 2002, 64). Although the schism between the groups was greatly reduced by the early 1950s, however, it had still not disappeared. Tis can be seen clearly in a letter from Stuart Smith to Brown in 1948, after Brown requested an article from him for Bird Notes. Smith declared that “my approach to birds is a scientifc one” and that “I doubt if such an approach would fnd favour with many supporters of the RSPB” (Smith to Brown, 25 September 1948). In response, Brown sent him a copy of the RSPB’s prospectus and a copy of Bird Notes, and Smith was duly impressed with the reorientation 218 S. Davis of the RSPB’s attitude and the inclusion of certain names in its membership. Now expressing interest in Brown’s avocet notes, Smith asked a telling question: Did Brown know of Makkink’s work? (Smith to Brown, 12 October 1948). Te reference to Makkink is a signal that Smith was now engaging with Brown as a more respectable scientist. Fresh from six years in the air force, Brown joined the RSPB in 1946 as publicity ofcer with self-admittedly relatively little qualifcation (Aitchison 1989, 34). Te following year he gained charge of the society’s reserves and wardens, and fve years later he rose again to become secretary. With a mainly administrative background, Brown faced an uphill struggle to gain scientifc authority in the feld of ornithology. Te 1953 article by Tinbergen’s group suggests that Brown’s connection to the RSPB tainted him too much with that society’s sentimental tradition for his study to be taken seriously by ethologists. We can also now more fully understand the signifcance of J. K. Stanford’s reference to Makkink above, mocking observations of pseudo-sleeping attitudes. Whilst Brown attempted to engage with Makkink’s work, the newly scientifc, ethological observation alienated the birds from the ones that Stanford knew. Tightly linked to this shifting relationship between observation and ornithological was the issue of the observer’s own visibility.

6 Hidden Birdwatchers

A sense of the observer’s unobtrusiveness had since the 1920s been a central and deeply important source of credibility for ethologists. Tis was achieved primarily through the hide, a small structure with walls punctuated only by narrow slots through which to observe. Te hide provided a boundary between ornithologists or ethologists and those with whom they shared the rest of the outdoor space: amateur birdwatchers, hunters, walkers, photographers and the like. Te existence of such a boundary was important in establishing credibility for their scientifc claims, as were the practices of observation they used inside them and the rhetoric surrounding those practices. From inside the hide, ethologists developed what Robert Kohler (2002) refers to as “border 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 219 practices”. Tese are practices that do not attempt to mimic laboratory methods and models but which possess the analytical power of laboratory experiments through appropriate use of feld methods. As the hide became integrated into the new experience of nature synthesised at the reserves, however, it progressed from being the domain of the ethologists to that of the public. Te hide lent to ethologists’ observations the qualities of self-efacement and disembodiment so valued in the realm of laboratory science, with which they were struggling to gain equal footing. As Helen Macdonald (2010) describes, inside the hide, the observer is both invisible to the animal (and so inconsequential to its phenomenal world) and interchangeable, lacking signifcant individuality. Hides’ prior association with wildlife photography also brought a sense of mechanical objectivity to ethologists’ observations, via the perceived objectivity of the camera lens. Naturalists made their observations appear privileged through recourse to the “expert” eye, where expertise was linked with the rhetoric of explorer-hero so long of service to natural history, whereby the ethologist, sustaining his attention through many hours of cold and discomfort, endures great physical difculty and so transcends the body. Like the hide itself, the rhetorical strategy of physical endurance also made the ethologist appear disembodied. Crucially, this sense of invisibility was linked to empathy with the animals, since the endurance of hardship could only be achieved through “delight and love” in the animals. Te ethologist thus seemed to relocate his disembodied eye into the animals studied, suspending judgement, avoiding anthropomorphism and achieving objectivity. Macdonald (2002) fnds this Neo Romanticism in ornithology—in contrast to the “bird lovers” of the RSPB—to be evident especially from the mid-1940s onwards. Recourse to an expert-eye, endurance and empathy were all important steps in giving credibility and authority to ethologists’ knowledge claims, but they all took place in the setting of the hide. As nature reserves expanded, however, the hide became more accessible to the public, not just to photographers and ethologists. Te frst reserve hides in the 1950s were not widely available to the public, as the four hides put up at Havergate in 1949 were only available to a maximum of 24 visitors per week, who had to apply in advance for a 220 S. Davis permit. Wooden hides were erected at Minsmere in the early 1950s, where again four hides served 24 permit-holding visitors per week (Axell and Hosking 1977, 25). By 1958, ten years after the inaugura- tion of Minsmere reserve, there were still only 200 to 300 visitors per year (Axell and Hosking 1977, 222). Brown was keen for people to see birds on reserves, but wrote in 1966 that probably no more than a total of 20,000 people would be allowed on to Minsmere in the next twenty years or so (Brown 1966, 110). Havergate’s weekly fgure went up to 48 in 1958 after a new hide was added, but the number of visitors was still small. Furthermore, only a certain class of people were committed enough to apply for a permit. In the 1950s, the Havergate trip, which included the boat journey, was 10 shillings for RSPB members and 1 pound for non-members, and the Minsmere permit was free to members and 5 shillings to non-members. Access to the hides was therefore still limited, and visitors’ perception and behaviour inside the hide was moderated by the reserve’s warden. All visitors to Minsmere were guided around by Dick Wolfendale, and many at Havergate were led by Reg Partridge. Visitors’ views and movements were guided by the RSPB (Fig. 2). Like the ethologists, bird protectionists celebrated the invisibility from the birds created by the hide. Te frst mention of the new hides in the national press came in early 1950, when Brown explained that in future years “people will now be able to get into the observation hides without being seen by the birds and to observe them at a reasonable range without the birds being aware of their presence” (Te Times, 10 January 1950). Te ballet-preoccupied journalist of Chapter 5 was “warned” by Reg Partridge “in the dimness of the hide” to “Keep your head ducked as you go in so that the birds won’t see you” (Te Times, 2 June 1953). Linked to this prizing of invisibility was a shift in scale. Later in the article, that journalist delights in the fact that “Sitting there, unseen but all-seeing, I can bring the birds virtually within a few yards through the binoculars”. Similarly, in A. W. P. Robertson’s description of watching avocets at Havergate and Minsmere with the well- known photographer, Eric Hosking, he marvels at how “Within the hide, 12 feet from an avocet, one could traverse the lens from nest to nest without arousing even mild interest. But at a movement a hundred 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 221

Fig. 2 Visitors outside the island mere hide at Minsmere with Bert Axell top left, from Minsmere: Portrait of a Bird Reserve (1977) (Courtesy of the Eric Hosking Trust, www.erichoskingtrust.com) yards away, the avocets would be up and protesting wildly” (Robertson 1954, 27). Te same story held appeal in a special article on Havergate in Bird Notes, in which Christopher Mylne explains how difcult wading birds normally are to identify, adding that this is not the case at Havergate:

[W]e never appear on the scene, not so far as the birds are concerned anyway. We approach instead from behind the sea-walls which enclose the muddy lagoons where the waders feed. We sit inside one of the permanent observation huts with the narrow shutters in front opened quietly from inside and rest our arms on the shelf to hold our binoculars steady. (Mylne 1959, 446)

With his use of the frst person plural, Mylne draws the visitor into the hide with him, establishing for his readers what the hide means for its 222 S. Davis inhabitants, and what they should experience at a reserve. Te value of the hides was underlined further by Max Nicholson, who, writing of Havergate, declared that the provision of observation posts “is one of the most important recent developments in Nature Reserve management”. Like Mylne, he adds that “sea-banks serve the important secondary purpose of enabling observers to gain access to the observation posts without showing themselves to the birds” (Nicholson 1957, 71). From these comments by infuential writers on the reserves, it is evident that the reserves’ spatial organisation has joined forces with the control of visibility. Inside the hide the view was framed like a picture by the slits that formed the windows, encouraging a distanced way of looking in which the eye asserts order over the landscape. Commentators’ emphasis on never appearing on the scene further demonstrates the sense of distance encouraged by the hides.

7 Framed Views

As we saw in Chapter 5, the avocets and their environment were initially treated as private, but were gradually opened up to the public. Soon after Minsmere’s Scrape was begun, public access to the reserve started spreading further across the social spectrum as the frst truly public hide at Minsmere was built on the Scrape’s edge. According to Bert Axell, this hide, positioned along the sea wall between the beach and the reserve, allowed several thousand people to see their frst avocets within a few years (Axell and Hosking 1977, 194). Te number of visitors inside Minsmere also rose after the 1960s work on the Scrape. In the 1970s, the yearly total was capped at 10,000 for several years, but by 1989 this had climbed to a whopping 82,400 visitors in just that year: the highest of any RSPB reserve (Chapman and Haw 1990, 78). As mentioned above, it was after the period when the Scrape was created that the commercialisation of birds really began to climb. Like the control of movement, control of watching was taken to a new level with the Scrape, where the scene visible from the hide had been arranged to a much higher degree. Since the visual coding of the reserve in the 1950s fed into visitors’ experiences at the Scrape from the 1960s onwards, it is worth looking 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 223 more closely at the framed view. Looking out from the hide onto the controlled reserve environment set out before them, the observer at Havergate or Minsmere was presented with a view not unlike that of a natural history museum diorama. Like a diorama, the scene had been arranged for the visitors’ viewing, attempting to be a snapshot of time, freezing one particular habitat state for visitors’ education and aesthetic appreciation. Indeed, the Nature Conservancy described nature reserves as “living museums” as well as outdoor laboratories. Laboratories had overtaken museums and herbaria as the premier position of natural historical research in the mid-nineteenth century, and in the 1950s museums were still fairly peaceful places with low visitor numbers compared to modern standards and were only in the early stages of becoming more visitor-oriented (Hudson 1998). Dioramas had enjoyed publicity in a range of high-profle settings in the interwar years, including at the Science Museum, where they continued to be used in new displays after the war (Insley 2008). As Lynn Nyhart (2004) argues, natural history dioramas occupy a special niche among 3D models in the sciences, their scale kept intact as a realistic representation. As such, they were less associated with research than other types of museum exhibition, but behind dioramas’ realism there are also sociopolitical agendas (Macdonald 1998; Wonders 2003). Te NC’s rhetoric of living museums helped instantiate a broader transition in natural history, where the gun was being replaced with feld glasses, and the collection of dead, dried specimens was backgrounded by the observation of living organ- isms (Marren 1995). David Matless (2000) shows how in the post-war decades the new naturalist’s discourse of watching and listening ran in parallel with, even as it began to replace, the more visceral discourse of the hunter’s gaze. Te new naturalists’ reserved mode of observing was particularly aligned with the reserves established by the Nature Conservancy, which the new naturalists dominated. An excellent demonstration of this is James Fisher’s description of the island of St Kilda in 1951, as a “perfect sanctuary”, where “Man’s future … is in one role only—the role of observer” (Fisher 1951, 41). Since all the residents had left the island in 1930, St Kilda became an ideal “natural experiment” for several of these new naturalists, including Max Nicholson and Julian Huxley, 224 S. Davis who began to make surveys of birds and other animals there every few years. St Kilda’s apparent suitability to science was due to the absence of human interference—“wild animals and plants may go the ways of nature” there (Fisher 1951, 40)—so that nature could be observed changing over time. Tis rhetoric helped shape the identity of nature reserve visitors. St Kilda was represented as a perfect alignment of sanctuary and science, and as a place where only the naturalist belongs. With this ideal in place, nature reserves functioned as places where the visitor identifed themselves to a degree as a naturalist. Promotion of citizenship through popular natural science was widespread at this time (Matless 1996), and contiguous with that trend, reserves’ visitors could imagine themselves either in a living museum diorama or in a place of experiment, both of which were bound up with the ideal of distanced observation. Despite this sense of scientifc observation, however, visitors to the hides and reserves in 1950s Sufolk were looking at scenes that had been deliberately managed. Whereas nature’s processes could be observed on St Kilda, at Havergate and Minsmere change was controlled and resisted. Te hides were celebrated for the invisibility they provided, but the scene before them also resembled a (living) diorama in that it had been—to an extent—artifcially synthesised. Havergate and Minsmere were described as having reverted to their “original” nature during the war, whilst simultaneously being acknowledged to be artifcially held there by the RSPB. In a patch of the country where war elsewhere had been simulated only a few years before at the battle training area, now its own nature was being simulated. In such a situation, there is no longer any point of reference. Jean Baudrillard describes this as “hyperreal”, arguing that when models generate a real without origin or reality, the real is stripped of meaning and “nostalgia assumes its full meaning”, and in fact is all that remains (Baudrillard 1983, 2, 12). At the reserves, the nostalgic desire for the original coexisted alongside preference for the replica. A further aspect of hyperreality is the link between simulation and surveillance. Te particular mode of surveillance in Baudrillardian hyperreality involves simultaneous alienation and magnifcation, as in the modern-day reality TV shows where we watch as if TV was not 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 225 there and yet also as if you were there. It is exactly this duality of distance and presence that delighted the infuential commentators of the nature reserves’ hides. At Havergate and Minsmere, viewers felt as though they were looking in from afar at the birds’ world, and yet also marvelled at being able to bring the birds virtually within a few yards through the binoculars: unseen but all-seeing. Tis sounds like panoptic vision, but the perspective truth of the panopticon no longer applies when what is being regarded is a simulation. Just as reality TV creates the reality it purports to observe, the nature watched from the reserves’ hides had been selected and controlled for the viewer. With the hides’ prior association with ethologists’ invisibility, relocating their disembodied eyes into the animals they watched, the visiting public could imagine themselves in this role, suspending belief in human involvement in the natural scene before them, imagining themselves in the middle of it. In the famous tree hide at Minsmere, the visitor could even occupy the same space and share the same kinds of views as the birds (Figs. 3 and 4). Ornithologists and ethologists did not often use the same kinds of hides as those of the amateur naturalist reserve visitors, and the two groups used them in diferent ways. Whilst the hides at the reserves were permanent wooden structures, ornithologists’ and ethologists’ hides were usually much more like those of photographers: small, temporary constructions made at a site of interest deliberately for one particular study. Photographers and naturalists both spent hours on end in these tiny spaces, waiting for noteworthy events. Te birdwatcher visiting a nature reserve, on the other hand, was likely to be more feet- ing. Describing the “tremendous upsurge of interest in wildlife in general and birds in particular” in the post-war years, Philip Brown lamented that most of it “was not even distantly related to ornithology”, since fresh air, fun, exercise and the “one-upmanship” of tallying birds seen were the dominant aims (Brown 1966, 52, 58). Nevertheless, the new form of watching enabled by the hides and managed environment marked a shift in experience as connected to nature. Indeed, a 1990 RSBP report listed the changes enabling close viewing of birds, frst mentioning the hides and habitat manipulation pioneered at Minsmere before adding to the more recent addition to reserves: closed-circuit television. 226 S. Davis

Fig. 3 Tree hide at Minsmere, from the RSPB’s Minsmere guidebook (1952b) (Courtesy of the RSPB) 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 227

Fig. 4 Temporary hide at Minsmere (RSPB 1976) (Courtesy of the RSPB)

8 Birds on Screen

Photography had benefted ornithologists and ethologists with its associations with mechanical objectivity, but some were still suspicious of photographers in the 1940s–1950s, fearing the disturbance they caused when erecting their temporary hides near to birds’ nests. But from inside their more temporary hides, photographers and flm-makers popularised a novel form of access to the wildlife of nature reserves through the rise of nature documentaries in the post-war period. As the star of the new Sufolk reserves, the avocet played a key role in this development. Tese developments also ft into a broader picture of flm-making in post-war Britain, since realism and documentary had been taken up by many photographers, flm-makers and anthropologists during the Second World War (Swann 1989; Murphy 2000). In terms of natural history flm in particular, the frst broadcast of the BBC’s new natural history programme, Look, was in 1953, and four years later, the BBC 228 S. Davis formally established its Natural History Unit (NHU) at Bristol. Gail Davies argues that the space for the emergence of natural history television in the 1950s and 1960s was opened up by the popularity of natural history on the radio in the 1940s and the nature flms, trave- logues, scenics and expedition flms that had been an important part of non-fction cinema entertainment from the 1920s (Davies 2000). Bird photography had brought with it associations with hunting, and natural history flm shared this hunting association from its early days, which to an extent continued through the 1950s and 1960s (Mitman 1999). Armand and Michaela Denis’ Filming Wild Animals series was dominated by anthropomorphism and an alignment with Victorian values of hunting, collecting specimens and reserving animals for game. As Davies demonstrates, however, Peter Scott’s programme, Look, moved away from this tradition, instead carving a scientifc image for itself. Look began with Scott in his study, surrounded by naturalists’ props: maps, charts, feld glasses and microscopes. Together with a guest, Scott would introduce and discuss reels of wildlife footage in the manner of a television lecture. Most of the footage used in the early programs came from amateur naturalist flm-makers and scientists, obtained through personal and professional networks. Some were taken from ethological studies: Huxley’s gannets, Fisher’s fulmars and Tinbergen’s herring gulls. Tese flms were made according to the aims of feld naturalists, showing animals in the feld “apparently undisturbed by human intervention”, and did not make concessions to their medium of broadcast, containing long shots from a continuous perspective for example (Davies 2000, 451). In other words, this development in natural history flm was both consistent with the new naturalists’ distanced mode of watching, and in its long shots joined the reserve hides in foreshadow- ing the appeal reality TV. Te ofcial position of the RSPB in the early 1950s was that “the publication of bird photographs in a number of popular magazines is doing much to make the public not only bird-minded but protection-minded too” (Davies 1950a, 101). In reality, however, photographers were not exactly welcomed into reserves. As Brown later recollected, “several members of the RSPB Council were stubbornly opposed to any sort of photographers on the Society’s bird reserves” 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 229 in the late 1940s and early 1950s (quoted in Aitchison 1989, 34). Te frst photographs published from Havergate were taken in 1950 by Eric Hosking, who had risen to fame as a bird photographer in the 1940s. Hosking spent a lot of time in the 1930s–1940s photographing birds in Sufolk and became the photographic editor for the Collins New Naturalist series. After Hosking, though, only a select few were granted such a chance. Even by the mid-1950s, when the colony at Havergate was more securely established, Brown turned down a number of applications for photography (e.g. Brown to Macmillan, 23 May 1956). Before the RSPB undertook their own photography session at Havergate at the start of the 1956 breeding season, Peter Conder (the RSPB’s assistant secretary) reminded the warden: “you are in control there and what you say goes, so far as photography is concerned. If you are at all worried about the positioning of the hides, do make certain that they are removed to safe spots” (Conder to Partridge, 13 April 1956). In short, the birds’ safety and privacy took priority over the RSPB’s desire to photograph them or yield to the demands of the public. Te representation of birds, however, was on the verge of transition. Bird lectures were extremely popular in the 1940s and photographs were increasingly shown there. Already though, in his role as publicity ofcer, Philip Brown felt that “Slides were rapidly becoming ‘old hat’”, and that some bird flms were clearly necessary to attract audiences (Aitchison 1989, 35). Along with the well-respected ornithologist, James Fisher, Brown wanted to establish a flm unit at the RSPB. Te idea was strongly opposed by certain key members of the RSPB, including the secretary (Donaldson), and Fisher and Brown therefore decided to lie low for a few years, during which time they became acquainted with George Edwards, who they hoped would later run the flm unit. So high was Brown’s estimation of this tireless enthusiast that he allowed Eric Hosking to spend a breeding season at Minsmere only on the condition that Edwards, his assistant, be given a reasonable amount of time to use the photographic hides for flming. Tis gave Edwards the chance in 1950 to make what I argue were two landmark flms for the RSPB: Minsmere Bird Reserve and Avocet Island set on Havergate Island. 230 S. Davis

Te popularity of the two flms was phenomenal. At their frst showing, at the RSPB’s London meeting in October 1950, they were introduced by J. K. Stanford. As Bird Notes reported to the nation’s birdwatchers, they were “most enthusiastically received” by over 1000 people, and long queues at the next showings in Chester and Exeter prompted second screenings at both, where “the audience was immensely appreciative of the flms” (Bird Notes 24(5), 1950, 188). In the coming months, the flms were taken all around the country, from Taunton to Cardif, Leicester, Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Te showings reached 50 within the frst year at RSPB or naturalist societies, advertised in Bird Notes. Some priority was also given to the place of the flms’ creation, the list of cities punctuated by the villages of Orford, Torpeness, Walberswick and Westleton. Chaired by Captain Ogilvie, the Torpeness showing had a “large and enthusiastic audience”, and at Orford “Te audience left no doubt as to their interest in the local bird life”, with Bird Notes crediting the locals: “the successful breeding of the birds is due in no small measure to the fact that they have refrained from disturbing the birds in any way” (Bird Notes 24(5), 1950, 190). Whereas locals’ responsibility and ways of seeing the avocets were usually overshadowed by the writers we have encountered, when everyone’s point of view was made equal by the camera, they were suddenly attributed the same credit as others. Gwen Davies took advantage of her position of Bird Notes editor to reinforce a positive view of flm, writing: “[T]here is no doubt that these flms are proving very valuable in illustrating the results of some of the work the RSPB is undertak- ing” (Davies 1950b, 190). By early 1952, new flm-hire arrangements were introduced for Avocet Island, with a limited number of black and white copies made available for hire. Although the RSPB had used a small number of privately made bird flms prior to the Minsmere and Havergate flms, the extent of their reception was without precedent. When Brown succeeded Donaldson as RSPB secretary in late 1952, the success of the two flms smoothed the way for him to make ofcial the RSPB’s interest in that medium. He hired George Edwards as a one-man flm unit a few months later, with Bird Notes declaring that Edwards’ 1950 flms “were really the seed out of which the flm-unit has grown” (Davies 1953, 221). Te flm unit was ofcially established 6 Nature Set in Reserve: 1950s–1960s Nature Conservation 231 in 1953, the same year that Look began broadcasting. Within a year, the frst flm-hire catalogue came out, and colour flms were sent out with commentators. Edwards was soon flming the foods that covered East Anglia in 1953, from which he made two more flms, Havergate under Flood and Sufolk Bird Reserves, both again dominated by the avocets. Havergate under Flood was shown at the RSPB’s AGM almost as soon as it was completed. Te frst showing of an RSPB flm at the Royal Festival Hall came in 1956, introduced by James Fisher, and the Havergate material appeared on Look in 1958. Avocets were the lure again for Island of Birds in 1959, the RSPB’s synopsis declaring that “the famous colony of Avocets, unique in Great Britain, [are] shown in every fascinating detail, from the wonderful courtship display to the leading of the frst tiny chick away from the nest” (Aitchison 1989). By this time, Edwards had left, Christopher Mylne had taken over his role, and the flm unit had moved to the University of Edinburgh, where it operated in association with the flm unit of the Animal Genetics Department. After three more screenings on Look and the BBC, in 1960 the RSPB began a contract with the BBC to provide them with three half-hour flms per year, and the rising acclaim of the flm unit was evident as the Radio Times reported that contract, describing Mylne as one of the best nature-flm photographers in Britain. Later on, after the introduction of flm awards in the mid- 1960s, the flm unit’s 1973 flm, Avocets Return got a second in category in the British Industrial and Scientifc Film Association (BISFA) and a silver award at the British Sponsored Film Festival (BSFF). From a beginning dominated by avocets, flm strengthened its footing year on year in the RSPB, taking on a wider range of subjects and reaching a large audience. Not only was the avocet the focus of the RSPB’s pioneering development of reserve management and spatial control at Minsmere, it was also the coordinating point of the RSPB’s development of its flm unit, which in turn fed into the rise in new naturalist flms. Te avocet story contributed to the negotiations of a key period in the history of bird protectionism and nature conservation. Like islands, the nature reserve was conceptualised as a manageable, controllable environment and as the perfect natural ecological laboratory. As with the island-laboratories of the radar story, though, they were also crucially not isolated. Teir connection to the wider space of the nation 232 S. Davis came particularly through the developments in nature photography and flm at the pioneering reserves of Havergate and Minsmere. During a period when a more detached but empathetic engagement with nature was becoming established in scientifc ornithology and ethology, the new naturalists’ strategies of observation reached wider audiences through the hides and nature flms. Joining forces with the new forms of spatial control and environmental management at the reserves, however, the reserves’ hides and screening evoked a simultaneity of distance and presence, viewers imagining themselves into a natural scene that was artifcially produced to represent itself.

References

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———. “Avocets on the Sufolk Coast: A Prosperous Colony.” 13 September 1950. ———. “Te Avocets at Home: Birds Trive After the Floods.” 2 June 1953. ———. “Open-Air Laboratories: Te Art of Nature Conservancy in Britain.” 21 August 1954. Wonders, Karen. 2003. “Habitat Dioramas and the Issue of Nativeness.” Landscape Research 28: 89–100. 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness, c.1995 to the Present

Te chapters thus far have focused on mid-twentieth-century stories of Englishness connected to landscape, nature and militarisation, and this fnal chapter adds something of a coda, jumping forward to the early twenty-frst century. Conservation and heritage form the focus of this chapter, through a place that brings together our intertwining themes of nature and militarisation in yet another form. We have already encountered Orford Ness in connection to the early development of radar, and this long, shingle spit went on to house new forms of military-scientifc research, including an atomic weapons research establishment. After being abandoned in the 1970s, the Ness was bought in 1993 by the National Trust, who manage it both as a nature reserve and a monument to the Cold War. Te Trust’s strategy has been to let its many buildings decay in “controlled ruination”, creating a disturbing visitor experience that works together with its ecological framing to disrupt nostalgic memorialisation, the mysterious, ruining buildings evoking a sense of time-in-process. Contemporary understandings of this place build on my focus on the enclosed spaces of Sufolk, and how they relate to ideas of nature, militarisation and nation. Tis chapter investigates the afective potential of Orford Ness through my own experiences

© Te Author(s) 2020 237 S. Davis, Island Tinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9676-2_7 238 S. Davis there, as well as those of the site’s curators, urban explorers and media reports. As I show, there are various forms of temporality at work in this landscape, which I examine through notions of wildness and isolation, absent boundaries, and picturesque and sublime experience. Tis chapter is at once about the place itself and about the way that people have experienced, interpreted and narrated this place over the past 20 years.

1 A Strange Landscape

At the time of the early RDF research that we saw in Chapter 4, the Ness was only accessible by boat, and only to the researchers working there. Access is still tightly controlled today, but now by the National Trust, who operate the boat and use the threat of unexploded ordnance to keep visitors on a narrowly marked-out route. Te National Trust does not provide their usual pristine environment and tea-shop experience at Orford Ness, recommending three to four hours’ walking, and aiming for the visitor experience to be uncomfortable and emotionally challenging. Te Trust suggests this landscape ofers a space for refection on the relationship between science and war, and the natural world that is slowly reclaiming the structures. Orford Ness has received a surprising amount of media attention, with one Independent article boast- ing “Tere really is nowhere else like Orford Ness in Britain” (Rowe 2008). It was featured as one of Te Guardian ’s top ten UK walks in 2010, where the visitor services warden, Duncan Kent, claimed “Te best thing about this walk is the strangeness of the landscape: the jux- taposition of wild remoteness and fascinating but disturbing history” (Kent 2010). We left the Ness when the RDF researchers did, in 1936, but work carried on there for much longer. During the Second World War, the airfeld was closed and scattered with concrete blocks to prevent enemy landings, but experimental work continued apace, focused on fnding the “vulnerability” points of German planes, and developing British planes’ resistance to gunfre. As the Second World War gave way to the Cold War, the military-academic-industrial complex progressed, and “defence policy was dependent on the work of hundreds of scientists, 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 239 engineers and technicians engaged in research, producing fssile material and other special materials, and designing, fabricating and testing nuclear devices and weapons” (Arnold and Smith 2006, 13). Te importance of science was made evident to the public through the high-profle status of atomic weapons, guided missiles and space research during the Cold War (MacDonald 2006; Edmonds 2010). By contrast, this period brought new levels of secrecy to Orford Ness. After the United States closed collaboration on nuclear weaponry in 1946, British eforts to restore that link hinged on demonstrating competence (Twigge and Scott 2000, 100). Te remoteness of Orford Ness seemed ideal for environmental testing of the trigger mechanisms of atomic weaponry: to ensure the bombs would go of at the right time, no matter what changes in vibration, pressure, G-forces and temperature they underwent (Cocroft and Alexander 2009). Te Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at Orford Ness ofcially began in 1956 with the construction of laboratories banked by mounds of shingle to mufe accidental explosions. As the nuclear programme expanded through the 1950s, more laboratories appeared, joined by control rooms, connecting roads and magazines. Te architectural design of the laboratories developed too, from the soft roofs of the frst two laboratories to the domed roof of laboratory three, and fnally the two “Pagoda” laboratories, where narrow columns supporting fat roofs were designed to collapse upon unintended explosions. Te success of Britain’s research programme was indeed pivotal in bringing back American cooperation in 1958, but this also signalled the decline of that research, which became increasingly oriented around the “Anglicisation” of American weapons, tailing of by 1966 and fnishing completely in 1971. Te fnal project at this site was a massive web of aerials, erected on the northern part of the spit for an Anglo-American “over-the-horizon” radar project codenamed Cobra Mist. Consisting of eighteen 620-m strings, this was intended to detect far into the Soviet Union, but was mysteriously abandoned as “non-viable” only a year after completion in 1973. Today, non-human occupants are an important part of this landscape. After its abandonment, extensive looting by scrap metal dealers and an 18-year operation to remove unexploded ordnance, the National 240 S. Davis

Trust bought the site in 1993. Tis decision refected its importance for nature conservation, which at the time had been suggested by it being listed as Grade I by the Nature Conservancy in 1977, and indeed, the Nature Conservancy Council recommended in 1990 that the National Trust should take over the site once the Ministry of Defence was ready to give it up—although a long negotiation process within the Trust over its merits followed. Te site accumulated many designations of natural importance, including as a Site of Special Scientifc Interest, a Special Protection Area, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Area of Conservation and a Ramsar-designated wetland site. Te relationship between military sites and environmental narratives has been explored from various angles in history and geography (Dudley 2012), including David Havlick’s (2011) work on the conversion of military land to wildlife refuges in an American context. Left undisturbed by human development, the decaying structures have been colonised by various types of vegetation and barn owls breed in some buildings. Te wet marshes attract redshanks and lapwings, whilst the shingled area is an important habitat for little terns, ringed plovers, and herring and lesser black-backed gulls. Te Ness also has exceptional geomorphology and is the largest vegetated spit in Europe. One of the most dynamic land- forms in the UK, it changes shape through erosion and sedimentation, and much of its enormous area of shingle is vegetated along the tops of ridges running parallel to the sea. Vegetated shingle is extremely rare, the plant life depending upon the smaller shingle size along the tops of the ridges. Since these ridges form over many centuries, human disturbance causes irreversible damage, as can be seen in the barren patches that were driven over by military trucks. Te National Trust’s management of the site has involved creating new shallow pools within the marsh areas. Like the pioneering 1950s experiments in water control on Havergate and the new Scrape at Minsmere in the 1960s, this work is a creative endeavour. Fifty years on, there is increasing talk in conservation of the “rewilding” of natural ecosystems, and the ways that the Ness is experienced seem to gravitate towards ideas of the wild. Tis chapter asks again which kind of nature is seen here, but this time within the context of the treatment of the wild within recent “New Nature Writing”. 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 241

In recognition of the signifcance of its past, Orford Ness is framed by the National Trust as a monument to the Cold War. In some ways, it shares parallels with museum exhibits and the difculties faced there in presenting the relationship between science and warfare, as demonstrated by the controversy surrounding the Enola Gay exhibition, relating to the dropping of the frst atomic bomb (Linenthal and Engelhardt 1996; Gieryn 1998). Te ruins at the Ness can also be read within the context of scholarship on war memorialisation (Furlong et al. 2002; Moshenska 2010; Whitmarsh 2011). Commemoration can be thought of as an act of communal remembrance, a continual process of bringing public memory into being, as well as a space for individual experiences and memories. Emphasising the importance of place in remembering, Debra Marshall (2004) has explored the degree to which the places of war remembrance have become merely sites of memory rather than real environments of memory. Although time and forgetfulness have eroded some of the power or memorials, Marshall asserts that the process of memorialisation has also continued to evolve in the twenty-frst-century British landscape, with “vibrant discourse subject to continual renew- als and revisions” (Marshall 2004, 51). Whether or not memorials become “the artefacts of a vanished age” (Winter 1996, 98) has recently been fnely explored by Sam Edwards (2015) for East Anglia, concerning memorials for the American airmen based there during the Second World War. Unlike in my previous chapters, this one places the moving, sensing body centrally in its story. Such an approach resonates with more-than-representational theories, which tend to approach the world not merely through the visual and textual, but also through lived experience and materiality, acknowledging that pre-cognitive habits, intui- tions, practices and interactions are fundamental to our understanding of the world (Wylie 2005; Lorimer 2008; Macphearson 2010). Since the National Trust visitors move around the Ness on a predetermined route, I use this route to narrate and investigate my own experiences there. Tis evocative journey is based on several visits (Davis 2008), including a guided tour with property manager, Grant Lohoar, to the usually of-limits AWRE laboratories. Emma Waterton argues that embodied experience and the processes of meaning-making are 242 S. Davis crucial elements in understanding heritage, shifting the emphasis away from heritage as a thing to be seen, to considering what heritage does (Waterton 2014). As Waterton notes, perception is full of memories, such that spaces of heritage are always two: past and present. Visitors’ capacity to be afected by heritage is qualifed by the experiences inevitably and already encoded within their person (Anderson 2014). Concerning ruins and memory, Laurie Clark argues that contradictions emerge when ruins are used to commemorate trauma, since they are palimpsests, layered with a multiplicity of satisfactions alongside our condemnation or refection (Clark 2015). Tis chapter builds on these insights, as well as other work exploring afect and emotion in heritage, and how the past is felt through the embodied experience of the environment (Tolia-Kelly et al. 2017).

2 Walking in Ruins

I drive to the village of Orford along narrow, winding lanes enclosed by bushes and trees, and in the village, the houses crowd close to the street’s edge. Tere are no signposts to the National Trust site, and the road ends abruptly at the shore. Although once a thriving port, Orford was gradually cut of from the world as 500 years of the spit’s south- ward extension made ship access increasingly difcult. Today, it attracts visitors with its fne smokehouses and gastropubs, its mediaeval castle and pretty harbour, as well as the Ness. Down by the harbour, I look from the small white sailboats dotting the River Ore to the buildings hovering across the river, and they seem bizarrely close. I wonder what it must have been like to live so close to such secret but highly visible and audible research here (Fig. 1). Tere is a sense of tense anticipation in the tiny boat on the way across. Orford Ness is only open on Saturdays in March–June and October, and fve days a week in July–September, and there are just three crossings per hour between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. It receives scarcely 8000 visitors a year, fewer than would visit one of the National Trust’s great country houses on a summer weekend. As local farm- er-turned-property manager Grant Lohoar puts it, “We have to allow 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 243

Fig. 1 Pagoda laboratories from Orford harbour (Photograph by the author, October 2008) access, but not so many it becomes a problem” (quoted in Fletcher 2016). Tere won’t be many of us visitors on what locals still call “the Island”. In the National Trust’s booklet, I read about “a landscape of unusual character with its sheer scale perhaps its most memorable feature”, a landscape that “can be exposed, lonely, hostile and wild” (NT 2003, 2). Before being released on the other side, we are given a short briefng on which birds, habitats and buildings we might see, and we are told to stay on the marked path because of nesting birds, plants and unexploded ordnance. Setting of down the straight path, pasture and marshland stretch of to the sides as I pass the old airfeld, looking ahead towards a group of low-lying buildings: the Street. Tis is where most of the activity was focused during the First World War, interwar and early RDF work, but most of the 27 buildings the Trust removed were from this 244 S. Davis area, although their foundations remain as illegible scars. Tey are not labelled. Some have been minimally restored with a tin roof, windows and ventilation, and one is preserved as an interpretation centre. Inside, I fnd a brief display on the site’s geomorphologic and ornithological features and military history, next to an inaccessible room containing a large, rusting switchboard. A sign requests information from returning veterans (Fig. 2). A narrow tidal creek, Stony Ditch, divides this grassy, marshy part of the Ness from the strip of shingle beyond, and the path through the Street runs parallel with the ditch. As I walk towards the bridge across it, I become increasingly aware of the fat, emptiness of the landscape creeping in on me. But not quite empty. Punctuating the space to my left are the concrete posts of the old AWRE fence, now unconnected, and half-hidden in the gorse and grass are strange carcasses of buildings, entrails of twisted metal, collapsed wood and jutting concrete.

Fig. 2 Building entrails seen from the path (Photograph courtesy of Boris Jardine) 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 245

I feel a need to monitor and scan in both directions, slightly on guard. Crossing the bridge, I am the closest the trail allows me to the Cobra Mist site, where a few BBC World Service aerials glimmer in the pale light. Te bridge marks the passage onto the shingle, where the concrete and metal shapes littering its vast expanse seem even more inscrutable and pull my eyes in, but my feet must stay on the path. I’ve been following the red arrows stencilled on the ground, painted by the National Trust, and now they are pointing up the steps of the Bomb Ballistics Building with the instruction: “viewing area”. Suddenly enclosed within the building, I feel a sense of relief. Looking through the window, I fnd myself imagining falling bombs, before climbing up the steps to the open roof. On some days, the wind sings in ghostly wails through the metal railings, and when other visitors are up here, I watch them looking at one another, unsure, letting out bursts of anxious laughter. I take my time over the panorama of ecological progres- sion and military devastation arranged below. A huge ring of concrete sits inexplicably on the ground nearby (Fig. 3). After this view, a new type of immersion in the site begins. On the way down to the lighthouse at the shore, the shingle shifts and crunches underfoot, ripping through the silence, locking my attention down to the ground. Heavy legs. Mesmerised by the vast expanse of shingle marked by decaying, surreal objects, I feel slightly dizzy. I try to pull my eyes up from my feet to look at what I’d seen upon the Bomb Ballistics Building, but the parallel lines of ridges in the shingle draw me down seductive vanishing points. At the lighthouse, I sit on the steep bank by the sea’s edge, and suddenly all is lost in the roar of the water against the shingle. I grew up by to the North Sea, near another of the east coast’s long spits, Spurn Point, and gazing at the grey, brooding water here feels familiar, comforting. As usual, though, it transports me halfway to the horizon, and as I start walking again I’m in a daze, not quite here. Te sea’s debris seem surreal here along the shingle bank after the military debris I’ve only been able to see from afar, the discarded array of plastic and wood appearing vaguely sinister (Fig. 4). Eventually I pass the old Police Tower and reach the Black Beacon, where diagrams and photographs of the “Pagodas” ofer a special view of these of-limits structures. Up on the Beacon’s third foor, there are 246 S. Davis

Fig. 3 Concrete circle and shingle ridges (Photograph courtesy of Boris Jardine)

Fig. 4 AWRE laboratories in the shingle, and a sign warning of unexploded ordnance (Photograph by the author, May 2006) 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 247 labelled line drawings beside each of the seven narrow windows, and I look back and forth, ftting the site and its features into this new frame. Back on the ground, the strange hulks that had lurked on the horizon become gradually larger as I approach the atomic weapons site, shingle banks gradually distinguishable from the laboratories nestling inside them. As a child, I used to play with my dad and brothers in an old Pillbox at Spurn Point, the broken slabs of concrete perfect for hiding, themselves half buried in sand. Tat was after we had seen how far we dared to explore down the long, dark concrete bunker near to where we’d park the car. Not very far, usually. Approaching these half-hidden concrete structures, I start to feel more curious than dazed. A sign declares that the laboratories have been left to become more evocative as they ruin, and after my shifts in mood and half-hidden memories of adventure this somehow seems hilarious, a special in-joke. Te only atomic weapons research laboratory you can get close to is Laboratory 1, just before which is its old control room. Entering this small, square room, I am faced with a shining white atomic bomb. Apart from the bomb, the room just contains a few posters on the atomic testing, and a label: WE177A. Te bomb cuts through my mood again, leaving an emptiness behind. I stare at it for some time, stomach suddenly concrete, not quite able to form thoughts. Unable to process this sight, my feet seem to have taken me back outside, towards Laboratory 1. A dark hallway. I drift into a side room, rubble on the foor, switches on the wall. Back in the hallway, paint peeling on the walls, I’m moving towards the light behind a wire fence. Outside meets inside as sunlight pours through the steel skeleton of the roof, where pipes, wires and roof trusses break into unexpected angles, fuorescent lights hang in perplexed purposelessness above a deep pit, and walls and foor drip with slime, shadows and algae. After seeing so many surreal, decaying structures from the path, now I am almost inside one, fngers curled around the fence. I don’t know how long I stand here. At some point, I fnd myself outside again. Te rest of the AWRE site is barred to visitors, and from Laboratory 1 all that is left is to cut back directly to the bridge and return through the grassland to the boat. Te journey back is much swifter, the structures seeming at the same time more familiar, and yet somehow colder, shifted in meaning by the detached, 248 S. Davis

Fig. 5 Laboratory 1 (Photograph by the author, May 2006) 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 249

Fig. 6 Laboratory 1 (Photograph courtesy of Boris Jardine)

Fig. 7 WE177 (Photograph by the author, May 2006) 250 S. Davis desolate mood I’ve sunk into: an unsettling combination. Finally, the wardens at the jetty tick my name of the list, making sure that everyone who comes here also leaves (Figs. 5, 6, and 7).

3 Wild Ness

My experiences at the Ness are clearly infuenced by my own memories, both implicit and explicit, but there is also a sense in which experiences here are orchestrated by the National Trust. Tere is a wild, exposed feeling to Orford Ness, but one that has been curated. To investigate this dynamic, this section explores writers’ and journalists’ recent experiences there, as well as the National Trust’s production of the site. It took the Trust two years to open Orford Ness to the public, after resolving internal conficts over what some dubbed “Awful Mess”. Te people who were key to establishing its current presentation were archaeologist Angus Wainwright, who I interviewed in May 2006, as well as regional director Merlin Waterson, and historic building representative Jeremy Musson. Others had thought it should be “cleared up and the area returned to a wild state” (Wainwright 1995, 2), the initial architectural survey suggesting demolishing over 60 buildings. In Wainwright’s view “there was no objective reason behind it, it was just this … desire to be tidy” (personal communication, May 2006). Wainwright described how he and Musson tried “to step beyond … gut reactions and endeavour to understand Orford Ness on its own terms, to appreciate the order in disorder and the beauty in ugliness” (Wainwright 1996, 199). Tey wanted to redress the fact that “the defning and describing of the aesthetic qualities of properties has not been developed to the same extent of the surveys of other aspects”, which inadequately capture “the essence of a landscape” (Wainwright 1996, 198). Part of the “essence” they tried to capture can be seen in the Trust’s management plan, as their keenness to preserve the appearance of “wilderness where the only moving things are normally birds and the occasional hare” (NT 2004, 1). More recently, the Trust created a “Sprit of Place” document for the Ness, opening with describing it as “open, exposed and wild”, “waste yet full of life” (NT 2015). Tey keep this 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 251 sense of “wilderness” on the expanse of shingle by not allowing anyone on it, as well as practising what they call “controlled ruination”, interfering minimally with the natural processes of colonisation and decay of the structures, and preventing reminders of their ownership of the site through discreetly stencilled path-markers and a lack of external labelling of buildings. As with any British nature reserve, however, the habitats in this wilderness are surveyed, recorded, and actively managed. Te property manager, Grant Lohoar, was recruited to the Ness from one of the Trust’s most established nature reserves, Wicken Fen. At the Ness, some habitats were recreated and restored using livestock grazing as a management tool, water control has been improved, and winter fooding of the marshes was provided for wildfowl and summer nesting and feeding areas for other birds. In an even more active approach, two lagoons were constructed on the Kings Marsh in 1998, over the 2011–2012 winter, as well as six shallow pools, two deeper lagoons and 2.6 km of new ditches on Airfeld Marsh, and two deep lagoons on the Kings Marsh further north to counter them drying out in the summer (Warrington et al. 2014). Over the following years, numbers of breeding pairs of avocets, redshanks and lapwings increased signifcantly. Trough their management, the Trust has succeeded in maintaining a felt sense of wildness. Around its opening, it was described by a range of journalists as a “wasteland” (Te Guardian Weekend, 24 June 1995), as “bleak” (Independent on Sunday, 1993, Orfordness fles, National Trust Sufolk Regional Ofce, Ipswich), and “barren” (East Anglian Daily Times [EADT ], 6 January 1995), and as “the nearest you can come in England to walking in the desert” (Te Sunday Telegraph, 18 January 1998). More recently, it appeared as a “fragile wilderness” (Card 2010), and as “a bleak and desolate wasteland, pounded by waves, lashed by rain, fayed by icy winds, its desolation compounded by the sinister remains of the top-secret military experiments” (Fletcher 2016). Robert Macfarlane has written about it as “a wild place” (Macfarlane 2012), his book, Te Wild Places, describing landing on the Ness’s shore and immediately sensing that it “was in a wild state”, in which “it was impossible to tell where brown desert gave way to brown sea. Te horizon was lost, dissolved into a single rolling beige of shingle, sea and sky” (Macfarlane 2007, 256). 252 S. Davis

Wilderness is not a term often associated with British landscape. As a concept, wilderness has historically been rooted in a sense of awe at wild nature and associated with a lack of humans. Some dismiss Britain as having no real wilderness left, but—shifting the emphasis from “wilderness” to the less morally loaded “wildness”—contemporary writers like Macfarlane advocate fnding wildness in our midst. Tis was the concern of the Common Ground movement inspired by Richard Mabey’s (1981) book, and the journey in both Roger Deakin’s Waterlog and Macfarlane’s Wild Places map a circular route, beginning at home and ending with a new appreciation of the wild at home via a long tour in search of it elsewhere. As we saw already in Chapter 6, in the 1950s ecologists viewed wildness as not necessarily meaning nature free of man, but rather as particular habitats held in a steady state of human intervention. Discussing contemporary nature reserves, Nigel Cooper (2000) describes how the control at nature reserves increased since the 1950s such that a diversity of habitats and species was artifcially compressed and sustained (Mabey 1981). Trough management plans and habitat management hand- books there has developed an increasingly tighter control over nature (Wood 1996, 48), and an engineering-like “fne-tuning” of practices (Morris 1991, 333). Peter Marren writes that “It is one of the anoma- lies of the English landscape that much of our wild life requires human activity to survive”, describing nature reserves in terms of manpower as among “the most intensively managed parts of the countryside” (Marren 1994, xviii). Some argue that this approach is starting to shift. In his Beyond Conservation (2005), conservationist Peter Taylor describes British conservation as moving out of its “protective phase”, and into “a widespread but piecemeal operation of habitat creation and the wilding of forests, heaths, upland grassland and coastal marshes” (Taylor 2005, 4). Tis signifes a development from “creative conservation” (Sheail et al. 1997), which Taylor argues is an ongoing paradigm shift from conservationists protecting a nature perceived as under threat, to becoming more proactive and creative, willing to “rewild” landscapes. To this end, new habitats are being created, damaged ones restored, larger areas acquired and others connected through wildland corridors. Moreover, 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 253 the previous emphasis on species and diversity is shifting to embrace the importance of natural processes of landscape change. Some link this to a paradigm shift in ecology away from seeing a balance of nature to emphasising non-equilibrium processes (Picket et al. 1992), and ele- vating non-intervention to being a central, positive purpose of reserves (Cooper 2000, 1141). For Taylor, this change is rooted in the growth in fnancial resources and political impact of conservation organisations, as well as in the realisation that it is inefective to create a network of isolated, small reserves surrounded by areas that can be exploited and intensively farmed. Te mid-century appeal of island reserves seems, for some, to have dwindled. Te idea of rewilding extends in some cases beyond the “nature” of reserves. Peter Taylor’s book, although mostly ftting within conservation biology, also discusses the healing dimension of the forest, suggesting that “the whole nature conservation endeavour has been a category mistake, born of a fatal separation between what it is to be human and what it is to be natural” (Taylor 2005, 2). For Taylor, this separation is the afiction at the heart of our losing touch with nature’s process both within and outside of ourselves. An account of the “rewilding of human life” can also be seen in the writing of English environmental writer-activist, George Monbiot (2013, 10). In Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding (2013), Monbiot criticises nature conservation’s approach as having been to “manage nature as if it were tending a garden”, with the result of “freez[ing] living systems in time” (Monbiot 2013, 8). Rewilding appears not as a romantic idea of returning nature to its putatively original state, an idea recognised as illusory, but rather to boost ecosystems’ inbuilt capacity for regenera- tion, such as performing reintroduction experiments that might encourage natural ecological processes to restart. Increasing attention to nature and the wild in British literature over the past few decades has even produced the awkward label “New Nature Writing”, many of whose proponents are or were coincidentally based in East Anglia, with works including Richard Mabey’s Beechcombings, the late Roger Deakin’s Waterlog, Mark Cocker’s Crow Country, Robert Macfarlane’s Te Wild Places and Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk. Behind them is also a venerable tradition of East Anglian nature writers, 254 S. Davis notably Ronald Blythe and W. G. Sebald, who we will also encounter at the Ness. My own frst trip there was with Helen Macdonald, who was supervising my research at Cambridge at that time. Many have protested the New Nature Writing label, including some of those labelled by it, and it certainly covers a broad spectrum. Te term is problematic partly because this kind of writing typically does not set nature apart from culture, seeking to map cultures of nature seen as being as much under threat as the non-human world of which they are part (Smith 2013). Stephen Hunt (2009) suggests the alternative label of “psychoe- ceologists”, aligning them with urban writers like Iain Sinclair and Will Self, because of their concern with their own agency in constructing as well as describing the natural world. Tis type of writing has a distinctly post-pastoral approach, not attempting to return to some ruralist golden age, but rather to repu- diate such fantasies. Te wild of the New Nature Writing is associated with a messy, confused, violent and unruly state, which recalls primor- dial states even as it acknowledges the impossibility of restoring or being able to access such states. It is bound up with an ecological awareness of the porous boundary between “inner” and “outer” worlds. Graham Huggan locates a dual idea of wildness as being central to some of this writing, in a post-primitivist combination of recognising the need for human interference in nature, but still believing at some deeper level in the self-regulating capacities of the natural world (Huggan 2016, 163). Te wild Ness seems to resonate with these conceptual shifts, its unruly violence coded in both its military remains as well as the non-humans and natural processes there, and it also evidences a disturbance to boundaries.

4 Loneliness and Boundaries

Te appeal of the wild demands closer inspection and the following sections look more closely at various aspects of experiences at Orford Ness in order to understand its particular wildness. One key contributing factor seems to be that people feel both isolated and out of place there. Property manager Lohoar defnitely did not want too many people 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 255 there, stating “We don’t want the place to be inundated by orange kagouls” (quoted in Mead 1995, 29). Commentaries often describe how visitors feel like an “intruder” (Te Sunday Telegraph, 18 January 1998), and that it is “hostile” (EADT, 6 June 1995) or both “unsettling and strangely calming” (Card 2010). Others describe it as a challenging, uncomfortable place, warning that “it’s not like going for a walk along the beach” (EADT, 6 January 1995). Many writers note a sense of solitude there, as in another Guardian article on this “eerie wilderness”, where Kieren Falconer (2005) described being “left to your own devices to walk on miles of paths and usually never meeting a soul”. In fact, a felt sense of loneliness was encouraged by the Trust’s design of the route through the site, notably in their construction of the bridge over to the shingle. Wainwright describes how the original, unstable public access route was at the centre rather than at the edge of the AWRE site, creating a view of buildings from left to right that he thought would “display them to least aesthetic beneft”, since “visitors are likely to fan out in both directions causing maximum disturbance to the shingle and wildlife and maximum visual disturbance” (Wainwright 1996, 208–209). A sense of wildness was therefore partly produced through aesthetically informed decisions that heighten the landscape’s potential for eliciting feelings of isolation. For Wainwright, the felt isolation encourages visitors to be refective. He related to me how “my Orford Ness was just me there on my own … It’s an extremely lonely place, and it’s so fat and open that you can see any movement of one person miles away”. Te current positioning of the bridge helps alleviate Wainwright’s worry that “nobody is going to get the experience that I had of being there on my own”, the solitude of which he feels is necessary “to appreciate the aesthetics and consider at length the relationship of the structures to the wildness” (personal communication, May 2006). Tis refective attitude certainly seems to have reached many people, as in Falconer’s (2005) article, where “Bleakness has a beauty that forces refection”. In a landscape experienced as wild and lonely, we may ask what kind of refection this elicits. Te sense of loneliness here goes deeper than simply not seeing many people. When W. G. Sebald explored Orford Ness on his melancholic wandering tour of Sufolk in 1992, a year before the Trust bought it, 256 S. Davis he found that “With each step I took, the emptiness within and the emptiness without grew ever greater and the silence more profound”, and that “ahead lay nothing but destruction” (Sebald 2002, 234, 235). A semi-autobiographical, semi-fctional narration of Sebald’s journey was published in 1998 in English as Te Rings of Saturn (and in 1995 in German), at once a tour of the Sufolk coast and a rumination on memory, the past, and above all destruction. Sebald relates stories from the lives of writer-intellectuals such as Joseph Conrad, Edward FitzGerald and Algernon Swinburne, and, as in his other works, muses on the European battles that shaped the history of the places he visits. At Dunwich, the lost village where George Carter mused on loss and destruction in the 1950s (Chapter 2), Sebald writes: “If you look out from the clif-top across the sea towards where the town must once have been, you can sense the immense power of emptiness” (Sebald 2002, 132). Te Sufolk tour itself was begun “in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work (2002, 3), but the narrator becomes preoccupied with the “paralysing horror” that comes over him at various times when “con- fronted with the traces of destruction, reaching far back into the past, that were evident even in that remote place” (2002, 3). Emptiness and loneliness—more than solitude—signify a sense of loss or absence. For Susan Sontag, W. G. Sebald’s writing showed “a mind in mourning”, an existential lament for lost worlds and selves (Sontag 2000, 3). Cultural geographer John Wylie has noted the importance of putting “absence at the heart of the point of view” in understanding place (Wylie 2009, 278), and in this landscape, absence and disappearance seem to be just as important as various kinds of presence. Te general emptiness seems to exacerbate and be exacerbated by particular absences, such as the gaps between the stranded concrete posts of the AWRE site, no longer linked by their fence. Next to this lost boundary, I certainly felt an increasing alertness and guardedness, registered as bodily tensing and scanning. On the shingle, there is no physical boundary preventing visitors from leaving the path, and yet they are held to the path. Macfarlane describes observing the “military debris” of “twisted sprays of tank tracking, a shattered concrete block, and an exploded boiler”, registered as “warnings not to stray” 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 257

(Macfarlane 2007, 256). Te Trust’s “Sprit of Place” document for the Ness asserts that “Lost in the vast scale you can feel liberated but at the same time oppressed and challenged” (NT 2015). For me, this mixture of intriguing presences and being gripped to an unbounded path created a felt sense of being untethered. A similar sense is captured in an article whose author remarked that “the eye kept straying” during this “unsettling” experience (EADT, 6 June 1995). Te loud noise and physical difculty of walking made me feel almost submerged by the experience, and the strange sights of the parallel ridges and unidentifable decaying forms were disorienting. Te loss of boundaries here is manifold. Te huge expanse of shingle creates a physical feeling of exposure, exaggerating the felt sense of the windy weather. Macfarlane opens both the chapter in his book and his Guardian article on the Ness with the impactful phrase “Lying just of the Sufolk coast is a desert” (Macfarlane 2007, 241; 2012). As journalist Kieren Falconer (2005) had it: “It might always be winter here”. Yet another disturbed boundary is that between inside and outside, which I experienced powerfully in Laboratory 1 with its absent roof and growing interior. Finally, the AWRE laboratories seem to vacillate between an array of characterisations, as when Andrew Mead saw them shift from “concrete hulks”, to “Neolithic burial mounds” and “primitive temples” (Mead 1995, 29). Te comparison to “prehistoric burial mounds” appears often, most recently in a long feature on Orford Ness in 1843 Magazine (Fletcher 2016). What is special about Orford Ness is that although the boundaries seem absent or subverted, the landscape is haunted by ideas of its boundedness. Remote and separated from the mainland by the River Ore, it had been guarded for some decades before the AWRE site arrived in the 1960s, when it was enclosed within a wire mesh and barbed wire fence, and watched over from a police tower with police dogs. As Sebald put it, during the Cold War it was “efectively no easier to reach than the Nevada desert or an atoll in the South Seas” (Sebald 2002, 233). Much of what happened on the Ness is still covered by the Ofcial Secrets Act, and many of those that worked there are either dead, will not talk or operated on a need-to-know basis. Te former secrecy of the site is always prominent in writing on Orford Ness and 258 S. Davis is a key piece of information with which visitors arrive. Commentators evidently feel a thrill in being in an area that was so secret for so long, and the Trust values “the mystique of secrecy” there (NT 2004, 1). Tis seems to be sustained by the unlabeled, unidentifable structures, as is captured by Robert Macfarlane in Te Wild Places, when he describes how “enigmatic structures … protrude from the shingle” (Macfarlane 2007, 256). Like many articles, the 1843 piece by journalist Martin Fletcher revels in propagating the continuing mystique around the site, quoting Grant Lohoar as saying “Ofcially there was never any fssile material on Orford Ness, but you pays your money and you takes your choice on that one” (Fletcher 2016). Macfarlane, too, describes how the ferryman once told him that “Te frst rule of Orford Ness is never believe anything you’re told about it”, with the irresistible addition that “I didn’t know whether to believe him or not” (Macfarlane 2012). A tension exists in many of these accounts between the air of secrecy at the Ness, excitedly consumed by visitors, and the view of the locals. One of the Trust’s volunteers, Patrick Heazell (2010), has managed to piece more of the site’s history together by talking to some of those who worked there, following an earlier attempt by local historian Gordon Kinsey (1981). Heazell’s account, too, revels in the former secrecy of the site and the mystery still shrouding many of the stories and observes that the Trust’s management of the site means it “may still give an impression of being essentially a secret place” (Heazell 2010, 18). He also observes that it is evident in the experience of so many who worked at the Ness that there was an “unwritten pact between ‘island’ and village”, as the local people “entered into the conspiracy of silence” (Heazell 2010, 140). He relates an account of an exchange between one of the ballistics workers on the Ness and the shopkeeper, Mrs. Brinkley, who casually observed “I see you dropped that old atom bomb this morning” after the frst trial with the Blue Danube bomb (Heazell 2010, 140). In among the absences and invisible boundaries, there is ample space for the Ness to feel haunted. Writing for Te Guardian back in 1995, David Newnham found Orford Ness “nothing short of sinister”, describing the AWRE laboratories as “ruins that haunt the shingle with their glowering presence” on his way to quoting Wainwright’s stance on 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 259 the laboratories as memorials to the Cold War and the power of modern destructive weapons (Newnham 1995). More recently, another journalist felt that “the air is still charged with an undercurrent of Cold War menace” (Watkins 2009), and artist Emily Richardson (2009) found it “quite otherworldly”. For Macfarlane (2012) too, “the site still feels militarized”, and a sense of disturbed boundaries comes across when he writes of “An eerie and intricate landscape, then, in which the military and the natural combine, collide and confuse”. In Wild Places, Macfarlane describes the disconcerting realisation that he was seeing various aspects of the landscape through a militarised lens at Orford Ness, so that “A hare exploded from a shingle divot”, and “Green and orange lichen camoufaged the concrete of pillboxes” (Macfarlane 2007, 257). Tis afective quality of the landscape is also apparent in an article by journalist Martin Fletcher, who sees the Cobra Mist building resting “on stilts in the marshes like a stranded battleship”, whilst elsewhere “Brambles coil and curl like the barbed wire they replaced” (Fletcher 2016). Returning to John Wylie (2007), he argues that haunted, spectral places house a circling, transforming temporality. Writing on the spectral places narrated by Sebald, for whom place seems to rely on a sense of dislocation, or a sudden uncertainty regarding location, Wylie sees “a confounding of past, present and presence all witnessed by a troubled, stricken fgure” who is haunted by this process (Wylie 2007, 181). Sebald’s haunted places and preoccupation with destruction are particularly evident at Orford Ness, where he describes the “extra-territorial quality” of the place (Sebald 2002, 233). Te sense of past boundaries at Orford Ness is recurring, continually active with new irruptions of possible meanings. Whereas most visitors stay on the path, however, some are drawn to intrude further. Te site’s history and former secrecy appeal to urban explorers, a growing body of people drawn towards of-limits, abandoned places. Te “urbex” community has its own websites, and contributors’ online reports often include photographs of old signs declaring the Ness as a prohibited place (e.g. MarkR 2006). On the British urbex website, 28 Days Later, many reports show frustration at not being able freely to explore the AWRE site. One member planned to “sneak” into the pagodas, but encountered an “angry Trust volunteer 260 S. Davis and a land rover patrolling the site making sure we go nowhere near them”, following them back to the ferry (Norfolk Explorer 2015). In the discussion, others asked if “a covert mission could be done by canoe”, or whether it would be possible to walk down from the northern part of the spit. Claiming to have done just that, one member describes a “father son adventure” of walking south from Aldeburgh, including being followed by a Cobra Mist land rover, questioned by its four occupants, and sent back from the lighthouse of the land. After walking a mile back and hiding behind a dune, they trekked back down to the lighthouse and on to the AWRE site, revelling in being there “without the National Trust breathing down your neck telling you where you can and cannot go” (Exxperious 2017). Tis report received much praise from other members, sparking a lively discussion over how others would have responded to being told to leave (not so coop- eratively). Another urbexer also walked down from Aldeburgh, again receiving praise for this feat (Nebula 2016). Tese stories are typical for the urbex community, which Carie Mott and Susan Roberts (2013) argue is pervaded by a highly masculinised sense of strength, virility and risk-taking, reinforced through tales of adventure. Even these explorers admitted, however, that it was “eerily quiet” (Nebula 2016), in particular fnding the pagodas “pretty eerie” (Exxperious 2017). Trough the landscape’s potential of loneliness, and absent boundaries, there is something uncanny about it.

5 Decay and Temporality

Part of the appeal of this eerie landscape lies in another absence: the decaying structures. Te redolence of decay at Orfordness contrasts starkly with typical National Trust sites and is valued by the Trust as crucial to its symbolic and aesthetic qualities (NT 2004). Te Trust’s Jeremy Musson stated that these “modern ruins” are “as historic and as dramatic in their own way as the twelfth-century castle in Orford village” (Hills 1994, 2), and a Telegraph article reported Duncan Kent as saying that “Te sense of dereliction adds to the atmosphere” (Watkins 2009). Although aesthetic appreciation of ruins and decay is not new, 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 261 there seems to be increasing popular interest in contemporary ruins, exemplifed in the popularity of urban exploration. Addressing this interest, Andreas Huyssen (2006) argues that the chance for things to age and become ruins is diminished in the age of “turbocapitalism”, with the commodifcation of ruins taking centre stage. Concerning industrial ruins, cultural geographer Tim Edensor suggests that they ofer an escape from excessive order, as marginal spaces in which you can see and feel things that you cannot in the ordinary world (Greco 2012). For Edensor (2005a, b), ruins’ unknown functions displace attention to their forms and textures, disturbing and intruding upon the controlled body, and rendering bodily boundaries obsolete. Dylan Trigg (2006) also argues that the porous boundaries of contemporary ruins subvert the familiarity of everyday life. Tis destabilisation of bodily boundaries works together with the spectral boundaries of the last section. Whilst this interest in decay and ruin may rebel against excessive order, urbex reports are dominated by photographic documentation of the buildings, seeming to support Luke Bennet’s (2011) argument that urbex shows a need to document and survey in addition to its trans- gressive motives. Although some urbexers snuck into Orford Ness, most went across on the National Trust’s boat. Many of the contributors comment on the satisfaction of seeing and particularly photographing things for themselves. Tis desire to survey suggests a need to create a particular kind of order: everything that is out of place is also in place. Critics accuse photographers of decay of objectifying empty buildings and accounts of deindustrialisation of a creeping nostalgia (Cowie and Heathcott 2003; Strangleman 2013). In contrast to those narratives of deindustrialisation, the curious thing about the Ness is that it simultaneously is and is not an example of economic disinvestment. Although it was abandoned in the 1970s, the National Trust raised the hefty sum of 3.5 million GBP to purchase and endow the site (Heazell 2010, 231). Too much for the Trust alone, this was achieved with grants from the Enterprise Neptune Fund, the Derelict Land fund (from the Department of the Environment), the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and the County and District Councils. It is a managed ruin. As some urbexers even noted, it is “very strange” to see a place left purposely 262 S. Davis to ruin there (DocD, in MarkR 2006). Tis also struck journalist Greg Dickinson in his article on “ruin porn”. Referencing the inten- tional nature of decay at Orford Ness, Dickinson (2018) described it as “enriching:” “a place where the innocence of wildlife and the destruction of humans intertwine, which feels like a work of art in itself”. Taking this further, I argue that the intentionally preserved decay at the Ness afords a particular form of temporality, which is crucial in provoking refection on its themes of nature, war and science. Orford Ness is a place in which processes are valued. As Wainwright told me, “the actual process was worth preserving, so that you could actually come to Orford Ness and see the process of decay” (personal communication, May 2006). Te conservation of built structures usually constrains processes: “Tat’s what the National Trust does; it decides buildings are important and how they’re going to stop them falling down. So it was a pretty difcult conceptual decision to take” (personal communication). In order to consider these ruins-as-process, I want to turn to the study of monuments, since the AWRE site is also treated as an “extraordinarily powerful monument to the Cold War” (Sufolk Life, 16 May 1994). Te sense of monumentality is sometimes even compounded, as when architect Robert Holden (2005) described the pagodas as a “Neolithic site, memorials to Cold War military science”. Te AWRE buildings were ofcially listed as a Scheduled Monument in 2014, following a survey by English Heritage (Cocroft and Alexander 2009; Historic England 2014). In his history of public monuments, Sergiusz Michalski (1998) describes how from around 1950, designs tended increasingly towards abstract forms and themes of disappearance, using negative or semi-visible forms. Michalski roots this in an attempt to deal with the unprecedented scale of death and to redress the feeling that political public monuments had become meaningless. Whilst many ruins have been preserved as memorials, however, it is more unusual that the process of decay is invoked: a strategy that seems more emphatically to refer to disappearance. Anthropologist Susanne Küchler (1999) argues that monuments referring to their own absence prompt a diferent form of remembering than memory as a metaphorical connection of a lost present to a desired future, envisioned in the image of the past. 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 263

She describes this other form of remembering, present in various non-Western cultures, as akin to a momentary collapse of the past, future and present into a single point: the present is animated with a sense of the past. Drawing on Küchler, Caitlin DeSilvey has written about ruins in terms of artefacts-as-process, which she suggests allow a mode of remembrance to take place “that is erratic and ephemeral— twined around the past and reaching imperceptibly into what has yet to come” (DeSilvey 2006, 328). Intentionally allowing the process of decay at Orford Ness seems to cut through a nostalgic tendency to look back to one point in time, since the continually changing nature of ruins forces them into the present. Looping again to Wylie’s thoughts on haunting, he refers to the spectral quality of places as ushering in an “endless process of returning, without ever arriving”, making an “unsettling complication of the linear sequence of past, present, future” (Wylie 2007, 171). I argue that this irruptive sense of temporality encourages refection at Orford Ness on the continued relationship of war and science. Indeed, DeSilvey views Orford Ness as an example that ruination does not have to be associated with failure and neglect, but can be an impulse to ask ourselves what we can learn from the changes (DeSilvey 2017; Dickinson 2018). Tis emphasis on processes at Orford Ness again draws an afnity between that place and the New Nature Writing, which Stephen Hunt argues does not relate to the natural world with a passive and regretful nostalgia, but rather portrays an “urgent clawing for psychic survival” (Hunt 2009, 76), as well as narratives of the resilience and regenerative powers of the natural world. Tere is also yet another sense of temporality at this nature reserve. Te natural processes of whole ecosystems are managed here, the most prized being the vegetated shingle. Along with the constantly changing shape of the spit, visitors read about the slow, incremental growth of the shingle ridges in the interpretation centre. Gesturing to these ridges on top of the Bomb Ballistics Building, Lohoar told my guided tour that what we were really seeing is a sort of pictorial history of the evolution of the land site. He told this to journalist Martin Fletcher recently, too, who wrote beautifully how each of the long ridges “was the crest of an ancient beach formed by storms as the Ness stretched southwards—the 264 S. Davis littoral equivalent of the rings of a tree” (Fletcher 2016). A sense of awe about these timescales also afected Falconer (2005), who described the pressure to keep of the shingle as: “Even just stepping on it can crush a hundred years of evolution”. Te diferent scales of time represented by the ridges and the decaying buildings are a key feature of the Ness. Te National Trust see Orford Ness as characterised by “timeless natural processes contrasting with the transitory man-made dereliction” (NT 2003, 17). In this phraseology, the diferent senses of time do not sit easily alongside one another, but rather jostle for primacy. Te winner is clear for Wainwright: “Te atmosphere of the place is changing from one dominated by man to one dominated by nature” (Wainwright 1995, 3). Others seem to have experienced this too, as for one writer: “To walk here is to celebrate a miracle: the survival of a fragile, specialised environment: an incomparable haven for seabirds and plants” (Te Sunday Telegraph, 18 January 1998). Similarly, in art historian Christopher Woodward’s In Ruins, he mused that at Orford Ness, “In a new and hopefully more peaceful century the ruins would crumble into extinction in exposure to the wind and waves, as if the earth was being puri- fed by Nature” (Woodward 2001, 223). Tis reminds me of Silke Arnold-de Simine’s (2015) suggestion that when ruins are memorials, they allow not only melancholic refection but also actual mourning to take place. Tere is, therefore, a contrast in understandings of Orford Ness as a place where something is disappearing, and a place where new meanings are continually inscribed in the present through that very process. In yet another understanding, the writing of Robert Macfarlane syn- thesises the diferent senses of time into one being. Up on the Bomb Ballistics Building, Macfarlane found that the “landscape’s own logic became more apparent”, describing the long shingle ridges that are “the Ness’s storm-born growth rings” (Macfarlane 2012, 257). In this description, the organic nature of the shingle spit comes to the fore, a structure that has accumulated itself, storm by storm, ridge by ridge. From this vantage point, the tracks of the bomb disposal unit’s vehicles are also clear, cutting across the ridges and the green strips of vegetation along their tops. Lohoar describes these tracks in terms of their 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 265 destruction of the natural ridges, but Macfarlane sees these marks of “the desert’s decontamination” diferently. He describes how “Te man- made lines and the storm lines swooped and arced and intersected with one another, to create a single vast fngerprint of shingle, stretching as far as I could see” (Macfarlane 2007, 257). Tis is a wonderful example of the New Nature Writing’s refusal to separate “nature” and “culture”, the various histories of the Ness seen as part of one whole.

6 Order and Awe

What makes this landscape so interesting is that it resists interpretation along one set of lines. Whilst decay and ruins have often been associated with the picturesque tradition (Kemp 1990; Fassi 2010), Dylan Trigg (2006) reads the pleasure taken in contemporary ruins as ftting a post-industrial sublime, inextricably bound up with the way ruins challenge the idea of rational progress. Steven High and David Lewis (2007) also coin the term deindustrial sublime for former industrial ruins, interpreting their appeal as going beyond nostalgia to demon- strate responses to the huge disruptions of globalisation. Te shifts in aesthetics at Orford Ness can be connected to ideas of wildness as well as the temporalities operating there. Following the Trust’s route and descriptions in the booklet, visitors are encouraged to make use of the vantage points of the Bomb Ballistics Building and the Black Beacon. As Lohoar explained at the former: “It’s worth coming up here, because one of the problems of such an open site is that … you need these places of elevation to understand what its all about” (personal communication, April 2006). By the time visitors reach the elevation of the Black Beacon, they have been led down a path surrounded by military debris, their enforced distance highlighting the Trust’s lack of interference. Tey walk in among the sea’s debris, where decaying objects from military and sea intermingle, resisting order. In the Beacon, architectural drawings and old photographs of the AWRE laboratories seem to distance the Trust from these structures. Finally, on the top foor, diagrams beside the windows label the structures in sight. 266 S. Davis

In this sequence of events, the Trust slips from apparent non-interference with the distribution and decay outside to active mediation in the way it is seen. Ofering visitors this vantage point after they have felt overwhelmed in an expanse of shingle and decaying disorder afords them the relief of a sense of order over the site. For Wainwright:

When I was out there, in the very early days, I was literally the only person there. But I always felt that there was somebody watching me … You feel much better up in the air …[it’s] sort of controlling thing, and it’s a quite diferent experience to being on the ground and feeling like you’re being watched and not understanding what you’re looking at. (personal communication, May 2006).

Visitors feel more in control in the Beacon, although they are looking at a view that has been framed and ordered for them. Susan Stewart describes a nineteenth- and twentieth-century obsession with occupation of the sky, which speaks to “an abstract transcendence above and beyond the viewer and the possibility that the viewer can unveil the giant” (1993, 90). Te transcendence up in the air at Orford Ness seems to provide a kind of detachment from what is seen, pushing the visitor towards a more superfcial aesthetic appreciation, which could be seen as more in line with a picturesque, melancholy refection on decaying civilisation. Te labelled diagrams also make the buildings from diferent periods appear as a collection rather than an accumulation. Stewart argues that a collection tends to hide the point of the objects’ origin, discouraging a view of history as continuous (Stewart 1993, 151). In a collection, time seems synchronous within the collection’s world, its spatial whole superseding the individual narratives lying behind it: “the point of the collection is forgetting” (Stewart 1993, 152). Up here, the ruins seem less connected to a felt sense of time progressing, perhaps distancing the visitor from moral engagement with what they are seeing. Tis shift in view and temporality is only brief. On the fnal approach to the AWRE laboratories, they simultaneously evoke the impression of “scattered memorials to the Cold War” and the “transient and insignifcant” nature of human intervention (Mead 1995, 27). Tis language is reminiscent of a picturesque invocation of a civilisation 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 267 already overtaken and ultimately doomed (Kemp 1990), where the “civilisation” is military science. Indeed, another newspaper article called Orford Ness “a graveyard for secret military experiments” (Te Sunday Telegraph, 18 January 1998). Picturesque engagement is present also for Christopher Woodward in his discussion of “the strange magic of war” and “dust in the air suspended. Although others since have investigated the impact of aerial bombing on British surrealism (Mellor 2011), Woodward considered the 1940s paintings of bombed churches as “the last great fing of the British picturesque”, transforming the churches into “garden ruins haunted by birds and soft with greenery” (Woodward 2001, 212). Woodward moves seamlessly from discussing these images to describing Orford Ness, which he fnds a rare demonstration that “if a ruin’s owner is guided by an artistic vision then it can be opened to the public with its strange magic undiluted” (Woodward 2001, 223). Te Trust has invited a range of artists to this site over the years, the frst being British expressionist Dennis Crefeld. Woodward suggests that Crefeld’s work “infuenced the Trust in its presentation of the site, the management team soon recognising that the painter understood better than anyone the ‘mood, moment and the unexpected music of the island which hangs between the calling gulls and the endless wind’” (Woodward 2001, 223). Te idea that Crefeld infuenced the Trust is an exaggeration (Wainwright, personal communication, May 2006), but what is interesting here is that for Woodward, the ruins at Orford Ness are equated to picturesque bomb ruins. For others, however, there is a harsh brutality at Orford Ness, the appeal of which seems far from picturesque. Back in the days when W. G. Sebald was wandering down the Sufolk coast, exploring the Ness, it seemed a short step to imagine it as a post-apocalyptic landscape: “Te closer I came to these ruins, the more any notion of a mysterious isle of the dead receded, and the more I imagined myself amid the remains of our own civilisation after its extinction in some future catastrophe” (Sebald 2002, 237). Sebald’s writing often deals with a sense of displacement and exile, and with a sublime loftiness of writing that dis- places the self within elevated circles before dizzying vistas (Wylie 2007, 180). As John Wylie observes, Sebald’s writing conceives of place neither 268 S. Davis as located as if on a grid, nor independent of witnessing of some kind: “Place is in a sense what happens” (Wylie 2007, 181). In the unstable temporality at Orford, “what happens” shifts from being within the remains of our own civilisation to imagining a mystifed future visitor. Te narrator and future stranger merge into one, and for both, “wandering about among heaps of scrap metal and defunct machinery, the beings who once lived and worked here were an enigma, as was the purpose of the primitive fttings and contraptions inside the bunkers” (Sebald 2002, 237). Te temporal displacement at Orford Ness becomes more extreme and disorienting when Sebald adds: “Where and in what time I truly was that day at Orford Ness I cannot say, even now as I write these words” (Sebald 2002, 237). Discussing Sebald’s Orford Ness writing, Pippa Marland (2014) sees an afective force within the variously assembled things he observes, which develops incrementally, eventually exceeding its context. Sebald’s writing tended to have an invisible referent, a horrifying theme that could only be approached tangentially. For Marland, one of the undeclared concerns in Sebald’s Orford Ness passage is the concentration camp, and more generally the damage done to human souls by war (Marland 2014, 135). Perhaps it is a similar sense of underlying horror or violence that afects many other visitors to Orford Ness, shifting experiences away from the picturesque and towards something closer to the sublime. Sublime language is also present in Wainwright’s exhibition notes, where “it is only in the sweeping vistas of the atomic weapons test laboratories that we can feel the awesome destructive power of modern weapons” (Te Guardian Weekend, 24 June 1995). Te Spirit of Place document also highlights the tension between seeing the signs that “human destruction was planned and tested”, and nature’s reminders “of the limits of human ability” (NT 2015). Writing about contemporary ruins, Trigg (2006) argues that they are close enough to the present to mirror an alternative past/present/future, the derelict structures both testifying a failed past, and also reminding us that the future may end in ruin. Te sense of awe at the Ness is inextricably linked to its military-scientifc history. As the Trust sees it, the structures there are “emblematic of not only the Cold War, but also of the whole of twentieth century warfare”, because the “systematic application of 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 269 scientifc principles to the development of weapons and warfare resulted in the ability of one country to subject an opponent to the threat of ‘total war’” (NT 2003, 22). Similarly, English Heritage’s report declares that “Te structures at Orford Ness embody this link between science and high politics” (Cocroft and Alexander 2009, 62). Describing the “special power in structures in the landscape”, Wainwright told me that because “in the Cold War everything went underground”, “there really isn’t anywhere else in the country where you can visit such monumental symbols” (personal communication, May 2006). In addition to the laboratories’ visibility, the visitor’s movement is an important part of how they are experienced. For Wainwright, “[O]nly during the long walks between the buildings is their monumental scale appreciated. As they loom larger and larger the anticipation grows; this slow process is one of the attractions of the place” (Wainwright 1996, 206). Here, the process of walking echoes the slow process of the site’s decay and the other natural processes at work there. Wainwright continues: “Te scale of the buildings is overbearing and in this exposed landscape the individual can feel overpowered and reduced in their presence” (Wainwright 1996, 206). Te Ness’ essence is perceived in sublime terms by those who shaped its current state. Sublime experience at the Ness goes a step further upon encountering the WE177A atomic bomb. Te bomb stands remarkably free of interpretation, in a room otherwise bare apart from six 2 m 1 m × photographs. On one level, it seems to act as a metaphor for the site’s own ruin. Unlike the idea of the site being a graveyard for military science, the bomb suggests a far more extensive collapse of civilisation, propelling the imagination to fgure the bleak landscape at Orford Ness as Sebald had (before the bomb was put there), as a post-apocalyptic wasteland. At the same time, the small label in front of its case jolts the visitor with its entirely non-symbolic reality. As Falconer wrote on seeing it: “Te idea that such obliteration can come from such a small piece of metal is unnerving” (Falconer 2005). Coming after a couple of hours of slow walking through ruins, the glistening white bomb is one of the few objects not decaying, locked in its own time (they were in operation from 1966 until 1998). As such, it again destabilises the senses of time and memory active in this landscape. Perhaps it propels 270 S. Davis the threats of military-scientifc research into the present, encouraging the visitor to imagine its use today. It seems radically to undercut a picturesque view of a long-since fallen empire of military science. Scott Kirsch (1997) has explored the aesthetic fascination with annihilation in nuclear photographs eagerly consumed by the public, but the sublime takes on a diferent quality at Orford Ness, following the long hours of walking through decay. As a monument to Cold War military science, we could consider that Orford Ness represents the brief phase in which Britain pioneered its nuclear research alone, before the Mutual Defence Agreement in 1958 granted Britain access to the United States’ designs. Tis leads us to ask whether this landscape is read as a monument to Britain going it alone, a fing of nationalist pride in the aftermath of empire. At the same time, it could be read in terms of a nostalgia for the relative simplicity of the Cold War in a world of nuclear proliferation. Some argue that the nostalgic desire to cease time in its tracks is intensifed in our time of such anxiety and uncertainty. Nostalgia usually fxes a particular past in place, however, whereas I have described the shifting boundaries and temporalities experienced at Orford Ness, which I argue disrupt the nostalgic desire to reinvent the past in the present. Tis chapter has investigated the writerly constructions and felt experiences at Orford Ness, where the landscape of decaying buildings and protected ecosystems seems to shift through diferent characterisations. In some moments, a distanced, picturesque aesthetic appreciation seems possible. For great stretches of the tour, though, visitors feel overwhelmed in the exposed, lonely landscape with its absent, porous boundaries. Te landscape seems to evoke the eerie, the uncanny. With the visitor’s slow movement, the looming, decaying structures of the atomic weapons research site seem almost sublime. Whilst the processes of decay and movement shift the temporality at the site, inscribing the structures continually in the present, the sight of the very much not-ruined atomic bomb cuts through this sense of time. I suggest that this interposing of diferent temporalities is part of what makes this sight so appealing. With all its contrasts and mixtures, it manages to bring the association of war and science through to possible presents and futures. 7 Rewilding and War Monuments: Orford Ness … 271

References

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In the stories unfolded throughout this book, we have glimpsed some of the huge cultural transformations marking mid-twentieth-century Britain at an intensely local level, in a small patch of the country that was shaped by invasion and defence, progress and destruction. Te island nation would have to be understood in diferent terms following both the contraction of the empire to its core and the increasing militarisation experienced through the Second World War. Within the confnes of this small region, we have followed various registers, usually kept apart, which allow us to explore the juxtapositions and contrasts between them, understanding each in the setting of the others. We have seen emerging narratives of nationhood and nature, militarisation and technological modernity, and rural heritage and nostalgia, all of which have been connected in this archipelagic history through imagined or physical enclosures—islands within the island—that were made to relate to the greater “island” of England or Britain. From the shores of coastal Sufolk, we have considered what it means to be an island, and how island thinking has invoked both refuge and anxiety, security and fear. In what follows, I will look back at the various narratives, before drawing out their key themes.

Within the rediscovery of the countryside, Sufolk promised a more authentic version of the nation’s past, sometimes obscuring—or ofering an escape from—the present. If England was found in its regions in the period 1930–1960, as Jed Esty argues, then Sufolk was found to be secluded and isolated, and as such, made to stand for the insular nation in more authentic form. Te preoccupation with its surrounding sea, coast and sky showed shifting characterisations in the post- war period, when natural features and older structures (the Martellos) were used to convey a sense of vulnerability and threat focused on the nation’s edges. In the nativist writing looking for folk traditions, some anti-modern post-war writers struggled to come to terms with the disappearance of the taskscape-mediated connection between land and sky. Te local military presence in the landscape and skyscape was often nostalgically written over with peaceful agrarian imagery, whilst at other times could be aligned with a kind of aerial warfare pastoral, alternately bringing a reconnection with nature or a despairing descent into post-apocalypticism. On the ground, the extensive militarisation of the Sufolk landscape produced a patchwork of inaccessible areas, transforming the meanings of the land and landscape in England’s “farthest East” towards a felt sense of being on the front line, with the idea of invasion close at hand. Tis sense existed in tension with portrayals of an ahistorical, timeless England to which to escape. Between the partially enclosed military areas and the fraught coastline, this militarised landscape could hover between seeming emptied and a simulation of elsewhere, as well as prompting new ways of moving in familiar spaces. As the war receded, military traces proved difcult to integrate into ways of seeing the countryside, but some writers began to integrate wartime memories into the marshes, constructing a kind of military pastoral by the coast. Looking further ahead, ideas of military defence and threat seem to remain close to the surface here, bubbling up again as the heritage of wartime anxieties took another gasp at Shingle Street. We saw the language of wartime defence centring on archipelagic concerns in the radar stories and operating through a mixture of spatial and visual registers. Te seclusion of radar’s early spaces seemed to endow the work with a magical quality, the idea of “the Islanders” 8 Conclusions 279 forming a curious echo of the English as a whole. An isolation myth linked the early research sites with contemporary iconography of the island nation or island fortress, as well as with the idea of special communities there. Like laboratories, the isolated research sites were able to make the world outside resemble that inside them and so coordinate a network of other people, places and equipment. Island-like spaces appear protected not by physical features but by visual elements. Feeding from wartime narratives of the authoritative, all-seeing gaze of the airman and the “hero’s war”, stories of radar were dominated by visual language, imagining an island ringed with eyes. In post-war stories, radar could write over the disempowering wartime experience of blackout with its promise of extended sight, linking island spaces with their own invisibility as well as new forms of perception and observation. Militarised spaces and practices tangled with cultures of nature in the post-war years, as bird observatories and bird protectors watched the sky for invaders. Te avocet events were laced with militarism, from the initial characters to the material circumstances that allowed their return. Whereas early post-war countryside writing found it difcult to integrate signs of militarisation in with the countryside, this story shows how deeply it was interwoven with the region’s cultures of nature. Te birds seemed to form another expression of anxieties around aerial invasion and immigration, and their identity as British or English seemed important to defend. Te birds acted as vectors for reorientation to English landscapes’ homeliness in the post-war years, at times delicate, at times themselves at war. Militaristic cultures of protective secrecy interacted with a drive towards cooperation, which went further as the avocets’ breeding grounds were transformed into pioneering nature reserves. As the protection of British national parks and wildlife was brought under legislative control during the 1940s, the natural world gained in importance within the resurgent concept of national culture. Whereas countryside writing evidenced a vision of Englishness under threat, dwelling and almost delighting in melancholy, the nature reserves were part of a movement seeking to plan and preserve aspects of the nation. In Sufolk, the RSPB’s avocet reserves fulflled the function of Arthur 280 S. Davis

Dent’s “propaganda reserves”, but could also be constructed as ecologists’ laboratories—a stone’s throw away from where radar’s island- laboratories had sought to eradicate the features of the landscape—with Havergate Island being compared to other islands of the archipelago for its advantages to natural scientists. Under the RSPB’s care, old logics of protection were superseded by a more active form of management that created spaces and orchestrated the movement of both birds and people. Te RSPB positioned itself as ensuring a reversion to wild, “original” states through its active interference. Te kind of nature synthesised at the Sufolk reserves was one kept in control, and the newly public hides created new cultures of observation, simultaneously distant and present. If radar directed perception outside the island’s vulnerable edges, in the new enclosures of the nature reserves, observation hides and new natural history flms relocated observation to the interior, positioning the observer as invisible. Unlike the principle of keeping an ecosystem in a controlled, managed state, a more recent trend in nature conservation has been shifting towards the concept of rewilding, which advocates both interference and then allowing natural processes to take their own course. In contrast to the twentieth-century’s “historicist turn” of trying to preserve structures and landscapes in time, endowing them with the role of performing heritage, this shift signifes a new openness to allow processes to unfold. We saw this embodied at Orford Ness, where new lagoons have been constructed in a wetter version of the Scrape half a century before, but where the buildings are allowed to decay in “controlled ruination”. Te landscape is understood in terms of wildness, both by those managing it and by those writing about it, but a wildness that exists in permanent tension with—rather than attempting to exist outside of— human culture. Whilst at some points picturesque aesthetic appreciation seems possible, Orford Ness is managed and experienced in terms of feeling overwhelmed in the exposed, eerie, lonely landscape with its absent, porous boundaries. With the visitor’s slow movement, the looming, decaying structures of the atomic weapons research site seem almost sublime. In tension with the slow processes of decay and movement at the site—inscribing the structures in the present—are the sight of the pristine atomic bomb. Te jostling temporalities and afective power 8 Conclusions 281 there make the site appealing and disconcerting, bringing the association of war and science through to possible presents and futures. Tese Sufolk stories are set in the context of the shrinking empire’s insular revival of Englishness—a renewed interest in fnding magic and mystery in the cultural centre without its periphery, as well as realisti- cally documenting the daily island life. Te stories have circled around themes of militarised landscapes, invasion anxieties and threatened edges, and the impulse to create protective refuges. Vulnerable isolation; safe enclosures. Following these mid-twentieth-century narratives within the more recent story of Orford Ness, we saw hints of a diferent attitude towards both nature and its connection with humans and their military cultures. Where the mid-century focus seemed to revolve around loss and protection, the management and experience of Orford Ness resonate with some of the post-pastoral, post-primitivist themes in the New Nature Writing, treating human culture as bound up with nature. Te diferences should not be highlighted too much, however, as many of the mid-century themes seem still very much alive in this corner of the country. Bringing us up to the present day, Sufolk was one of the Leave-voting counties in the 2016 Brexit referendum, with nearly 60% of voters favouring leaving the EU. To consider what our explorations of insularity in the developing sense of Englishness during the mid-century have left us with, in what follows I focus on three axes within the stories: spatially, visuality and nationality.

1 Spatiality

At various points within the book, the stories have revolved around ideas of space and physical boundaries, with a relationship being efectively drawn between the enclosed space and the wider country. Te region itself was imagined as secluded, isolated from the rest of the nation, and we saw the idea of enclosed, island-like spaces operating all over the wartime countryside, through limited access to airfelds, battle training areas and a Defence Area along the coast. In the latter, the land was viewed by the government as a military zone: emptiable and suitable for military controls inside and at the boundary of the area. Te 282 S. Davis locals also took on something of this attitude, coming to see the area as the front line. Tis part of the country thus stood apart from that further inland than the roadblocks, seeming closer to the continent and its battles and invasions. Tis was taken further in the Orford Battle Training Area, where the land was emptied more dramatically of both people and prior meanings. Te Orford battle area was made into an obligatory passage point for landing on foreign soil, itself taking on the character of a continental battlefeld so convincingly that this perception continued for many years after the war had ended. In the radar stories, we saw landscape being mobilised not only in terms of enlisting particular places, but also through the recruitment of certain ideas about landscape. Te research sites’ association with islands was mythically entwined with the knowledge and techniques developed there, especially the physical characteristics of islands, namely their boundedness and separation from the rest of society. Later, at Orford Ness, we saw an enduring fascination with ideas of secrecy and isolation. As with the recent eruption of the Shingle Street invasion stories, older associations with military conficts and research seem to continue to circulate here. Te association with islands as natural laboratories seemed to give more credibility to the RDF work, distancing it from feldwork. At Bawdsey Manor, the physically bound space seemed to enable social boundaries to be broken down within it, giving the radar stories a wider appeal in a similar manner to the islands of literary works being used to challenge normal social structures. Te world outside the island- laboratories was made to resemble that inside them in various ways, from the cockpit of the planes in Bowen’s airborne radar group, to the string of Chain Home stations and the ways of seeing of those operating the stations. Bawdsey was made to coordinate a network of people, places and equipment; it was an island, but crucially not an island. Another form of secret, private place within this landscape was that colonised by the avocet in post-war Britain. Militarism was encoded in narratives of the avocet episode in a variety of ways in this formative episode in the history of British bird protection and nature conservation. Te birds were linked to the local landscape through ideas of containment, and in order to hide Havergate’s identity, the self-designated 8 Conclusions 283 wardens of the birds tried to control local and national rumours. Rumours still proliferated (as with Bawdsey, Shingle Street and Orford Ness), but unlike the military occupants of private spaces, the bird protectors were portrayed in a negative light, as inefective and incapable. As well as echoing the military sites in terms of rumour and secrecy, the protection of the eggs at the sites was represented with language reminiscent of the wartime activities of watching, waiting for and guarding against raids. Linking this privacy of nature more strongly to the military, in J. K. Stanford’s writing the birds and landscape together formed a safe medium through which to re-enact and simultaneously recover from war. Tose protecting the birds were mostly ex-military personnel and/or outsiders to the local area, and many in the birdwatching community feared the birds would be kept for this elite group only. Like rambling and hiking, bird watching had become popular among a much wider spectrum of society in the two decades preceding these events, and the protection of the avocets and their space appeared as a throwback to an older, more hierarchical relationship to the countryside. In the same space that had been imagined, rumoured and represented in terms of privacy and containment, a new type of private nature came to be established. Te establishment of National Nature Reserves grew out of conservationists’ actions in the Second World War, part of the progressive mood of post-war planning. Distancing themselves from the open-access lobby, nature conservationists tried to present nature reserves as places primarily for scientists and ecosystems rather than the public, and the public’s presence at these sites was linked to their coding as citizen naturalists. Te island-like nature reserves—like the radar stations—were connected to a network, envisaged as part of a system of reserves that together represented the nation’s variety of fora and fauna. As Havergate and part of Orford Ness came under the Nature Conservancy’s ownership in the mid-1950s, they were drawn into closer association with these developments. Within the reserves themselves, spatial controls brought a purpose- fully engineered quality to the “wild” English nature. Beginning at Havergate and progressing more radically at Minsmere, the RSPB’s pioneering work in conservation management centred on practices of 284 S. Davis spatial organisation. Not only was access into the sites strictly controlled (by permit and river journeys) and movement around the sites usually led by a guide, but the possible routes for movement of both birds and humans were planned to such a degree that the Scrape at Minsmere represented orchestration of movement on a grand scale. As hides and screened walkways were constructed for visitors, the idea of spatial separation was brought to work inside the reserve. By contrast, ffty years later at Orford Ness, spatial control of visitors’ movements sits in tension with a sense of haunted boundaries, the old boundaries of the site present but porous. Te new forms of environmental and spatial control at the reserves in some senses acted to simulate British nature, just a few miles from where the Orford battle area had simulated the Continent. Spaces of simulation multiply in this patch of the country. When Orford was turned into an archetypal “invasion village”, its existence as a real place disappeared as it journeyed around America as a model. Every summer of Bawdsey’s research phase, large-scale aerial invasions were simulated, and all around the coastal area during the war mock invasions were practised periodically. At Stanford’s Bledgrave Hall, elements of war were constantly re-enacted. Finally, as the rumours of failed invasion and a sea of fre took aim at Shingle Street in the 1990s, they told stories of a simulated invasion that was mistaken for reality. In this landscape of layers of military simulation and imagination, the nature reserves took simulation a step further, by covering over that which they imitated.

2 Visuality

A second important element of the stories has concerned visualisation practices, with new ways of looking, seeing and representing. In the radar stories, methods of display were essential to Bawdsey’s establishment as the central coordinating point of a network. Since the work carried out there was in some respects like feldwork, dependent on the particularities of place, the researchers attempted to mimic laboratory space and practices in a variety of ways. In the early work at Orford 8 Conclusions 285

Ness and Bawdsey, researchers tried to remove the particularities of local landscapes, choosing long wavelengths and the featureless space of fat shingle and sea. Trough the translations at the island-laboratory, refected radio waves became lines on the graphical surface of the cathode ray oscilloscope, revealing information (aeroplane positions) that could then be made to travel around a network, as immutable mobiles. Showing the displays to be trustworthy was key to keeping the air defence policy-makers and funders interested; the screens must be seen to be readable by anyone. Measurements from the cathode ray screens were then used to connect together flter rooms, Fighter Command HQ and the sectors that coordinated interception. Te Chain Home task of perception/representation, coordinated by Bawdsey, was therefore translated into the control of movement. As diferent research groups improved and specialised their systems of detection, the relationship between representation and logistical control altered. I showed how the emergence of a new imaging technique, the plan position indicator (PPI), resulted from heterogeneous social and technical factors that had in common a focus on the control of movement. Whereas the early RDF research focused on the problem of detection—leaving interception to others—two of Bawdsey’s research groups made early attempts to combine observation with action, Bowen’s group on aerial interception and the War Ofce group on anti-aircraft searchlights and guns. Te groups developed systems with shorter wavelengths, aerials of new shapes and sizes. As the need for need for remotely controlled movement was recognised, these inno- vations were linked with a new imaging system. In other words, making radar more concerned with orientation and arrangement was the driving force behind the progress in technologies of representation. Early researchers had sought to erase features of the landscape, but landscapes fnally became the focus of the H2S system, “mapping” the landscape below on a PPI display. Te PPI display became iconic to radar, interacting with wartime iconographies of sight and vision. Constructed as giving an unmediated representation of the surrounding space, it was linked with contemporary rhetoric of the airman, the two seeming to restore to warfare the advantages of the hilltop perspective that had been horrifcally lost in the trenches of the First World War and which 286 S. Davis was disturbingly absent from the lives of those under blackout on the home front. With its promise of extended sight, radar functioned as a kind of remedy to the disempowerment of the nation’s blackouts on light and information. Shifting from “metal hawks” to actual hawks, centimetric radar began to be used to track migrating birds. As wavelengths became shorter and objects could be resolved with greater accuracy, birds and meteorological phenomena became a source of unwanted interference on radar screens. Meteorological information from radar began to be used as valuable feedback in military operations from early in the Second World War, extending the pilot’s vision even further. Large birds or bird for- mations created “spurious echoes” on PPIs that were initially labelled “angels”, sending fghter pilots on wild goose chases, prompting reports of aeroplanes diving into the sea and frustrating airfeld controllers. Teir identity as birds was recorded from as early as 1941 and was published in secret reports of the Ministry of Supply in 1942 and 1945. Te phenomenon was brought to more public attention in Nature in 1945, but it was only in the late 1950s that a series of research papers took it further. Using radar stations on the Norfolk coast, but based ofcially at the Edward Grey Institute in Oxford, David Lack began pioneering a new approach to the study of bird migration. Tus, the visualisation technique intended to act as the “eyes” of island fortress became a way to monitor some of its native or visiting animals. Forms of observation in animal studies were undergoing a transformation in the mid-century that reached much deeper than this new, military technology. Scientifc ornithology had developed throughout the 1930s and was becoming better established at the time of the avocet events in Sufolk. It involved coupling observation with theory in a way that had been considered poor practice among ornithologists until the 1930s and was still regarded as such by many in the 1940s. Ethologists’ work on topics like animal aggression involved claims about inner emotional states that the old guard of ornithologists, like J. K. Stanford, found unconvincingly linked to what could be observed. Te avocet story gave us a window into this period of transition in cultures of nature. Central to ethologists’ credibility was the authority they gained from their practices of observation, oriented towards achieving 8 Conclusions 287 objectivity. Trough the invisibility of the observation hide and the many hours uncomfortably spent watching the animals, ethologists denied their physicality, using a rhetoric of expertise and empathy to relocate their disembodied selves in the animals: a new form of romanticism. As hides and avocets became gradually more open to public con- sumption, so did these cultures of observation and visibility. Initially, the reserves had been represented as private spaces and the self-designated wardens had efectively conspired to make Havergate disappear, as had the early RDF researchers at Orford Ness and Bawdsey. In the case of radar, topography emerged when wavelengths were fnally made centimetric and thus capable of resolving small objects, and when they were needed to guide movement. At Havergate and Minsmere, the landscape and birds also became more visually accessible to the public through remotely viewed flms, and the remarkable popularity of the avocet flms paved the way for the RSPB establishing its flm unit. Fitting the contemporary construction of “citizen scientists”, much of the natural history footage on Look in the 1950s was taken directly from ethologists’ research and the programme was presented as scientifc. Te natural history flms allowed viewers to feel unseen but all-seeing—distant and present—similar to the experience of visiting the hides in the nature reserves in the 1950s, which contributed signifcantly to the dramatic escalation in visitor numbers in the 1960s, led by fagship reserves like Minsmere. Te avocet reserves trace the early development of a certain dislocation and multiplicity in the experience of nature: you are there/you are not there; you are part of it/ you are separate. Tied up with this instability in location, as well as with the layers of simulation and reference in this landscape, is an inherently nostalgic sense of time.

3 National Past

Te fnal theme I want to highlight is the relation of my extremely local stories to the level of the nation and its past. In the introduction, I mapped out the shifting anxieties around Britain’s island form as the 1930s fear of aerial invasion dovetailed with an emerging frailty 288 S. Davis associated with the shrinking empire. Te rhetoric of isolation of the mid-1930s research sites at Orford Ness and Bawdsey resonated strongly with the mid-century’s iconography of the island nation. From within the island-laboratories at the two sites, researchers tried to make “Britain an island again”, aiming to erect an “electromagnetic fence” around the nation’s borders, resulting in the Chain Home radar stations that faced out to sea. Te concern with defending national borders went further than military initiatives. Wary of its own citizens’ holiday-making, in 1943 the government commissioned a survey of the national coastline in order to inform post-war planning. Te survey was led by geographer J. A. Steers, who had pioneered the study of coasts in the interwar period, beginning with Orford Ness and then expanding along the East Anglian coast. Fusing together the nation by its edge, Steers wrote in a 1943 report: “Te coast is one and indivisible and must be considered as a whole” (quoted in Sheail 1976, 269). Wartime propagandists spread rumours of a failed attempt to penetrate this indivisible national boundary, and just as the threat of real invasion reduced, the rumours seemed to take on a life of their own. Tey fared up in new forms over the years, reafrming the sanctity of the border through the thrill of imagining its disruption. A preoccupation with the island nation’s edges seemed to recur at various levels. After the possibility of invasion by sea as well as air had been imagined so many times, in post-war countryside writing on Sufolk the sea bordering the county was represented as more threatening and sinister, representing the threat of destruction and loss. Te vertical edges too seemed dis- rupted, as writing on Sufolk’s quintessentially English skies portrayed them in unsettled language. Elsewhere along the coast and on Britain’s small islands, bird observatories began appearing in the post-war years, mapping birds’ migration across these lines. In addition to the focus on the archipelago’s outer limits, as the British empire contracted, attention shifted from the far-reaching colonies to the cultural integrity and authenticity of the island nation, making English culture into an object of study. Late-modernist writers explored older traditions like the village pageant, artists in the wartime Recording Britain project drew, painted and photographed the buildings deemed important parts of Britain’s heritage, and Mass 8 Conclusions 289

Observation recorded the moods and habits of the nation through the writing of diarists and trained amateur observers. Documentary photography was an important observation technique for Mass Observation, and documentary realism was a strong force within both British literature and wartime cinema. With anthropology contracting from imperial periphery to core, we saw evidence of the folk revival in writing on Sufolk’s villagers and country folk. In a wide variety of ways, then, Britain was observing and representing itself. Tis native culturalism could take an anti-modern direction, and indeed we saw a tendency to focus on loss and the past. Countryside writing championed Sufolk as still preserving an older, rural, village England, often disconnected with the present, the timeless past appearing as lost heritage in need of rediscovering. With its tradition of being represented as isolated, Sufolk—particularly its coastal region—formed an ideal outlet for this nostalgic view. Such writing resonated with the ideas of W. G. Hoskins, a key fgure in promoting local history, who saw it as establishing a sense of meaning in belonging to a particular place, rather than escapism (Hoskins 1959, 6). Te nation’s past played a substantial role in the reconstitution of Britain after the Second World War (Hennessy 2007; Kynaston 2007), and in the 1951 Festival of Britain, the British were portrayed as cemented together by character, tradition and ancient origins, the past being shown as a non-chronological series of traditions imbued with trans-class and trans-historical qualities (Conekin 2003). Evoking the national past and its rural roots in the vague but evocative language of Deep England, regional countryside writing helped fuel the fetishisation of tradition as seen in the heritage movement. In tension with anti-modern countryside writing, looking only backwards, there was also a planner-preservationist strand of thinking within the mid-century mood of planning for the future. Along with its “anthropological turn”, mid-twentieth-century Britain became increasingly interested in documenting its nature and natural life. Tis began with the amateur naturalists’ participation in 1930s surveys with the British Trust for Ornithology and spread to 1940s–1950s amateur involvement in migration studies at the bird observatories as well as at wildlife centres in nature reserves. Fusing survey with plans for 290 S. Davis preservation, Steers assessed the coastline, and others developed plans for national parks and nature reserves. Like the nostalgic writing, however, this activity was also underpinned by a sense of loss and threat, which has acted as a powerful force in driving contemporary conservation and heritage. As the nature reserve movement built momentum in the post-war years, the reserves at Minsmere and Havergate were presented as having reverted to a former state, as if an “original”, wild nature could be accessed there, despite having been created by military action and widely acknowledged to be sustained by the work of conservationists. As Baudrillard argues, when models generate a real without origin, nostalgia is all that remains. In other words, the reserves evidence a step in the direction of nostalgic “hyperreality”. Just as the hides separated visitors from the reserve even as they made them feel like they were in the birds’ midst, the reserves presented managed nature even as they were perceived as wild. Te new post-war reserves and hides, pioneered at Minsmere, represent a doubling of experience, a mediated–unmediated version of English nature. Te reserves’ claim to “English” nature also rested on their ability to calibrate time and space. Like radar’s island-laboratories, the Nature Conservancy’s nature reserves were both isolated and crucially not isolated. On one level, the wider space to which the “nature” in reserve was connected was ecological science, connected to the nation through its claims for useful applications, such as agriculture. Promoting their association with science, reserves were conceptualised as outdoor laboratories, a formulation that foregrounded process: observing changes over time. On another level, the reserves were connected to the nation through the idea of a system of representative types. Tis kind of space was linked to a static conception of time, as enclosed parts of the country were held to represent traditional British countryside. Linked with this second conception of time, the RSPB attempted to freeze environments still at their reserves. Tis kind of reserve, infuential during the 1950s and early 1960s, was more akin to a (living) museum, observed like dioramas through the framed windows of its hides. Within the impulse to unearth a cohesive English culture and nature after empire, the stories in this book have followed threads of 8 Conclusions 291 militarisation within conceptualisations of this region. Tese were often fragmentary, not fully worked through, as in the slicing aeroplanes of Virginia Woolf and George Carter. At other times militarism seemed to help recover a sense of belonging via reorientation to local nature for returning British servicemen, following James Fisher’s wartime declara- tion that birds are “the heritage we are fghting for”. Elsewhere still, militarism seemed prior to the organisation of enclosed, guarded space as in the landscapes that became nature reserves. Following both the heritage and the nature conservation movements through to their modern-day incorporation of Orford Ness, we found militarisation not hidden, as it was in much mid-century countryside writing, but rather embraced. Te slow processes at Orford Ness, from the visitor’s movement to the buildings’ gradual decay, seem to animate the present with a tangle that makes nature appear militarised even as it reshapes the military structures. If the various stories in this book have followed the mid-century preoccupation with fxing Englishness and this insular, regional cultural landscape in place, what happens when we take this drive towards heritage, nostalgia and even simulation to the extreme? In Julian Barnes’ novel, England, England (1998), a theme park covering the entire Isle of Wight duplicates and condenses all the highlights of English heritage. Visitors to the Island could see Big Ben, Anne Hathaway’s cottage, Wembley Stadium and Stonehenge all in one day, not to mention catching sight of Francis Drake, Shakespeare, Robin Hood and his Merrie Men, and watching aeroplanes in the Battle of Britain. Like the islands within islands that we have followed throughout this book, Barnes uses a small island within the British archipelago to stand both for and apart from the nation. Whilst lamenting the belief that we cannot access an authentic place of origin, the book also ofers a critique of those who celebrate this fact. Nick Bentley argues that this postmodern novel is a lament not for lost Englishness, but for the fact that the “real” past can never be recouped, as it is always artifcial. As he writes, “It presents the preference for the replica alongside the psychological desire for the original, and, in fact, these are presented as the same thing” (Bentley 2007, 494). Seeming at times to validate Baudrillardian theory, Barnes also includes elements that reach towards authentic human experience 292 S. Davis of the real, positioning itself somewhere between homage to and parody of the dominance of the “hyperreal”. Te desire for authentic experience of nature whilst simultaneous appreciation of its impossibility is also a feature of the New Nature Writing, many of whose key proponents are coincidentally located in East Anglia. Tis region has been strongly afected by the new internal threat to nature perceived from the late 1960s onwards: modern, industrial farming. Such writing looks for the wild within our midst rather than locating it at some point in the timeless past and is attentive to the ways in which nature and culture should be traced simultaneously— cultures of nature—in order to understand them. At Orford Ness, a sense of the wild has been cultivated by those who manage the site, and the experience there is designed not to be consumed nostalgically, but to be disturbing and disorienting. Although the rise of the heritage industry could be linked to the recent interest in modern ruins, as in the urban exploration movement, my study of modern-day Orford Ness resisted interpreting it only along the lines of nostalgia. Te various temporalities in tension with one another at Orford Ness, from ruins- as-process to the shiny atomic bomb, prevent experiences at the site from being only concerned with looking back. Beyond our mid-century focus on English boundaries, nature, heritage and regions, Orford Ness shows us how many of the same themes—of both threat and destruction, refuge and sanctuary—are still connected to narratives of isolation in this area, but that there is a new openness to embracing tensions and multiplicity within experience as well as processes of change.

References

Barnes, Julian. 1998. England, England. London: Vintage. Bentley, Nick. 2007. “Re-writing Englishness: Imagining the Nation in Julian Barnes’s England, England and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. ” Textual Practice 21 (3): 483–504. Conekin, Becky. 2003. Te Autobiography of a Nation: Te 1951 Festival of Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 8 Conclusions 293

Hennessy, Peter. 2007. Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties. London: Penguin. Hoskins, W. G. 1959. Local History in England. London: Longmans. Kynaston, David. 2007. Austerity Britain 1945–51. London: Bloomsbury. Sheail, John. 1976. “Coasts and Planning in Great Britain Before 1950.” Te Geographical Journal 142: 257–273. Index

A Atomic bomb 58, 117–119, 241, Addison, William 44, 50, 100–102 247, 269, 270, 280, 292 Adventure lit their Star 179–181 Avocet 2, 14, 16, 140, 161–163, Aerial invasion (fears of) 53, 98, 287 166–172, 176–178, 183–190, Aerial photography 41, 124 192, 199, 200, 203–206, 208, Aerodrome, Te 94, 95 209, 211, 213–216, 218, Air defence 118–120, 122, 124, 128, 220–222, 227, 230, 231, 251, 132, 137, 145, 147, 285 279, 282, 283, 286, 287 Airman, fgure of 53, 143 Awl-Birds, Te 177–179, 182, 185, Aldeburgh 37, 48–50, 52, 58, 65, 190 66, 78–82, 85, 86, 89, 123, Axell, Bert 211, 221, 222 125, 129, 260 Alde River 52 Allsop, Kenneth 179, 182 B American servicemen and women 82 Baldwin, Stanley 9, 116 Anthropological turn 9, 10, 13, 40, Batsford, Harry 3, 4, 10, 34, 48, 98, 41, 43, 164, 289 186 Apocalypticism 175 Bawdsey 15, 35, 39, 61, 65, 83, 84, Arnott, William 42, 44, 46, 49, 50, 101, 104, 105, 108, 117, 121, 52, 57, 100 123, 127–132, 134–140, 145,

147–150, 152, 161, 282–285, C 287, 288 Carne, Daphne 129, 139, 144 Bawdsey Manor 74, 82, 100, 121, Carter, George 42, 50–52, 57, 127, 137, 138, 146, 187, 282 59–61, 66, 67, 102–104, 256, Beer, Gillian 4, 5, 7, 11, 60 291 Belonging 101, 172, 289, 291 Chain Home (CH) 100, 117, 129, Between the Acts 10, 60, 61 134, 136–138, 144, 145, 149, Bird migration 2, 164, 174, 176, 151, 165, 282, 285, 288 192, 286 Churchill, Winston 11–13, 32, 40, Bird observatories 2, 4, 165, 174, 77, 78, 108, 116, 117, 120, 279, 288, 289 142, 150, 153 Birds, Te 175, 176 Clodd, Harold 58, 59, 66 Birdwatching 54, 163, 164, 171, Coastal landscape 38, 153, 284 188, 189, 217, 283 Colley, Linda 5, 13 Blackout 16, 32, 141–144, 154, 279, Constable, John 36 286 Countryside writing 10, 15, 32, 34, Blaxhall 42, 46 35, 37, 39, 41, 44, 47, 53–55, Blythburgh 51, 59 61, 67, 75, 90, 97, 99, 109, Bofns 140, 144 115, 174, 183, 279, 288, 289, Boundaries, boundedness 132, 254, 291 256, 257, 261, 281, 282 Bowen, Edward 125, 126, 128, 134, 136, 137, 147, 149, 150, 152, D 282, 285 Darsham 81, 85, 129 British empire 8, 173, 288 Decay 18, 48, 59, 61, 67, 237, 251, British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) 260–263, 265, 266, 269, 270, 163, 164, 168, 184, 189, 217, 280, 291 289 Deep England 31, 37, 40, 43, 52, Brooke, Jocelyn 93, 94, 97 55, 93, 174, 183, 289 Brown, Philip 166–172, 178, Deer, Patrick 9, 11, 12, 31, 32, 40, 183–191, 209–213, 216–218, 53, 90, 93, 97, 116, 117, 142, 220, 225, 228–230 143 Burning sea myth 107 Dent, Geofrey 183, 205, 206 Buxton, John 165 DeSilvey, Caitlin 263 Index 297

Dudley, Marianna 24, 86, 87, 103, G 240 Grufudd, Pyrs 19, 20, 24, 53, 54, Du Maurier, Daphne 175, 176 58, 143 Dunwich 47, 48, 50–52, 59, 256

H E Habitat management 208, 212, 252 Ecology 199, 203, 207, 217, 253 Hanbury Brown, Robert 126, 127, Edensor, Tim 261 129, 133, 136, 145, 147, 150, Edwards, George 229, 230 151 Edwards, Sam 24, 82, 83, 229–231, Havergate Island 2, 16, 18, 161, 241 166, 167, 170, 177, 183, 184, Eerie 61, 63, 75, 259, 260, 270, 280 187, 188, 199, 204, 206, 209, Egg collecting 170, 172, 184, 185 229, 280 Englishness 1, 4, 8, 9, 20, 24, 34, 46, Hayward, James 105, 106, 108 95, 115, 161, 164, 168–170, Heritage 2–4, 18, 21, 41, 43, 47, 174, 184, 237, 279, 281, 291 60, 67, 92, 95, 104, 109, 116, Esty, Jed 8, 9, 13, 32, 40, 42, 60, 67, 164, 174, 237, 242, 269, 277, 90, 164, 278 278, 280, 288–292 Ethology 215–217, 232 Hides 16, 185, 199, 210–214, 219, Evacuation 74–79, 81, 86, 98 220, 222, 224, 225, 227–229, Evans, George Ewart 42, 46, 56 232, 280, 284, 287, 290 Hosking, Eric 79, 163, 172, 183, 211, 214, 220–222, 229 F Hunting 34, 103, 228 Felixstowe 47, 61, 78, 80, 81, 85, Huxley, Julian 164, 167, 202, 217, 98, 104, 127, 133, 135 223, 228 Film unit, RSPB 16, 200, 229, 231, Hyperreal 224, 292 287 Fisher, James 164, 165, 189, 212, 223, 224, 228, 229, 231, 291 I Folk revival 41, 289 Identity 1, 2, 12, 14, 20–22, 36, 37, Foreigners, foreign visitors 173 53, 55, 60, 61, 88, 93, 124, Front line, the 12, 15, 57, 73, 81, 125, 131, 162, 171, 183, 185, 82, 97, 278, 282 192, 224, 279, 282, 286 298 Index

Iken 15, 39, 46, 74, 85, 86, 96, 100 93–95, 97, 101, 104, 105, Immigration 32, 174, 279 109, 123, 124, 134, 135, 138, Ingold, Tim 55, 56 148, 150, 152, 179, 182, 183, Insularity 4, 44, 281 186, 190–192, 202, 216, 222, Invasion 104 237–239, 241, 243, 244, 250, exercises and rehearsal 90 252, 253, 255–257, 259, 260, fears 9, 53, 61, 98, 109, 287 264, 265, 267, 269, 270, 278, myth 32, 36, 73, 98, 105, 107, 280, 282–285, 287, 291 108 Leyshon, Catherine 3, 20, 32, 34 village 15, 63, 73, 75, 82, 91, 92, Living museum 204, 223, 224 284 Lohoar, Grant 241, 242, 251, 254, Ipswich 1, 47, 75, 77, 79, 81, 84, 258, 263–265 102, 251 Loss 3, 7, 41, 48, 49, 51, 56, 58, 61, Islands 115, 256, 257, 281, 288–290 island-laboratory 126, 127, 131, 132, 135, 137–140, 231, 280, 282, 285, 288, 290 M motif of 1, 2, 8 Macdonald, Helen 54, 163, 168, romanticism of 126 171, 215, 217, 219, 253, 254 vulnerability of 5, 7, 9, 11, 116, Macfarlane, Robert 251–253, 122, 133, 280 256–259, 264, 265 Isolation 3, 16, 33, 36, 117, 124, 125, Makkink, G.F. 215–218 127, 129, 132, 154, 162, 238, Martello towers 15, 33, 61, 62, 66, 255, 279, 281, 282, 288, 292 75, 104 Martlesham Heath 82, 99, 117, 121, 124, 125, 133, 136, 150 J Mass Observation 10, 79–81, 84, Jobson, Allan 42–44, 49, 54–60, 141, 163, 288, 289 99–101 Matless, David 19, 21, 37–39, 75, 76, 164, 166, 168, 173, 207, 213, 223, 224 K Mee, Arthur 43, 49, 50, 99 Küchler, Susanne 262, 263 Memorials 241 Meredith, Hugh 35, 37, 48, 98, 99 Messent, Claude 45, 82, 102 L Michalski, Sergiusz 262 Landscape 14, 15, 18–23, 31, 33, Middleton 42 34, 38, 40, 41, 48, 53–56, Militarised landscapes 22, 23, 88, 58, 67, 73–76, 85, 88, 90, 90, 109, 182, 281 Index 299

Military-industrial-academic com- Networks 23, 228 plex 22 New naturalists 168, 223, 228, 232 Military research 74, 82, 103, 121, New nature writing 240, 253, 254, 129, 186 263, 265, 281, 292 Minsmere 2, 16, 161, 166, 176, 177, Nicholson, Max 202–204, 206–208, 183, 186, 188, 199, 205, 206, 222, 223 209, 211, 213, 214, 220–226, No man’s land 88, 89, 97 229–232, 240, 283, 284, 287, Nostalgia 3, 21, 33, 39, 41, 51, 56, 290 67, 182, 224, 261, 263, 265, Mobilisation 14, 73, 74, 97, 147 270, 277, 290–292 Monuments 95, 262 More-than-representational theories 241 O Morton, H.V. 10, 34, 43, 52, 63 Orford 43, 49, 52, 65, 81, 83–87, 89, 91, 92, 95, 98–100, 103– 105, 108, 121, 123, 125–127, N 133, 161, 178, 230, 242, 243, National parks 33, 201–203, 279, 290 260, 268, 282, 284 National Trust (NT) 2, 18, 200, Orford Battle Training Area 74, 85, 237–243, 245, 250, 251, 257, 89, 282 258, 260–262, 264, 268, 269 Orford Ness 2, 15, 18, 49, 74, 82, Nativity, nativism 57 89, 99, 100, 103, 104, 117, Naturalisation, of the military 162 120, 121, 123–129, 131–136, Nature 138, 145–148, 183, 186, 187, Nature Conservancy (NC) 199, 199, 204, 206, 237–239, 241, 202–206, 208, 223, 240, 283, 242, 250, 254, 255, 257–259, 290 261–270, 280–284, 287, 288, nature conservation 2, 16, 18, 291, 292 161, 199–204, 207, 231, 240, Ornithology 34, 177, 188, 214, 215, 253, 280, 291 217–219, 225 nature flm 228, 232 Outdoor laboratory 168 nature protection 2, 16, 137, 161, 190, 192, 201, 202, 205, 279–283 P nature reserves 2, 14, 16, 161, Pennington, John 45, 102 168, 192, 199–204, 206, 207, Picturesque 21, 48, 99, 238, 265– 212, 214, 219, 223–225, 227, 268, 270, 280 251, 252, 279, 280, 283, 284, Pillbox 62–65, 82–84, 95, 101, 131, 287, 289–291 142, 247, 259 300 Index

Post-apocalypticism 278 Rumours 57, 99, 105, 107, 108, Priestley, J.B. 3, 4, 12, 31, 40, 52, 175, 187, 188, 283, 284, 288 63, 176 Propaganda 11, 32, 33, 75, 76, 89, 91, 105, 107, 116, 143, 144, S 206 Sack, Robert 78 Propaganda reserves 203, 205, 280 Sanctuary 174, 178, 179, 189, 205, 208, 224, 292 Savage nature 168, 176 R Science and war 18, 238, 241 Racialised imagery 174 Scientifc ornithology 215, 217, 232, Radar 2, 13, 15, 16, 58, 65, 74, 100, 286 108, 115, 117–119, 121–126, Scott, Peter 40, 228 128–132, 136, 137, 139–141, Scrape, the 211, 222, 280, 284 144–154, 164, 165, 231, 237, Sebald, W.G. 254–257, 259, 239, 278–280, 282–288, 290 267–269 Radio Direction Finding (RDF) Secrecy 16, 118, 129, 131, 134, 136, 117, 120, 125, 131, 133–139, 138, 144, 165, 179, 183–187, 146–150, 238, 243, 282, 285, 190–192, 200, 214, 239, 287 257–259, 279, 282, 283 Refuge 7, 16, 43, 142, 162, 178, Sheail, John 201–205, 208, 212, 252 240, 277, 281, 292 Shingle Street 15, 18, 35, 51, 64, 65, Replica 224, 291 75, 82, 105, 106, 108, 109, Returning servicemen 16, 162, 177, 187, 278, 282–284 183, 191, 192 Simulation 89, 90, 108, 109, 179, Rewilding 240, 253, 280 224, 225, 278, 284, 287, 291 Rings of Saturn, Te 256 Sky, skyscapes 54, 67, 278 Rowe, A.P. 118, 120, 121, 125–128, Slaughden 50–52 133, 139, 148–150, 152, 153 Southwold 1, 76, 78, 81, 104, 188 Royal Society for the Protection of Spatial control 81, 210, 213, 231, Birds (RSPB) 16, 161, 162, 232, 283, 284 164, 166–168, 183, 186–191, Stanford, J.K. 176–178, 182–185, 199–201, 203, 205–214, 217– 187–191, 214, 215, 218, 230, 220, 222, 224, 226, 228–231, 283, 284, 286 279, 280, 283, 287, 290 Stewart, Susan 266 Ruins 47, 59, 93, 179, 241, 242, Stewart, Victoria 31, 32, 34, 40, 52, 258, 260–269, 292 63, 65, 93 Index 301

Sublime 59, 238, 265, 267–270, 280 Vision 11, 16, 20, 40, 41, 48, 49, Sudbourne 52, 74, 85, 86, 96, 97 52, 55, 59, 90, 93, 116, 126, 139, 142, 144, 146, 147, 149, 152, 154, 164, 206, 225, 267, T 279, 285, 286 Tansley, Arthur 201–204, 207 visual cultures 143 Taskscape 56, 67, 278 visualisation techniques 286 Tawny Pipit 172, 173, 175, 176, 191 Temporality 14, 20, 55, 56, 88, 238, 259, 260, 262, 263, 266, 268, W 270 Wainwright, Angus 250, 255, 258, Tennyson, Julian 37–39, 43–45, 54, 262, 264, 266–269 62, 63 Wallace, Doreen 35, 37, 98 Territoriality 78, 85, 86 War Treat 4, 8, 9, 22, 32, 33, 40, Cold war 18, 23, 58, 67, 119, 47–50, 52, 62, 63, 65, 67, 68, 166, 175, 237–239, 241, 257, 77, 80, 90, 93, 97, 99, 102, 259, 262, 266, 268–270 105, 109, 115–117, 161, 172, First World War 9, 24, 33, 52, 174, 184, 185, 238, 252, 254, 53, 63, 65, 97, 117, 118, 123, 269, 270, 278, 279, 288, 290, 143, 177, 179, 200, 243, 285 292 memorials 241, 259, 262, 264, Tizard, Henry 118–121, 132, 133, 266 135, 140, 148, 152, 153 Second World War 2, 3, 11–13, Town and country tensions 95, 96, 15, 23, 24, 31, 32, 39, 40, 43, 164 49, 53, 62, 65, 66, 73–75, 81, Trigg, Dylan 261, 265, 268 100, 102, 104, 115–118, 122, 140, 143, 162, 177, 201, 207, 214, 217, 227, 238, 241, 277, U 283, 286, 289 Urban exploration (urbex) 261, 292 Warner, Rex 31, 93, 94, 97 Waterton, Emma 241, 242 Watson-Watt, Robert 119–122, V 124–129, 132, 134, 136, 137, Vale, Edmund 47–49, 61, 62 140, 147, 148, 151 Violence 22, 24, 43, 168, 169, 174, Webster, Wendy 11–13, 32, 169, 185, 254, 268 173, 174 302 Index

Wickham Market 99, 100 Woodward, Christopher 264, 267 Wildlife photography 219 Woolf, Virginia 10, 11, 31, 32, 60, Wildness 2, 48, 238, 251, 252, 254, 61, 93, 97, 291 255, 265, 280 Wright, Patrick 21, 24, 43, 52, 55, Wilkins, Arnold 120, 125, 129, 86 132–134, 138, 147 Wylie, John 20, 241, 256, 259, 263, Wolfendale, Dick 191, 211, 220 267, 268 Women’s Land Army (WLA) 74, 76