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| OUR NEW EAR TRUMPET: 'WILBERFORCE' THE NISG TEAM IN THE SOUNDING SPACE |
INTRODUCTION
GEOLOGY: Ice, river, sea and storm.
NISG
field experiments in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and in Hull and Holderness in
particular, have lifted the lid on the role of water as a stimulus and primary
engine of sonic eruption in this area.[1]
The
plain of Holderness and the Humberhead levels both owe their present geological
form to the Quaternary ice ages, when ice fields formed on the higher land and immense
glaciers crawled inexorably down the main valleys, scouring material from the
valley sides and depositing it as the climate warmed and the ice melted some
14,500 years ago.
The
landscape around the Queens Gardens sounding space is dominated by deposits of
till, boulder clays and glacial lake clays. Peat filled depressions (known
locally as meres) mark the presence of long-lost, ancient lake beds in the area.
At
the southern limit of the ice was an extensive lake, Glacial Lake Humber, which
later filled with clay sediments up to 20 metres thick. These were slowly overlain
by peat deposits, in which can be found the remains of a huge buried forest.
The
geology of the area runs in bands, with a chalk layer at Flamborough in the
North, Boulder clay or till (laid down in the last ice age) to the south and
river deposits in the Humber Estuary.
Because
the clay is a weak mass of particles and boulders it erodes more rapidly than
the more resistant rock of chalk in the north. Rain and rivers also wash and
reform the land in a constant cycle, releasing historic sound and creating a
sonic porosity that is unrivalled in the UK.
The sea is
also the sonic geologist’s friend
in this area, its tidal rhythms setting up repeating sonic wavelengths in the
substrata that can stimulate sonic eruptions many miles inland.
Holderness
is the number one place in Europe for coastal erosion, and in a stormy year
waves from the North sea can remove between 7 and 10m of coastline, making it one
of the fastest-eroding coastlines in Europe. The
coastline starts with blowholes, stacks and stumps at Flamborough, and
culminates with Spurn Head, a very large spit that runs across part of Humber
Estuary.
The rich
fertile land of the inland area around Hull has also been extensively drained
and irrigated, with numerous large agricultural watercourses dug into its rich
clay soils. As the sea devours the land it releases sonic phenomena that travel
along these watercourses, allowing us to listen in on the ghostly echoes of as
many as 30 lost towns along the coast.
These include the submerged farm
village of Wilsthorpe, mentioned in the Domesday Book, the drowned hamlet of
Hartburn at the mouth of the great Earls Dyke watercourse, the ridge and furrow
agricultural system of Monkwell, and the church settlement of Sisterkirk,
where, on the night of the 16th February, 1816, after a storm of unusual
violence, the church was washed down the cliffs, and coffins and bodies were
strewn upon the shore below.
AROUND QUEEN’S GARDENS: THINGS TO NOTE:
The
Sounding Space lies on the
porous Boulder Clays of the Humber Estuary, and until 1930 Queens Gardens was filled with the waters of
Queen’s Dock. As the dock was not completely filled
in when it fell from commercial use, the gardens are largely below the level of
the surrounding streets and buildings.
This means we are listening below general ground
level, closer to the source of the sonic phenomena, a fact that greatly
enhances the already impressive powers of our Ear Trumpet technology.
The ‘subterranean’ nature of the site also creates a ‘sonic funnel’ that collects local proto-historic
phenomena, amplifies them and makes for some fascinating listening, although one
should always be careful of potential surge conditions that might lead to
embarrassing ossicular responses.
The
location of the busy wharf on this site explains sonic phenomena such as
industrial noise, melodic echo-type phenomena associated with work and drinking
songs and some conversational activity. Queens Dock was surrounded corn mills
and seed and fish processing plants, and the area was an important centre for
the whaling industry.
Sonic
eruption in this area may therefore be explained by the extensive disruption to
the ground that has taken place in this area over the years. Queens Gardens
themselves are an excellent example of landscape re-design by the prominent architect
Sir Frederick Gibberd, and Hull
was heavily bombed in WW2 when ‘The Hull Blitz’ of 1941 killed around 1200 people and destroyed much of the town.
Large ground interventions have therefore defined
the place, from defensive structures such as the town wall and moat, to the
creation of the dock and expanding trade, to marine technology and practices
rendering the dock redundant, the creation of the public gardens, and post war
regeneration in a modernist landscape style by a celebrated architect.
The NISG team believe that the
extraordinarily large amount of recent building work in the environs of this
park and the repaving of the entire city-centre has stimulated conversational, melodic, ambient and
proto-historic sonic phenomena through its disturbance of the underground
strata. This fortunate occurrence offers NISG an opportunity to record and
analyse a significant eruption event.
Most of the buildings around the sounding
space are post-war, apart from the south east corner where there survives a
block of Georgian and Victorian buildings fronting Lowgate, a Georgian Bond
Warehouse fronting Guildhall Road and the offices on the corner of Quay Street,
all grade 2 listed buildings. The original old town walls lie to the south edge
of the site.
Kingston-Upon-Hull was a key territory in the
early part of the English Civil War due to the large arsenal in the city. The
1642 Siege of Hull was the first major action of the English Civil
War, and saw the town and surrounding area flooded when attacking Royalist
forces smashed sluice gates and river defences on The River Humber. Faint
echoes of battle are often detected in the sonic profile of the area.
NOTE: Subterranean sonic phenomena have been
detected in this area by NISG members, which might offer a rational scientific
explanation for longstanding local folkloric
reports of music from below ground, the sounds of swords, minstrelsy and
incantation.
The sounding space
is very near to the statue of William Wilberforce, the slave trade abolitionist.
Wilberforce was born and educated in Hull, and elected as MP for the town in
1780, before becoming MP for the County of York in 1784. His profound Christian
faith motivated his political life and led to him becoming the leading opponent
of slavery in parliament. His campaign work contributed to the abolition of the
slave trade in the British Empire in 1807 and of slavery as an institution in
1833.
[1] (See:
Lathenby, B (2016) Getting Wet for Sonic
Geology – Sub Aqua Investigations at Spurn Head Spit, Journal of Aural
Investigation, 6:2, pp135-212)