Nullscapes
Part 0 – Goth sluices and ‘Swineshead Revisited’
I started researching this piece of writing, and in fact produced something a ‘mature draft’, around ten years ago. It emerged from my PhD research (2014-2017) which looked at fairground heritage, making some suggestions as to how the heritage industry can address complex and intangible heritage practices from popular culture and working-class life. During the research it was quickly evident that many of the vernacular collections of fairground machinery had a crossover to agricultural machinery. This meant their nostalgic imperatives tended to drift eastwards into the flat agricultural expanses of eastern England. As I did the fieldwork (in every sense of the word) out in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk I appreciated a deeper understanding of the landscape and (semi) built environment.
It also brought back memories of our annual childhood trips from Derby to Skegness, when we traversed the boring expanse of Lincolnshire with perhaps the odd stop at some ramshackle café. Are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet? I’ve mentioned these in my pre-punk subcultural nurturing – new wave themed tat (keyrings, badges, etc). In later years these trips were replicated from Sheffield, crossing a slightly different bit of Lincolnshire to get to Skegness, but it looked exactly the same only with different markers (well, different versions of the same types of markers like broken windmills) which indicated how near we were to the seaside destination. There used to be a skateboard half-pipe, semi-derelict in farmyard junk style, in a field near Horncastle which always intrigued me. This would be the late 1980s, when skating had something of an underground resurgence.
Since I undertook my research in the mid-2010s, Lincolnshire and The Fens have gained something of notoriety with their intense concentration of Brexit voters and subsequent support of Nigel Farage’s Reform party. It is not a political argument that I want to venture in to, but the clinging on to Farage’s promises (vitriolic, dog-whistling, petty-minded, ultimately hollow, etc) pervades the atmosphere and fabric of the place. Taken during a visit last month, the framed images of anthropomorphised dogs caught my eye - evolving from the barroom scenes of card and pool playing canines to channelling ‘our Nige’ with his man-of-the-people pint and waistcoat.
Nothing came of the writing when I finished it around 2017. I thought about shaping it into an academic submission, and even sent a speculative draft out to a couple of random geographers who I thought might be interested (no replies were forthcoming). Then, at the end of my PhD, I ended up moving into the east of England, buying a small terraced cottage in a village on the Great Ouse near St. Ives. I was working at Cambridge, which has been the least inspiring place I have ever encountered, and living in a semi-rural area. In truth, it was a posh village full of commuters, so no bumpkin-logic or fifth-generation eel catchers. The writing withered and was abandoned.
And now, in 2025, I’m about to leave ‘the east’, meaning that this piece of writing has come back to haunt me. It has been hard to view the region at a distance whilst living here. The glib fascination that the area held for me, as someone who regularly ‘passed through’ as either a holidaymaker or PhD ethnographer, was now nullified by actually living there, experiencing it every day. Though in many regards I was still at a distance, in my posh village. I guess it was like a Deleuzian fold if you want to get quasi-academic – an exterior-interior in an interior-exterior (I think).
In the last few weeks, before I move back north, I’ve been retracing some of the steps I took as the passing-through tourist and ethnographer of a decade ago. Another trip to Boston on the train, and a pass through Swineshead to enable an airing of the poor pun ‘Swineshead Revisited’. Not that I ever actually visited Swineshead. My main memory: driving at speed along the A17 towards Norfolk and (needing a pee and a cuppa) thinking that there is a café somewhere along here before the road crosses the railway line. And then seeing the café as it was almost upon us, and shouting there it is, only for my partner to brake and turn into the car park at top speed, throwing up a cloud of gravel and screech of scree, and stop suddenly in a vacant space… like the arrival of Bonnie and Clyde in a forlorn outpost. Why do these silly moments stay with us? It’s got me reaching for StreetView to relive the moment.
The overhead view taken from Google Earth is somewhat more intriguing. A number of regionally typical businesses are signposted: recycling, machinery, driveways and landscaping, and two examples of racing. The latter is a big thing in Lincolnshire, with banger racing, demolition derby and caravan-towing smash-ups a constant feature at Skegness Speedway Stadium. This is perhaps an example of the source material for the disparaging classification that art critic Adrian Searle (writing in Frieze in 1993 on artist Mark Wallinger) made with reference to “flat-land hillbillies”?
Topographically, the waterway that traverses on a slight upwards-rising diagonal seems to be colour-corrected in two incomplete halves either side of the A17 bridge where the scene of the crime was committed. To the west the water is a choppy olive green that matches a strange amoebic trail in a lush green field. What the fuck is that? It reminds me of a crop-circle version of a drum and bass logo – something like Moving Shadow? Are we communicating with aliens by broadcasting an almighty ‘Amen Break’ on loop? Actually, that sounds like a good idea.
To the east the water is drabber, and apparently still, giving the impression of two separate images stitched together along the seam of the road. The waterway is called Hammond Beck, which forms part of the magnificently named South Forty-Foot Drain – also known as Black Sluice Navigation (so, a goth link to the previous writings). And what about this… it runs from a place called Guthram Gowt and alleviates excess water and drainage requirements into The Haven at Boston. Guthram Gowt is a small village in deepest Lincolnshire, though it sounds very much like Gudrun Gut who was the alluring musician who briefly participated in an early version of Einstürzende Neubauten before setting up the all-female groups Mania D and Malaria!. Again, another natural segue from the previous essay on haute-goth… Post-punk psychogeography in action.
The maps are a bit confusing as the Black Sluice runs a widish (and mainly navigable) course through the middle of the county westwards from Boston through Hubbert’s Bridge and forming a triplicate of vectors with the railway line and A1121. There are smaller channels also listed as Hammond Beck(s). The Wikimedia photograph by Rodney Burton shows a typical piece of the Beck, sometimes little more than a channel.
Always something new. Last week a trip on the 904 bus from Huntingdon to Peterborough, to save a few quid on the usual train ticket as I connected with a pre-booked train from Peterborough up the East Coast mainline to take me into Sheffield (via Doncaster) for a music event celebrating the 50th anniversary of Cabaret Voltaire’s first public perfomance. The bus skirted various villages on the route, which is around 18 miles, all of which was uncharted ground to me.
It took over an hour to make the journey, which is normally around 15 minutes on the train, but the cash saving was worth it. In this modern age where everything is recorded, you can watch a YouTube video of the entire journey. I’ll offer you a route map and picture of the 904 idling at Peterborough’s grim toytown-brutalist bus station. You even get a bonus view of the equally grim Queensgate Shopping Centre reflected in the capacious windscreen of the bus.
And I got to see some new places. The bus weaves out of the dreadful and cheerless Huntingdon through the Stukeley Meadows estate to puncture the circumnavigating ring road and head into ‘bandit country’. Well, kind of. There’s a strange mix of ramshackle Fen buildings, twee thatched cottages, ‘Steves Cars’ vehicle emporium, and USAF guarded militarism. And then there’s Alconbury that offers multiple surprises. The ‘Gate Guardian’ of the USAF base, a fighter jet (that seemed too small, almost like a model?) supposedly in action but looking like it was about to reverse crash into terra firma. The strange penitentiary architecture of Alconbury Weald, an expensive option that invokes voluntary incarceration similar to the new estates such as Eddington, Northstowe and Trumpington on the periphery of Cambridge. The geographical and topological heteroclite always on hand.
For the next few weeks there will less of the goth and post-punk, less of the subcultural fashion, and a different focus on explorations into eastern England. Normal service will be resumed after that, but for now it is ‘normal for Norfolk’ as they say.
The dogs in hats do very much evoke Farage. I made a bus trip to Boston from London many years ago for a friend’s birthday. I borrowed a bike from outside the pub to do a whistle stop tour and then returned it. It was all about fruit picking and flowers, from memory.
Reminds me a lot of some West Texas cities. Without the heat of course.
The Fold was a very influential book for me as an architect and teacher. And for up and coming architects at the time. I read it in bits and pieces over some years. I never could get the full significance, but I recall blaming it on the translation.
Evocative piece. I liked the Germans and Caberet Voltaire. What about Cambridge didn't you like? (I'm planning a trip to Bristol and Bath).