Germander Speedwell's work for the Soundings from the Estuary exhibition:

 

For Soundings from the Estuary, Germander foraged on foreshores, pored over pilot maps, quizzed twitchers, apprehended historians, and intercepted the internet for information – both old and new, formal and local – and arranged her findings in a Germanderly manner into pieces on the following subjects.  

 

A few sample lines are shown from each, with the full versions downloadable, and full notes/glossaries on each piece available free on request.

 

 

The Rise and Fall of the Lower Hope

Physical features in and along the Thames Estuary, and their names

Islands and inlets, settlements and sandbanks, towns and attractions, including some lost due to erosion or human intervention, and some newly created by development.  Names both ancient and modern are included, from those found on maps and on location, to nicknames used only by locals.  

 

“...Fleets, creeks, guts and gores

Bights, banks, hithes and havens

Dozens of Hundreds

And the Lathe of Scray…”

 

 

 

 

 

Sightings

Reports of birds, and other flighted activity, in the Thames Estuary

The birdlife of the Thames Estuary, as interpreted and described by its human inhabitants.  Including local names and nicknames for birds, the language of birdwatchers, the misinterpretations and mis-spellings of amateurs, the reporting of sightings in bird hide record books and on birdwatchers’ websites, and the curious contradictions of wildfowling, which continues adjacent to bird conservation.  There are also a few lines from the fascinating 1950 ornithological classic, The Birds of the North Kent Marshes, from the time before cameras routinely took over from guns as a means of capturing sightings, lightships were still manned by humans, and the last corncrakes were seen in the estuary.  

 

“...Avocet egg watch

 Pipits on pit-stops

 Godwits on slipway

 And ducks flushed from ditches…”

 

 

 

 

Soundings

Descriptions and interpretations of the songs and calls of birds found in the Thames Estuary

A list of human attempts at describing and interpreting bird sounds, as found on birdsong record narrations, in bird identification books, in sighting reports, or observed by Germander.  

 

 "A squeaky trolley

 A windy whistle

 A curious purring

 Sibilant shivering

 And whimpering trill..."

 

 

 

 

The How, What, Where and Why of Hoo

The Hoo Peninsula of Kent is surprisingly remote and unknown for somewhere so close to London.  In response to finding the same limited - and sometimes inaccurate - information about the area constantly repeated, Germander has collected the lesser-mentioned minutiae of Hoo – its hidden institutions, industries, agriculture and histories, names of places, houses and characters, and re-asserted the correct meaning of its enigmatic name.   

 

 “...Mudflats to saltmarsh to cliff of chalk ridge

 Launching of seaplanes and assembly of airships

 Summer walkers, overwintering waders

 Spring onions year-round and autumnal intermittents…”

 

 

 

 

Loadings

Trade conveyed via the Thames today

The curious and multifarious items, from rubbish to richnesses, which are conveyed via the Thames today, though rather more invisibly than in the past.  

 

“...Ballast and bitumen, cement clinker and gypsum

 Pallets of bricks and waste silt for landfill

 Sand to Battersea, dredgings to Greenwich

 Crushed rock to Dagenham Dock

 And gravel to the Isle of Grain….”

 

 

 

 

Landings

Shipping movements in the Thames Estuary  

The grand, evocative or curious names of vessels and ships that work in the Thames Estuary today, and their journeys, locally and internationally.   Most of these were found in the Port of London's shipping movement listings over a few months in 2007/2008.

 

"...CELTIC CARRIER to Hamburg

BRITANNIA BEAVER off to dredge the Wash

TRANS ARCTIC arriving from Algeciras

And GLOBAL HARVEST in to Sheerness..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

All pieces © Germander Speedwell 2008.  

Design and formatting by Stephanie Thomson.