Earlier this month, I found myself at the Open Day at Lullingstone Country Park, in Kent, running a print workshop. It was a lovely summer’s day and families picked flowers, grasses and leaves from the surroundings, which we then used to make prints, either using light sensitive paper to make cyanotypes, or by bashing the plants with pebbles so they left an impression on the paper. (No protected species were harmed in these activities!)
My involvement was part of the launch event for the Layered Landscapes – a community engagement project delivered by the North West Kent Countryside Partnership, in collaboration with LV21. The project is funded through the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme from Defra and the Kent Downs National Landscape (Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty).
During the project, which lasts for a year, finishing in spring 2025, the partnership will work with local schools, community groups, and visitors to public events in the Sevenoaks area of Kent, to celebrate the unique landscape and geology of the region, to promote an understanding and appreciation of the natural landscape of the Kent Downs and to encourage sustainable interaction with that environment.
At each event, creative activities using mixed media techniques in a variety of mediums, with environmentally sustainable recycled and natural materials, will encourage participants to explore all the layers of the local landscape from high in the sky, through layers of trees, to rivers and watercourses, each with their diverse wildlife, and then down to the chalk, the soil and the roots that lie under the ground.
‘We’re exploring multiple different layers of this unique landscape,’ explains Päivi Seppälä, lead artist for Layered Landscapes. ‘The workshops and other community events give us opportunities to learn and delve deeper into those layers in a variety of creative ways. So alongside the visual artworks, we have a poet exploring the nature and sounds of the river, and we have an archaeology workshop, looking at what lies beneath, and how bygone eras have shaped the landscape. We’re also working with a sound artist to record bats and a film-maker to bring a digital layer to the final artwork.’
While work with schools will consider all layers, public workshops will each explore a different themed layer.
‘For every event that we run, we’re working with artists to produce artwork that resonates with that layer,’ says countryside Project Officer, Amanda Hedges. ‘For our archaeological event, we’ll have a brief talk about the area from an archaeologist and then we’ll go for a walk along the River Darent, past Lullingstone Castle and carry on to Lullingstone Villa. When we get back, everyone will have the opportunity to look at and handle various artefacts, before expressing their experience through creating a piece of art – they might, perhaps, want to use air drying clay to make a miniature pot, or perhaps do some brick printing.’
Lullingstone Roman Villa (unfortunately, closed to visitors for maintenance at the moment) is a good example of how geology influences the built environment. At Lullingstone, in the North Downs, the porous chalk aquifer meets impermeable rock. The water can’t drain away and so it moves up, to form a natural spring. Springs were sacred to the Romans, who also needed reliable sources of fresh water, so their settlements were often built near to these natural springs.
The workshop I was involved in at Lullingstone, focused on plants. The next one, on Saturday July 6th at the Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve (details below), will focus on exploring flying insects and pollinators. Here participants will get the chance to make simple automata of winged bugs, such as bees, butterflies, beetles and dragonflies, to take home. This is a free, family-friendly, drop-in activity with everyone, regardless of age, welcome to join in.
The Layered Landscapes project will conclude in spring 2025, with a series of pop-up public exhibitions, across the Sevenoaks area, featuring the artwork produced throughout the project. The exhibitions will feature multimedia and be multi-sensory, explains Amanda Hedges.
‘During our workshop on water, we’ll be working with a poet, she says. ‘We’ll do river dipping and we’ll be asking people to talk about what they see and hear, which we’ll then work together to turn into a poem. We’ll use video and we also hope to play recordings the participants’ impression of the water, to produce something that is all-encompassing – a holistic experience.’
The Cross-Channel Geopark
The context for all this creativity is the ‘Cross-Channel Geopark‘, which is seeking UNESCO Global Geopark status. While Layered Landscapes is specific to the Sevenoaks area of Kent, Amanda Hedges, explains, there are many similar projects in different areas of the geopark, on both sides of the Channel, each contributing to the process of obtaining UNESCO Global Geopark status.
‘Each individual project is a small puzzle piece that makes up the bigger picture, and demonstrates why that particular area is special, and how it deserves to be recognised as being special, she says. ‘Every single part of the geopark has something unique about it.’
The Cross-Channel Geopark spans two protected landscapes – the chalk hills of the Kent Downs and the Caps et Marais d’OPale Regional National Park in Northern France – and the seascape that connects them.
I love all the art projects that I am lucky enough to get involved in but this one is particularly interesting to me, Some of you might know that back in the day, I studied geology at university. The cross-hatching, stippling and shading that you’ll find in a lot of my drawings originates in the geological field drawings that I did at college. And, because it’s where I grew up and lived until recently, I know a bit about the way that geology shapes the Kent landscape. I’d heard about geoparks and vaguely knew what they were, but the Cross-Channel Geopark was a new concept for me but, thinking about it, it makes perfect sense.
To qualify as a geopark, a region must have a geological heritage of international significance. But geoparks are not just about geology, they encompass wildlife human activity and areas of archaeological interest. Global Geoparks became an official UNESCO programme in 2015 and, at the moment, there are 213 UNESCO Global Geoparks around the world, with four in Ireland and nine in the UK.
The Cross-Channel Geopark, if given UNESCO status, would be the world’s first cross-border geopark, united by the sea. So what unites these two regions, post- Brexit, I hear you ask….well, are you sitting comfortably, here comes the science. I think it’s really interesting, and it’s all to do with a MEGAFLOOD…
Britain and France are connected by a layer of chalk that runs from Dover to Calais and, because of geological events hundreds of thousands of years ago, they share a landscape.
One hundred million years ago, much of Western Europe was covered in a warm sea. Minute single celled algae (foraminifera) with calcium-rich skeletons thrived in this environment.
As they died, their skeletons fell to the seabed and built up. They were compressed over time to form chalk. The picture below shows the fossil of a echinoid that I found on a construction site in the North Downs. It is probably about 80 million years old, from when the area was covered in water. The picture on the right shows what it might have looked like – although photographs from 80 million years ago are quite hard to come by!
Later, massive movements of the Earth’s crust caused this chalk layer to fold, forming hills that stretched from London, all the way to Northern France. When sea levels were high these hills acted as a land bridge, which humans and animals migrated across. The hills also acted as a dam, restraining the giant ice lake in the southern North Sea. But approximately 450,000 years ago, the lake breached the chalk ridge, causing an enormous ‘megaflood’, which eroded channels into the soft chalk, cutting England off from France and creating the English Channel.
The Kent and French coasts are still connected by a layer of chalk that runs under the Channel. The legacy of these events is two landscapes, separated by water, that share very similar features including white cliffs and rare chalk grasslands and streams, with their associated wildlife.
Traces of this geological history can be found across the area, says Amanda Hedges. ‘The North Downs, at the top of the valley carved out in the last ice age, has fragments of bone and sea creatures in the chalk,’ she explains.
Because 80 million years ago, the earth was much warmer, the carbon dioxide in the air and the water favoured life forms that used carbon and whose skeletons, over time, formed the chalk that underlies the geopark.
Interestingly, global warning is now, once again, playing a part in shaping today’s landscape. Because the chalk seams found in the North Downs are the same as those found in the Champagne region of France, they are ideal for growing grapes. Warmer conditions because of climate change have caught the attention of wine makers from around the world, and there is talk that French champagne houses are looking to buy land there to establish vineyards. Domaine Evremond, who make Tattinger champagne, already have vines near Faversham.
Getting involved in Layered Landscapes
The best way to keep up to date with Layered Landscape events is through the LV21 or the North West Kent Countryside Partnership websites. Here are a few dates for your diary though.
- Saturday 6th July: Drop-in Peg Bugs workshop as part of the Festival of Nature at Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve
- Wednesday 7th August (times to be announced): Archaeology talk, walk and workshop with Dr Anne Sassin at Lullingstone Country Park
- Monday 19th August (times to be announced): Rivers and Watercourses workshop at Westminster Fields, Horton Kirby.
IF YOU ARE A PRIMARY OR SECONDARY SCHOOL OR A COMMUNITY GROUP BASED IN THE SEVENOAKS AREA AND WOULD LIKE TO WORK WITH ‘LAYERED LANDSCAPES’ THERE ARE STILL PLACES AVAILABLE. Contact Amanda Hedges using the phone numbers or email on the North West Kent Countryside Partnership website contact page.
Other links
Geo Adventures Events to get involved in at other geosites in the Kent Downs and Caps et Marais d’Opale Geopark.
