Baleen
WORDS: Gary Budden LOCATION: Kent There was all the stuff you’d expect; heart lungs liver kidneys etc. Baleen thick and numerous like bristles on an old paint-brush. But nothing in the gut, half-digested and smelling of pricey French perfume. Empty
Port Lympne: Matrimony at the Fascist Zoo
LOCATION: Kent WORDS & PICTURES: Kit Caless One gentle morning the post arrived when I was working from home. I opened an envelope that had something flat, rectangular and solid inside. It was a wedding invitation from an old school
A Palaeolithic Invocation at Barnfield Pit, Kent
LOCATION: Swanscombe, north-west Kent MUSIC: Hand of Stabs Unofficial Britain is delighted to share another site-specific performance by the experimental sound collective Hand of Stabs. In Barnfield Pit, the bones of our ancestors groan and shift uneasily in the shadow of Bluewater shopping centre.
Mock Rock in Ramsgate
LOCATION: Ramsgate WORDS: Gareth E. Rees I was on a trip to Ramsgate with the kids at the weekend. Approaching the harbour from the west I found myself walking down the B2054, otherwise known as the Royal Parade, an elevated
Specifics: Thoughts on birds and birdwatching
LOCATION: Kent WORDS: Gary Budden The sky is moody and grey. We park up in a windy carpark by Reculver towers, see two sand martins dart by towards the sandstone cliffs. They’re specific to this place and newly back for the
Ossuary English and Hythe’s ‘Human Lasagne’
LOCATION: Kent WORDS: Ben Thompson The 13th Century church of St Leonard’s occupies the kind of hillside position – looking down over the stranded Cinque Port of Hythe and then out across the English channel – which is traditionally described
Dieback
Unofficial Britain is pleased to host new fiction, for those with time to spare for a longer read. Today, a short story by regular contributor Gary Budden… LOCATION: Blean Woods, Kent Dieback Off the path, the forest sways and
The Medway Megaliths & the Phantoms of Blue Bell Hill
LOCATION: Kent WORDS: Gary Budden Mention the words megalith and Neolithic to many people and they will instantly think (unless their eyes, understandably, glaze over) Stonehenge. Maybe Avebury, Silbury Hill or the standing stones at Callanish. Postcard-ready sites away from
Beowulf in Faversham? In search of a Kentish Grendel
LOCATION: Kent WORDS & PICTURES by GARY BUDDEN It’s a compelling thought.; the monster Grendel inhabiting the bleak marshlands of the Isle of Harty (part of what we now call Sheppey), just over the water from the town of Faversham, separated
An Abandoned Monument to Arrogance
LOCATION: KENT Neolithic soul drone collective Hand of Stabs perform ‘Hallux Working’ by a derelict monument to a man who chopped his toe off in 1835… “In February 1835, the 5th Earl of Darnley was walking in the grounds of
