CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 19 EAST ANGLIA COAST ANGUS WAINWRIGHT Orford Ness: resolving a landscape in conflict Taking care of Orford Ness depends on appreciating the order in disorder and the beauty in ugliness: savouring its attractions and persuading others to fall in love with it. Orford Ness lies on the eastern edge of England. Its vegetated shingle spit, the largest in Europe, stretches for 16 kilometres south of Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Behind it is a thin strip of grazing marsh and mud flat, then the River Ore divides the spit from the mainland and the village of Orford, still dominated by its medieval castle. The importance of its geology and biology, reflected in its many national and international designations, led the National Trust to acquire Orford Ness in 1993. But for the visitor, its long history of military experimentation is more striking. The landscape is dominated by the structures and detritus of decades of intense scientific activity. Many who visit Orford Ness dislike it at first, including many decision-makers within the National Trust. Around the time of its acquisition many in the trust believed that the place should be ‘tidied up’ and converted back to a ‘wilderness’. This was the reaction of those used to judging the charms of lowland farms or elegant landscape parks. As the new curators, our job was to step beyond such institutional reactions and to understand Orford Ness on its own terms, to appreciate the order in disorder and the beauty in ugliness.We had to listen to its stories, learn to savour its attractions and finally persuade others to fall in love with it.This article summarises how we did this. The military connection began in 1915 when the Royal Flying Corps bought the site as a research station. During 1935–6, Robert Watson-Watt’s team began work here on the development of Radar, demonstrating its possibilities as a practical air-defence system before moving to a larger site nearby. This achievement came just in time to allow Radar to take a pivotal role during the Battle of Britain. During the second world war, experimental work focused on bomb ballistics trials on a purpose-built bombing range. The site was handed over to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in 1959, when the cold war threatened to turn into a hot war on such a scale that whole nations could be destroyed. Enormous concrete laboratories were built on the shingle to carry out environmental The coastguard lookout and some military installations about to swept away (Photo: National Trust)
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