Collective memories

Harry Cawkell would tap his pipe out, lean back into the common room chair, survey the eager faces before him and then begin. Anecdotes and stories, gossip and rumour, all had a place in the show that had now started. Harry, Dungeness Bird Observatory’s (DBO) long standing honorary secretary, loved nothing more than to talk about ‘the old times’ with any birders that happened to be in his orbit when he popped into the obs. For those of us who had known Harry for a few years the stories would be familiar, but we listened with avid interest regardless. Some of his stories were so familiar, and so rarely did he deviate in their telling, that we would know exactly what words were about to be spoken. Some of these became catchphrases. Harry’s stories - and Harry’s telling of them - became part of the Dungeness story itself. And then, in 1999, Harry died. And with him went those stories…

They didn’t entirely go. Some of us remembered them, or at least the odd personally selected highlight. I can visualise Harry and his brother walking to Dungeness from their home in Hastings, swimming across the River Rother at Rye to save on a several mile detour - this would have been in the 1930s - all thanks to a session of ‘DBO Jackanory’ with Harry. He didn’t (as far as we know) keep a diary and we certainly never saw him with a notebook. There were times when people suggested that his storytelling should be recorded, but it didn’t happen. A vast depository of social history was unfortunately lost.

But Harry wasn’t the only one to have a head full of Dungeness memories. There were others just like him, only they did not have such a willing audience, were not natural raconteurs or felt that their own DBO history would be of little interest to others. Fortunately there were DBO trustees (in particular Gill Hollamby) who thought otherwise and decided that to lose one headful of memories was unfortunate but to lose several more would be foolish. It was decided to bring such recollections together and publish them, to head off any further historical brain-drains. So the search was on for willing volunteers!

Seeing that DBO was founded in 1952 the first problem was finding birders from back in the early days to commit their memories to paper - there was no dressing it up, most of them were no longer with us. Fortunately old bird reports, newsletters and various other publications harboured material that was ripe for trawling through. Old diaries were consulted. Regular (and non-regular) visitors were cajoled into becoming part of the project. Some responded with enthusiasm, others needed time to commit. After a few months of gestation a booklet was published in 2022 - ‘Memories of Dungeness and Dungeness Bird Observatory 1900-1990’. It is, quite simply, a love letter to Dungeness, penned by 40 devotees of the shingle, some long gone, others still walking the beach today and birding the sea and sallows.

The decision was made to not over-edit the contributions so as to keep the character of each author, which has worked well. It may be tempting to assume that 40 people writing about the same place might result in something a touch repetitive, but that is far from the truth - Dungeness means many different things to the authors and the varying time-line allows the modern-day reader to time travel back to eras when there was no power station, Kentish Plovers and Stone Curlews still bred, there was an off-shore turbulence of warm-water from the power station outflow, the ‘Thing’ watched over us, the observatory had no shower or central heating and Little Egret was a species that you ran for!

What comes across is an unabashed affection for the place, with any wallowing in nostalgia tempered by an understanding that Dungeness has helped mould the contributor into the birder - even the person - that they now are. I was particularly pleased to read Brian Austen’s contribution. Back in 2012 I was staying at DBO at the same time as a quiet, unassuming elderly man. It was Brian. Throughout the 1950s he had been a regular visitor, culminating in a spell as honorary warden in the early autumn of 1959, one showered with rare birds. Shortly afterwards he left the country to pursue his career and only returned to stay at the observatory in 2010. What struck me was how, when telling me about his Dungeness days some 60 years before, his eyes sparkled and a beatific smile lit up his face, regardless of the lengthy lapse in his Dungeness time. Then it hit me - nobody’s Dungeness is the same but we are all imbued in the very same Dungeness. We may come to it from different eras, and leave it from time to time but it never leaves us - nor we it. I had been struggling to come to terms with a difficult spell in my Dungeness story, but this disturbance was cleared up and explained in one fell swoop - it was that we were all of our time and that is what went a long way in defining our relationship with DBO - the magic being that our times happily crossed over with those of others, even rubbing up against times that preceded our own and infiltrating those that are yet to come. So HG Alexander is still watching a Cream-coloured Courser on West Beach, Bob Scott and Peter Grant are still trying to suss out the juvenile terns on the patch, David Walker and the May Bank Holiday boys are still watching the Black-browed Albatross resting on the sea, Martin Casemore is still hyperventilating at the fishing boats having found his Acadian Flycatcher and I am still sitting on the bank of the moat on a July evening in 1979, breathing in the scent of the Nottingham Catchfly in the knowledge that there is nowhere else in the world that I’d rather be. We will never leave. Nor will any of the 40 who contributed to the book. We are embedded.

There are still copies of this glorious memory bank available to purchase. Full of joy, atmospheric photographs and people baring and sharing their Dungeness souls. Just click here for details.