Acoustic early warning systems, spectacular remnants of a dead-end technology on the British coast
Filming with a drone – The Dungeness Sound Mirrors. pic.twitter.com/Kc2zZ0CZJW
— Tim Paine (@TimPaine) June 25, 2016
CEMEX UK commissioned ECP Video to produce a short documentary on the history of the gravel pit at Dungeness, which is now an RSPB nature reserve.
"Sound mirrors are no longer a failed technology. They are art." https://t.co/cNQixCkKxD pic.twitter.com/2gbC02lJ4T
— theQuietus (@theQuietus) July 11, 2016
The mirrors’ fruitlessness may be forgiven if only because of the uncanny impression one gets that they were built for a future not yet seen or understood. Indeed, its second life as a monument and relic has been more enduring than its first.
Christo Hall visits the sound mirrors on the Kent coast with photographer Stuart Leech and “finds an obscure functionalism melting into majestic land art”, in The Second Life Of Concrete: Brutalism’s Renaissance, published by The Quietus on 10 July 2016.
The RSPB – which now owns the site – is holding an open day at the Denge sound mirrors on Saturday 23 July 2016, from 10:00 to 15:00. Open days are the ONLY WAY to access the Denge listening ears.
Saturday 23 July
Drop in any time between 10am and 3pm
Price: Free. Donations are welcome.On this day only, RSPB Dungeness will open up the reserve for free! Come and see what this fantastic place has to offer and get up close to our recently acquired, historical Sound Mirrors (or Listening Ears)! Come along for the day where we open them up for everybody to have a wander around the site and talk to our staff and volunteers about what we are doing to give nature a home here. So why not spend the day surrounded in nature and history and afterwards head to the visitor centre for a cup of tea or an ice cream to round the day off nicely.
Please note that I have absolutely no connection with the RSPB or the open days. Make you sure that you confirm the details of the open day with the RSPB before going – do not rely on this Sound Mirrors website.
The Remembering 1916 – Life on the Western Front exhibition about the First World War in the year 1916 is being held at the Whitgift Exhibition Centre in south Croydon from 12 March to 31 August 2016. It is well worth seeing.
The exhibition covers many aspects of the war, from Gallipoli to Jutland to the home front to conscientious objectors, with extensive displays of uniforms, documents, photographs, art, memorabilia, weapons and other exhibits from Britain, France and Germany.
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Full-size mock-ups using real objects portray rooms in a 1916 house, a horse-drawn wagon, a trench on the first day of the Somme, a fort at Verdun and a German machine gun position.
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While there is nothing about sound mirrors there (as far as I could see), there is a display about Zeppelins.
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Also of aviation interest is the display about an old boy of the school who was shot down (fatally) by the Red Baron.
The exhibition explicitly avoids getting bogged down in the politics and debates about who started the war or “lions led by donkeys”. In a refreshingly different approach, it attempts to give a 1916-eye view, and not simply see things through the lens of modern ideas about politics, class and gender – or a late-1980s TV sitcom.
The exhibition is not far from central Croydon: plenty of buses stop nearby.
Winding, a track from the album One Day by FunKingPoets, with images of the Denge sound mirrors.
Huw Morgan is a composer, organist and conductor is “drawn to the power of ancient, haunted landscapes and their lost inhabitants; fascinated by impermanence, space, and time.” This is the first perfomance of his new piece Sound Mirrors for organ and fixed media electronics, inspired by the Denge listening ears: “alien structures haunting the coastal landscape, still listening to the skies…”.
It was given by the composer as part of an Automatronic concert in the JAM-on-the-Marsh 2015 festival. Field recordings were made at St-Mary-on-the-Marsh and elsewhere on Romney Marsh.
BBC interview about the sound mirror in Redcar: “In 1916 it was sitting in open farm land. Since then a modern housing estate has grown up around it. The concrete structure has not always been treated well. When it stopped being used to detect German raids a farmer used it as a spot to store manure. There have been problems with bike enthusiasts using it as a ramp to practice their stunts.” Release date: 22 January 2014.
Beaumont Brown Architects describe their work to restore the Sunderland sound mirror which was recently completed.
![[Photograph of the three sound mirrors at Denge]](/images/mirror/dungeness99.jpg "The three early warning sound mirrors at Denge in Kent, (Photo: Michael Rich, 2004-09-12)")