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The Hidden History of Orford Ness

Most Secret

The History Press

Setting the Scene

As a place for keeping things secret, Orford is a good choice, for it is unexpectedly remote. In many respects, its contact with the rest of the world has relied on water as much as land. East Suffolk itself can seem very much off any beaten track with its relatively sparse rural population. Between Felixstowe to the south and Lowestoft on the Norfolk border lies some 40 miles of Suffolk's Heritage Coast, today an almost unbroken nature reserve. With no coastal road to link the intervening towns and villages, it remains a remarkably unspoilt and undeveloped corner of England.

There is only one classified road to Orford. The B1084 takes a distinctly circuitous route from Woodbridge, 10 miles to the west. This road ends uncompromisingly at a riverside quay. For quite a small place, it is quite a big quay. Its very size provides a real clue as to Orford's importance, particularly during nearly eighty years of military occupation of what locals often refer to as 'the island', the extensive stretch of marsh and shingle on the far side of the river Ore. Moreover, there is no way to continue on from Orford, except by boat. This so-called island is in fact a peninsula, narrowly and somewhat precariously attached to the Suffolk mainland at Slaughden, just to the south of Aldeburgh, some 6 miles, as the gull flies, to the north. This is Orford Ness.

There are good reasons for giving the means of communication with the outside world a prominent place in this history. Twisting roads and narrow lanes have always been an endearing feature of this part of the county. The railway from Ipswich to Lowestoft to the north passed 9 miles distant from Orford. Communications – or rather, the lack of them – have inevitably shaped the development of the village. Even the major trunk road to this part of the county, the A12, was only modernised years after secret operations on the Ness were over. Between 1915 and the early 1970s, enormous volumes of traffic, some of it very heavy, made its way along this inadequate route. That such considerable and complex projects were contemplated at such an inaccessible place is not the least of the mysteries of the Ness.

ORFORD BACKGROUND

Orford does not appear by name in the Domesday Book, and hence cannot claim quite the ancestry of some of its neighbours, like Snape or Iken or Sutton. It was no more than the coastal outlet for Sudbourne, now no more than a scattered village, but then a substantial and great estate, 2 miles inland. With a small but secure harbour, then much more open to access from the sea, Orford was a very suitable spot for Henry II to establish a base for exerting royal control. The castle was built to deal with various challenges to the King's rule, including possible threats from the exiled Thomas à Becket, as well as troublesome sons and rapacious local baronage, led in this district by Hugh Bigod of the nearby Framlingham Castle. Though Henry never visited Orford himself, his garrison must have stabilised the state of East Anglia and it certainly turned Orford itself from an insignificant fishing village into what was for a period, a notable town.

The power and dignity of Orford reached an early zenith in the reign of Elizabeth I, but even then, there were the first clear signs of impending decline. During the later medieval period, Orford had gained a charter entitling it to send two members to Parliament, a right that, disregarding the years of the Protectorate, only ended with the Reform Bill of 1832. The town's powers were extended by a series of Royal Charters, which gave it land and privileges.

Trade was under pressure, not least because of the shifting shingle spit, which increasingly blocked the harbour entrance. By the early eighteenth century, Orford came to be described by a noted visitor, Daniel Defoe, as 'once a good town, but now decayed'. Poverty and corruption marched hand in hand, making Orford a classic eighteenth-century rotten borough.

During the eighteenth century, the Seymour-Conway family acquired and developed the estate of Sudbourne Hall. With their title of Earls of Hertford their principal seat was in Warwickshire, at Ragley Hall. They added the manors of Iken and Gedgrave to their existing Suffolk estate, which included Orford village, the castle and the very quay on which all local trade relied. In 1793, the then Earl was created 1st Marquess of Hertford. The Sudbourne estate was attractive for much more than just its game sport. With the ownership of Orford came the lucrative patronage provided by its two parliamentary seats. The Hall was developed by the great architect James Wyatt and became notable for its art collection. The 4th Marquess was succeeded by his illegitimate son, Sir Richard Wallace, who sold the estate in 1884. The family treasures were transferred to their London house, now famed as the Wallace Collection.

Orford had benefited greatly by the generosity of the Hertford family, who built both the school and the Town Hall. With no railway and poor roads, the community was cut off from the rest of the county and was pretty self-reliant. Under its new owners, the Clarks, the estate was to give Orford another thirty years of relative prosperity. However, come the First World War, Orford was indeed fortunate that a new source of patronage appeared: the War Office.

Apart from the castle keep, another tower dominates the Orford skyline. This belongs to St Bartholomew's Church, which stands rather massively above the road that zigzags past it. Orford's church was originally no more than a chapel, the daughter church to Sudbourne, some 3 miles away. However, in 1295, with wealth rapidly increasing in the place, an Augustinian Friary was founded and the church in Orford expanded accordingly. Not all of its imposing structure has survived, and today little more than half of the original building remains. It is blessed by fine acoustics making it a favoured location for concerts and was chosen by Benjamin Britten for the première of Noye's Fludde and his church parable operas.

Shortly before the only road enters Orford, it passes the edge of Sudbourne Park. The Hall, once a great focal point for grand society gatherings, was requisitioned by the military during the Second World War. Together with much of the countryside along this coast, the estate became part of a vast military training area in preparation for D-Day. The Hall, occupied by the Army, never recovered. Too damaged to be worth repairing, it was knocked down in 1951.

This sad event does not alter the fact that the village was a source of rest and recreation and indeed of hospitality for countless Ness personnel, both military and civilian. Its hostelries provided accommodation, venues for meeting and social gatherings, and at times, Officers' Mess facilities. Its church tower was a navigational marker for many of its airmen, and its churchyard, sadly, a resting place for a few of them. Personnel from the Ness learned to regard this area as their 'home from home'. It is remarkable how many preferred to stay in this part of Suffolk when their appointments at the Ness came to an end. Orford is an essential part of the story of Orford Ness, however secret the activity there was supposed to remain.

Whatever the season, the scene on the quay is seldom dull and in summer, 'fishing' for crabs provides endless excitement for the young. The observant may spot a highly significant craft, usually moored on the further bank, a substantial battleship-grey landing craft, which periodically crosses from its home on the Ness to run vehicles on and off from a ramp which slopes into the water. This vessel more than any other provides a graphic reminder of a military past.

For centuries, Orford Ness was known chiefly for the hazards of its notorious shore. It was always posing a potential threat to the busy passing traffic, shipping goods and raw materials down to London, as well as to the local inshore fishing trade. The call for some sort of aid to navigation reached a point in the seventeenth century when the need for action became irresistible. King Charles I was happy to grant a 'patent' to a private speculator rather than to Trinity House, one assumes because he could thereby benefit his Treasury.

A long sequence of pretty unsatisfactory wooden beacons followed, all in turn burnt down or washed away. The last of these was destroyed in a fierce storm in October 1789. The then owner, Lord Braybrooke, aware that this was a profitable asset that deserved a more robust construction, decided to construct a mighty new tower in stuccoed brick. It was completed in 1792. This is the lighthouse that has survived to the twenty-first century.

During the nineteenth century, the Orford Light was developed under the demanding stewardship of Trinity House, which acquired it by an Act of Parliament in 1837. Technical improvement followed, notably in the 1860s, when the eminent contractor James Timmins Chance installed new lenses and mirrors. Chance brought with him his consultant engineer, John Hopkinson, the inventor of a system for light flashing. His son was Bertram Hopkinson, who would play a vital role in the history of the Ness.

Further major development was undertaken during the decade before the outbreak of the First World War. The Orford Light was thus as advanced as any in the land when war broke out and the keepers found their whole way of life altered for good. From then on, they would have to share the Ness with new neighbours, both military and civilian.

This prelude to the Ness story aims to explain the setting and the context for events that took place there over the course of nearly eighty years when it was a secret place. Forbidding notices along the riverbank throughout this period used to warn people off: 'WARNING: This is a prohibited place within the meaning of the Official Secrets Act. Unauthorised persons entering this area may be arrested and prosecuted'. Perhaps all this hardly welcoming message did was to stimulate an added curiosity as to what was really going on. Its new owner, the National Trust has, for obvious reasons, found itself seemingly only a little less forbidding. 'Please keep out', run its notices. 'This site is not open to the public.' The notice explains this apparently qualified welcome: 'All the structures are very unsafe: There may be a risk from contamination and unexploded ordnance.' Sadly, access to the secret site has to be managed and controlled, even as visitors are encouraged and warmly welcomed.

When the National Trust purchased the Ness in 1993, it rescued the site from serious neglect. Such neglect would not only have destroyed the intrinsic value of the place, but would have constituted a disgraceful insult to the memory of a legion of people who gave great service to their country. For the secret researches and tests carried out on Orford Ness played no small part in the resolution of the three great wars of the twentieth century: the First, the Second and the Cold.

So, even now that it is in the custody of the National Trust, Orford Ness may still give an impression of being essentially a secret place. There are no brown signboards with the familiar oak leaf logo to point visitors from far and wide in its direction. By design and by circumstance, the place maintains its obscurity. Only the determined and discerning press their way to the quay. They may quickly come to regard their passage across the river as an adventure into a land of secrecy, privacy, 'cover stories' and mystery; of curiosity, challenge, danger, discomfort, enterprise and invention. One thing is frequently observed and has often been repeated by those who worked on the site over the years. Here is a place with an amazing atmosphere, a bit of magic and, in its unique fashion, an unmatched beauty.

When the Ness was officially opened to the public in June 1995 it ceased to be quite the mysterious and secret site of the previous eight decades. Visitors at the rate of up to 7,000 a year come to satisfy their curiosity, and see the place for themselves. For a National Trust property, the numbers are small: a great house would welcome that many over a few weeks in summer. The Ness is not a grand landscaped estate or ornamental garden and it provides no stately home, and crowds of visitors filling the place would be quite inappropriate for what is above all a nature reserve.

VISITORS' VOICES

This coast in general and Orford in particular has always enjoyed a long tradition of folk-tale and legend, of ghosts (M.R. James (1862 — 1936) the noted Cambridge scholar and writer of celebrated ghost stories, was greatly affected by East Suffolk), of smugglers and of violence. Here is the venue for the nineteenth-century romance of Margaret Catchpole and the smuggling fraternity. Latterly it has been the land of military secrets, and it has regularly provided inspiration for artists and writers.

The first and perhaps greatest interpreter of the Ness shore was J.M.W. Turner, who painted a number of watercolours as part of his important 'East Coast' collection during the 1820s.

Until it was opened to the public, descriptions with a Ness setting have been understandably rare. An exception appeared in 1938, when the thriller writer Richard Keverne, a former Royal Flying Corps (RFC) pilot, published his book The Havering Plot, set in a thinly disguised Ness. In 1992, shortly before the Trust takeover, the atmospheric writer and scholar W.G. Sebald paid a visit. A description of an afternoon on the site appeared in his memorable book The Rings of Saturn. He chose a rather gloomy day and was in a rather gloomy mood. Tellingly, and he was far from being alone here, he sensed what might be termed an 'Ozymandias' reaction to the evocative silhouettes of the nuclear bomb test labs on the seaward horizon:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(P.B. Shelley)

The Ness was open to the general public only from 1995 and so the opportunity for artists and writers to be inspired by the place has inevitably been restricted. In recent years, the Ness has proved almost irresistibly attractive to artists, writers and photographers, actively encouraged by the National Trust.

Two noted artists were commissioned to celebrate this occasion, John Wonnacott and Dennis Creffield. The latter produced a series of dark and threatening portraits of the labs, highlighting the violence they represented and the wildness of their setting. He argued that they should be seen as monuments and memorials to the Cold War, and the Trust has indeed followed his advice.

Essential to the cultural heritage of Orford is the medieval myth of the 'Merman of Orford'. The story, as related by Ralph of Coggeshall, tells of the creature, half man and half fish, caught in Orford fishermen's nets and forced by torture to reveal who or what he was. Terrified that they had captured a devil who might corrupt them, they hurled him back into the sea off the Ness, and he was never seen again. This legend inspired the then Poet Laureate, Sir Andrew Motion to write a major poem, published in the Independent on Sunday in July 1994. Here he subtly interpolates the Merman tale into his interpretation of the twentieth-century military activity.

As to other writers in recent years, these have largely been journalists, who have struggled to find sufficient information about the Ness, many sources remaining classified. Travel writer Christopher Somerville penned a portrait which appeared in The Sunday Telegraph in January 1998 and offers the best possible alternative to actually visiting the Ness. 'It was', he argues, 'probably the nearest you can come in England to walking in the desert ...' The description given by the National Trust is 'the last coastal wilderness in southern England'. Somerville explains how the unique feature of the ridges and furrows in the shingle beach, which appeared 'to have had a giant's comb dragged lengthwise along it', were the product of centuries of wild storms. His is a brilliant picture in words.

Somerville reminded his readers of another feature of this Suffolk shore: its association with one of the great musicians of the twentieth century. Benjamin Britten, living locally most of his life, loved the characteristic sound of the Suffolk coast, and wove it into the fabric of Curlew River and Peter Grimes. For those with an ear for such a fantasy, the music of Britten and ghost of Grimes 'at his exercise' is never far away. For even if the air is still, there is the constant lap of water rolling up and down the shingle. The cry of swooping gulls is seldom absent. The constant winds blow through the railings on the staircase up to the Bomb Ballistics building's viewing platform. It makes a steady whistle and hum, varying in pitch and volume, like some eerie invisible orchestra.

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Excerpted from The Hidden History of Orford Ness by Paddy Heazell. Copyright © 2010 The National Trust. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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