Exhibition at the Discovery Centre Rye Harbour Nature Reserve – 26th September to 27th October 2025.
As a tree, woodland and forest lover, I am drawn to forested landscapes, but also to those palimpest places, layered with history – or better still, prehistory – echoing a deeper time. The coast off south-east Sussex is one such place. Today the shore is almost treeless, but this is not always how it was in the past.
Having discovered the ancient, sunken forest off the Pett Level beach a few years ago, I’ve been moved to carry out a project I’ve named ‘Ghost Forest’.
Around 6000 years ago and earlier, when sea level was lower, there existed a forest along the south coast now overcome by the sea . It grew and dwindled, grew and dwindled over millenia. Today at low tide, the beach at Pett Level reveals traces of ancient, fallen trees, their spongy wood now piddocked and preserved in silty mud. I believe this ancient forest was contiguous with a forest that swept across much of Europe before the birth of the English Channel, remnants of which are still found in Poland and Belarus, known as the Bialowieza Forest.
In my project I imagine the ancient Mesolithic people who lived in or beside this forest. Their flint tools were discovered in a cave, now eroded away, that was situated high up in the cliffs. These were people who hunted, foraged and fished before farming cultures arrived and took over.
Pett Level sketchbook pages.
