Spectacular remnants of a dead-end technology, the three concrete “listening ears” at Denge near Dungeness in Kent are the best known of the various early warning acoustic mirrors built along Britain’s coast.
The only way of seeing the Denge sound mirrors close up is during one of the public open days run by the RSPB. There is no public access to the Dungeness mirrors, which are in the middle of a disused gravel pit. Contact the RSPB for the dates of future open days.
A forerunner of radar, the sound mirrors were intended to provide early warning of enemy aeroplanes (or airships) approaching Britain across the English Channel. They did work, but the development of faster aircraft made them less useful, as an incoming aircraft would be within sight by the time it had been located. Increasing ambient noise made the mirrors harder to use successfully, and then radar rendered acoustic detection redundant.
There are three different designs of sound mirror at Denge; the 200′, 20′ and 30′ sound mirrors.
The 200 foot sound mirror
This is the biggy. There is another similar mirror at Maghtab in Malta.
Old photo
Thanks to Lawrence Mayes
The 30 foot sound mirror
The 30′ dish still has the metal pole which a microphone would have been fixed to. The mirror worked by focusing the noise of aircraft engines onto the microphone, which amplified the sound. The relatively slow aircraft of the time could be heard and located before they came into sight.
The height of the top of the flight of concrete steps down into the chamber below the dish show how far the ground level has fallen since the sound mirror was originally built.
The 20 foot sound mirror
The 20 foot sound mirror at Denge is a bit closer in design to the First World War period acoustic mirror at Kilnsea in East Yorkshire.
Denge sound mirror history
The book Echoes from the Sky by Richard N Scarth is the definitive work on the post-WWI sound mirrors, including the Denge mirrors and the Maltese example. Published by the Hythe Civic Society in 1999, it gives a detailed history of the sound mirrors and associated research projects, and is essential reading if you are interested in the story behind the mirrors. As Scarth has pointed out on the guided walks, his book is based on detailed research and original primary sources, rather than stuff found on the internet.
The book was reprinted in 2014 with additional material from Scarth’s research, and is available from Hythe Civic Society.
Conservation
July 2003: Britain’s Concrete Ears To Be Saved By English Heritage. English Heritage used a £500 000 grant from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund to help stabilise and preserve the mirrors. Local authorities secured £125 000 to provide visitor interpretation as part of the Historic Fortifications Network.
The foundations were propped up – see Paul Shearsmith’s photo showing how the 20′ mirror had been undermined – and the mirrors put on an island to protect them from the morons who seem to enjoy physically destroying historic structures and covering them in graffiti.
Location and visiting
The mirrors are near Greatstone in Kent. An approximate grid reference is TR 075213.
The only way of getting up close to the Denge sound mirrors is by go to an open day run by the RSPB. It is well worth doing – the mirrors really are impressive close up.
Other than the open days, there is no public access to the Dungeness mirrors, which are in the middle of a disused gravel pit.
Contact the RSPB for the dates of future open days.
It used to be possible for trespassers to gain access to the mirrors, but this is no longer physically possible. The deep lake created by gravel extraction has been extended to completely surround the mirrors, which are now on an island. The only access to the island is via a swing bridge, which is locked in the open position when not being used for guided walks.
The good news is that this should keep out vandals and undesirables!
If you visit the sound mirrors, feel free to add your photographs to the Sound Mirrors pool at Flickr.
Place names
The location of the mirrors is described in a number of ways depending where you look. I’ve gone for Denge, as it seems popular, and is used in assorted (quasi-)official sources including historic quotations in the book Echoes from the Sky.
Peter Faulkner of The Greatstone Website say: For the record, the Sound Mirrors are physically sited in Greatstone on an island on Greatstone Lakes. Dungeness is some three miles way to the south (albeit it is accurate to say that the Mirrors are in the Dungeness National Nature Reserve). The area known as Denge Marsh or Dengemarsh [there is no place actually called Denge] starts about a mile to the south east and continues southwards. Lade is not a place but a name taken from an old Napoleonic fort called Lade Fort located about a mile to the south east of the Mirrors in Lydd-on-Sea.
Links
- The Romney Marsh Countryside Project website has short history of the three sound mirrors.
- Dungeness National Nature Reserve:
At the back of two gravel pits at Lade on an island are the three concrete listening mirrors, built in the 1920’s and 1930’s to detect enemy aircraft as they approached Britain. This is the only site in Britain where all three designs are situated in one place. This early warning system with a range of 20 miles became obsolete by the outbreak of the Second World War, but they have survived and are popular with visitors on pre-arranged guided walks in the summer.
- The Denge sound mirrors were the 20th Century Society’s Building of the Month for October 2003. “Twentieth century lumps of concrete have only recently been recognised, even amongst English Heritage”, said Kendall. Did nobody tell them concrete was cool?!
- Justin Bennett’s website has a scan of a newspaper article on the Lade wall.
Sound mirror music, art and fashion
The Denge sound mirrors have featured in all kinds of art and music projects.
- In June 2001 The Guardian had an article about an acoustic mirror based art proposal (which has not happened):
This project, though, thematically twists the mirrors by 180 degrees, turning what was to be a shield of defence and surveillance into a tool for communicating with the continent. A new sound mirror will be built on Dungeness and a second facing it near Boulogne, probably at Wimereux … So when you stand at a certain point in the mirror, you’ll be able to hear the voice of the person standing by the mirror in France – but only at an exact spot in the mirror. Move just a centimetre and the sound will disappear.
- The band Turin Brakes used pictures of the Denge mirrors on the covers of their CDs Ether Song and Long Distance.
- … as did Blank & Jones on Monument and the video A Forest.
- … while The Prodigy included the mirrors in the video for Invaders Must Die.
- … as did Nicki Minaj with the Freedom video.
- There have also been fashion shoots at the sound mirrors,
- graphic short stories,
- and “rip-roaring tales of comedic supernatural intrigue set in 1930s Britain”.
More information
News and updates about the Denge sound mirrors. The Denge mirrors are the most famous, but there are a number of other early warning acoustic mirrors in Britain. There is another 200 ft mirror at Maghtab in Malta.
If you visit any of the sound mirrors, you can add your photographs to the Sound Mirrors pool at Flickr.
They worked for only a few years, so do we really need to spend millions trying to maintain them as a permanent scar on the landscape for eternity? Suggest we just let they decay gracefully.
Suspect photographs and plans give 99% of the historical information we need about these concrete utility constructions which litter the marsh.
Agreed. These don’t have the level of historical significance necessary to justify maintenance costs or allowing them to ruin a landscape.
I am amazed that you wrote that.
They are of major importance on several boundaries.
They were the first device set up to attempt to locate where enemy aircraft were coming from.
They were also the first electronic warfare device.
They used electronic valves for amplification and required a war effort to make them.
They saved a lot of people from death and destruction as the combat took place at sea.
Thus they do have incredible value to the history for the defence of these islands.
If you want these destroyed then do the Martello towers that are now obsolete and over 200 years old
https://youtu.be/NrGMU1Stigs
Singer James Blake also used the wall for the cover of his 2013 album ‘Overgrown’. The BBC TV show ‘Coast’ showed how the sound mirrors worked, and experimented to see if they could detect an aircraft [De Havilland Tiger Moth G-ACDC], which it did, the result being registered on modern instrumentation.
Hi, do you know which series and episode this was featured on please?
Series One, Episode One. Kent was the start point of the show’s clockwise circuit of Britain’s coast. And damn interesting it was, too.
Canterbury band Syd Arthur have an album called Sound Mirror with a cover photo of one
There is an Open day at the Greatstone Sound MIrrors on Saturday 15 July 2017. Please see http://theromneymarsh.net/whatson/2017/07/15#events for more information
What was the music used in this episode? I’m sure it had been in the charts either around that time or before?
they had the right idea, on the right track for radar in the end !
The band The Oscillation used images of the mirrors in their video for Future Echo dir Julian Hands https://youtu.be/mDxz4xRlKac
They also feature in a BBC programme with Jim Moir (aka comedian Jim Reeves who lives in Kent) who walks from Greatstone to Dungeness and explores the site.
They are an interesting illustration of how science and technology move forward. Sometimes the development ends up being a cul-de-sac and sometimes it moves forward to a new stage.
These relied on sound and sound waves travel as we know from our school days, at 340m/s.
These detected the sound traveling in advance of the aircraft. As aircraft moved from being slow moving biplanes to faster monoplanes the gap between detection using the mirrors and being able to see the planes became less and less. By the time the noise had been detected the plane was over the mirror and so any advantage was lost.
The development of radar using radio waves travelling at the speed of light produced a much better early warning in advance of the plane reaching the detector. (radio waves were broadcast and bounced back from objects in the sky- a simple calculation worked out the distance of the plane)