Psychogeography

Foulness

The landlord of the George & Dragon was wary; his voice dropped in tone — almost as if afraid of being overheard: ‘Oh no, no — you can’t go up there, they wouldn’t like it.’ He elaborated. ‘They’ll think you’re looking in through their windows, you might not mean to do it — but you will, and then. . well, then they’ll call Security.’ I had only suggested that I might leave the pub in Churchend and cycle up to the next village, Courtsend, but clearly this would be a mile too far. Up until that moment I’d known I was in as strange a place as you can reach in an hour by train from London — but suddenly things had turned weird.

The landlord said I was allowed to cycle down to the quay, so I did. It was a half-mile or so, past the church of St Mary the Virgin, past the old primary school which had been converted into a ‘heritage centre’, past the gates to one of the strange complexes of concrete buildings which studded the green fields of the island. I cycled through a deserted farmyard; in the bare branches of the surrounding trees were huge rooks’ nests and the glossy, blue-black birds circled around me as I pedalled, relentlessly kraarking.

At the quay I sat and looked west to where the sun was setting behind a cloud, sending down a perfect fan of rays: violet, grey and pearly pink. At my feet the wide creek purled, the muddy banks were smooth and silvery. Geese clamoured overhead, while in the far distance the dwarfish tower blocks of Southend-on-Sea chewed on the horizon like the snaggle teeth of a senescent world. I felt altogether at peace in this place of war.

Foulness Island — I’d known about it for years. It was a place where sky, sea and mud merged; at once within easy reach and totally inaccessible. Over the years I’d picked up other dribs of information. I knew that the island — the largest off the Essex coast — was wholly owned by the Ministry of Defence and that there were still villages and farms on it, but it wasn’t until recently that I learned you could actually visit the place.

All you had to do, it transpired, was phone the landlord of the George and Dragon and ask him to put your name on the gate. Drinking by appointment — surely the ultimate licensing law. I pitched up late afternoon and a bored security guard signed me in. This being 2005 the MoD have passed management of the 10,000 acres of firing ranges and fields over to a private company, Qinetiqa. ‘Welcome to Foulness Island’ an electronic signboard greeted me as I pedalled off down a military road ruled straight across the flat landscape.

At first sight the island didn’t look that peculiar. I mean, not that peculiar if you’re familiar with quite how peculiar this part of the British coastline can be: to the north was Dengemarsh — of fever fame — an introverted empty quarter of dykes and isolated farmhouses. To the south, across the Thames estuary in Kent, was the Isle of Grain, where chav meets Deliverance in a duel of Burberry banjos.

I passed signs to ‘New England’ and ‘Havengore’ — both names of firing ranges. In the distance I could hear the sound of gunfire; in this bucolic context it sounded no more threatening than someone repeatedly slamming a car door. Somewhere to the south, out on the great morass of Maplin Sands, Britain’s biggest colony of avocets were wading and dipping. Isolated farmhouses stood kilometres off from the road, gaunt, austere buildings, their windows no more inviting than the cameras oddly angled over steel barriers, and fixed there — I later realised — to record the impact of artillery shells.

I cycled into Churchend. The weatherboard, white-painted houses were all a tad uniform and perhaps their gardens a shade too neat, but it still looked like a real village — not Midwich. It was only chatting to Fred Farenden, the landlord, in the snug of his beautiful 1659 inn that the strangeness of the place started to well over me. Fred is a rubicund and welcoming fellow, but the tale he had to tell was of enterprise constantly thwarted by indifference and bureaucratic meddling. He’d tried bird-watching weekends, B&B packages, and now he was even brewing his own beer — Beaters’ Best — but all to no avail. He still had the same sized clientele that he’d had when he first came twenty-four years before: a handful of curious trippers and yachties in the summer, then the long, quiet months of the winter.

Personally I was at a loss to understand it. It might’ve taken me thirty-five years to get to Foulness — but now I’d arrived I couldn’t conceive of any other place I’d rather be.