It was 50 years ago

Monday 12th April 1976 was when I first trod on the Kentish Dungeness shingle and walked through the front door of the world famous bird observatory (pictured above). I had arrived to become a participating member of an RSPB residential course which was being lead by the society's investigations officer Peter Robinson. Little did I know at the time that I was about to embark on a lifetime's infatuation with all things Dungeness.

I have written an awful lot about my time at Dungeness, much of it scattered throughout this blog, so will try not to replicate it here. There was a time when there was nowhere else on Earth that I would rather be and although such manic devotion may have cooled down in recent years it is still a place that causes me to feel a swathe of emotions - happiness, inspiration, longing and, if I'm being really honest, a bit of sadness.

My choice of visiting Dungeness was purely by chance - had the RSPB chosen to run that course at Sandwich Bay or Portland Bill I may well be writing about the joys of spending the past 50 years visiting either one of those bird observatories instead. A sliding doors moment. It is fair to say that Dungeness is like Marmite to many birders, they either seem to love the place or hate it with not many opinions falling in-between those two choices. I used to spend some time with Mike McDonnell, a well-known Kent birder who used to come out in a virtual rash if he had to venture onto the shingle - "I cannot understand why you like it here Steve, it's horrible!" Admittedly, on the surface it could appear charmless, especially if it was windy (which it often was) or raining (which, come to think of it, it often was too). In the early days, before the gentrification (which I will touch on later) Dungeness comprised of squat unpretentious bungalows and converted railway carriages which were - to put it politely - mostly on the ‘tired’ side. Who visited the point back then? Apart from birdwatchers and fishermen it was mainly those who had become hopelessly lost...

But. All you needed to do was look beyond the human footprint, which was admittedly difficult when there were vast nuclear power stations to be taken into account, and then the true Dungeness was awaiting to charm the enquiring mind. I fell for it within hours of arrival. I somehow could filter out those vast buildings between the observatory and the sea. It was almost as if I had known the shingle before the power stations were built (which was clearly not the case). There is a photograph that appeared in the 1957 Dungeness Bird Observatory (DBO) report that I often stare at which can almost make me weep for something that is lost but which I didn't know - an aerial shot which shows the bird observatory marooned in a sea of shingle, with open ground between it and the waves. At the time the photograph was taken the power station had not yet been built, was at the planning stage being but an architect's drawing on paper. It depicts a lost world frozen in time, as unrecoverable as a dinosaur. I would have loved to have walked out of the DBO front door and crunched my way across that stony wilderness, to hit the sea and look north-westwards along the beach at... nothing. As to why it resonates so strongly with me and that I genuinely feel a connection to this bygone era is part of the mystery behind Dungeness’s aura and its hold on me.

But maybe that mystery can be partly solved. One of the first books that I read when taking an interest in birds was HG Alexander’s ‘Seventy Years of Birdwatching’ in which Dungeness not only gets many mentions but also its very own chapter. This book, and his description of the shingle, utterly captivated me, so when I ended up there myself I was armed with a certain amount of historical knowledge of the place - I knew about the once breeding Kentish Plovers and Stone Curlews; of the old RSPB watchers and how, in 1916, HGA had come across a Cream-coloured Courser striding across the stony wilderness. I arrived with HGA’s benevolent shadow accompanying me.

I was lucky that my fellow course members were a delight to be with, that the weather was kind, and that we were shown the whole of the area at its very best. The Black Redstarts, Mediterranean Gull and Long-eared Owl that we saw were almost secondary. It did not take much to persuade me to return to DBO the following September and by then the spell had been cast. I had been hooked. Between 1976 and 1997 I could claim to have been very much a regular, in some of those years even semi-resident. Serious illness and a fracturing of my Dungeness friendship group found me largely shunning the place until 2010 when I returned for what turned out to be a second golden period on the shingle. These two blocks of time held differing narratives, with pre-1997 being driven by the birds and post-2010 more by the place.

And this latest 'block of time' has been wonderful. I suppose maturity (apparently!) gives the observer a more discerning lens to see through, your thought processes being equipped to think beyond the birds, plants and insects, your eyes primed to take in the whole rather than the natural history detail. This time has seen a whole new level of Dungeness appreciation that could have survived a complete absence of birds and people (but I'm glad that wasn't the case!) The skies have never seemed bigger, the spirituality of the shingle never stronger.

What have been the avian highlights? There have been plenty of rarities, the pick of them being White-tailed Plover, Least Sandpiper, Booted Warbler, Sardinian Warbler and Western Bonelli's Warbler - but for me it is the spectacle of migration that stands out - the majestic flocks of Pomarine Skuas making their way up-channel during May; murky October mornings when thousands of thrushes are grounded; late-autumn finch extravaganzas; and best of all, those special September days when hirundines display an absolute burning desire to leave our shores in their tens of thousands. But it isn't just about the birds...

The people have left an indelible mark on me, some who came but briefly into my orbit and issued forth kindness, others that went on to become firm friends. Among those who have shared in my Dungeness time (and apologies to anybody that should be here and who I have missed out) were: Pete Aley; Barry Banson; Rosalind and Sally Barnes; Bivvy; Steve Broyd; Peter Boxall; Mike Buckland; Dorrian Buffery; Pete Burness and Pam; Dick Burness; Martin Casemore; Harry Cawkell; Jack, Lynn, Heather, Phil and Becky Chantler; Sean Clancy; John Clements; David Coker; Derek Coleman; Tim Collins; Steve Cox; Dave Davenport; Mick Davies; Neil Davies; Dave and Hazel Eland; Alastair Forsyth; Peter Grant; Graeme Green; Tony Greenland; Lee Gregory; Andy Hanby; Peter Heathcote; Alan Heaven; Mark Hollingworth; Gill Hollamby; Gary Howard; Anna Hughes; Tim and Carol Inskipp; Nigel Jarman; Owen Leyshon; Jim Lidgate; Mike McDonnell; Sean McMinn; Roger Morris; Steve Morgan; Dave Okines; Ray O'Reilly; Kevin Osborn; Chris and Carol Philpott; Keith and Fran Redshaw; Nick and Elizabeth Riddiford; Tim Ruck; Bob Scott; James Siddle; Mick Sinden; Steve Smith; Tim Toohig; Paul Trodd; Kenny Thomas; Colin Turley; Ray and Janet Turley; Jacques Turner-Moss; Dave Walker; Mary Waller; Richard Watkins; Barry Wright; Tom Wright and John Young. Some of these names I knew but for a short period of time but they played their part in making Dungeness a special place  - others have a reach that went far beyond that of the shingle. I thank them all. 

What of the Dungeness of today, 50 years down the line? This is where a bit of sadness creeps in. It has changed. Social historians would have a field day in examining how the rise in the numbers of people visiting the shingle has grown, and explaining how the demographic of those that do so has shifted. My own take on it is that the visitor numbers started to mushroom when the broadsheet press and the colour Sunday supplements started to cover the region largely in the wake of the exploits of the film-director and artist Derek Jarman, who lived at Dungeness (Prospect Cottage) and created a garden part botanical and part art installation. This enticed the curious to make the trip south, to not only see the garden but also sample the big skies and the shabby-chic that they had read about. The bohemian types (among others) started to buy their own pieces of Dungeness, to give the modest bungalows 'Grand Design' makeovers, to replace the working vehicles of the fisher-folk with large, new shiny vehicles straight off of premier forecourts. What began as a gradual change then accelerated. Dwellings that would have cost you under £50,000 now cost well over a million. And with these changes came the massive increase in weekend and bank-holiday traffic, chasing the quirkiness of this once backwater of Kent, now furnished with several food outlets and independent craft shops, a lighthouse to climb up and the mini-railway to ride. Annual footfall is now in the low millions. The number of people walking their dogs across the general area increased exponentially (to see a dog back in 1976 was akin to seeing a Wryneck!) Dungeness is no longer a secret, no longer a hidden corner of Kent. It is the place of hundreds if not thousands of daily multi-media posts and feeds, celebrating the locally-caught fish lunches, crab sandwiches, the lighthouses, steam from train funnels, narrow-gauge railway lines, boardwalks across the shingle and the long abandoned bric-a-brac of the fishing industry. Great for the day tripper, wonderful for the local business owner, but not good for me and 'my' Dungeness. 

However... you can still find the old Dungeness. You need to be up early in the morning, or wait until the day-trippers have all gone home. That is when I venture out. Walk across to the fishing boats and meander through the adjacent containers, nets, drums and rope. Sniff out the odd migrant and take in the local history. Or stand on the site of the old school that was abandoned before the start of the Second World War and let your mind drift back to when the school bell rang and the children chanted their times tables. Even go further afield and seek out the lonely foundations of the old dwellings at Dengemarsh Gully. Go and find the day markers on the beach, mostly now toppled over. Visit the shingle swells inland which do not see a person from one day to the next. It is still there. You just need to make a bit of effort and have a vivid imagination to resurrect it.

And what of the observatory? After 74 years it is still in operation. I last stayed there in September 2024 but do not know whether I will do so again. I need my privacy now which is something that bird observatories cannot guarantee. The thought that I may well have spent my last night there would once have filled me with intense sadness, but now that doesn't bother me so much. We are of our time and what fills that time shifts and changes along with us. Maybe our time is up. I cannot tell you how much pleasure, what wonderful moments and how much sheer joy that building has given to me, whether it was when staying for just one night or during a lengthy spell when I acted as an assistant warden. 

It is, without doubt, one of my happy places and in that I know that I am not alone.