From Reykjavík to Wivenhoe

Increasing angles of earth and water.

A walk between shipyards in Wivenhoe.

It was on a particularly grey day that I first stepped off the train at Wivenhoe station. A very English day, some might say, although for me, England was the country of endless summers. Whenever I returned home  during college holidays, people would smugly ask me about the ‘English weather’, perversely ignoring the fact that even at the height of summer the temperature in Iceland rarely rises above fourteen degrees Celsius. 

My stomach fluttered as we squeezed through the station gate, but then, as we stood on Station Road, my smile of   anticipation instantly soured and I could feel how my heart sank.  I hoped my new love wouldn’t notice my disappointment in his home town, but inside I was in turmoil.  If this was Wivenhoe I’d made a terrible mistake.  I’d had the weirdest feeling that I might belong here, but now I wasn’t so sure.

In front of us, right opposite the station, menacing black iron gates, chained shut by a huge padlock, guarded a vast area of wasteland.  Flattened buildings and abandoned roads were covered in weeds and rubbish, and only occasionally the horizon was broken up by …. piles of timber.  This desolate wilderness of concreted earth seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see, and as if to match my mood, the sky darkened overhead and heavy clouds threatened rain.

‘What on earth is this?‘  I asked with trepidation,  not wanting to believe  my eyes. 

‘This was the shipyard; the ‘upstream’ shipyard,’  my love answered proudly, and his obvious  contentment with his grotesque wound in the earth was  strangely soothing.   

I thought about it for a moment, and decided that I could handle ports, even abandoned ones.  Perhaps this was the sign I’d been hoping for as  I’d grown up only a stones throw from Reykjavik’s container-ship port, so ships and ports were a part of my internal landscape.

My love squeezed my hand reassuringly as we walked along the perimeter fence which  seemed to chase us because it went on forever, until we reached a river. It was the river Colne, he explained.  By now, the grey sky covered the little  town like a tightly fit lid, draining the colour from the river. He pointed at an inlet, ‘And this is the dry dock. The used to build ships here.’ A wave of relief washed over me. There was a river and they used to build ships here, all things that made sense to me. Maybe I could belong…

It was impossible to imagine at that moment that only a few years later, this vast abandoned area would be covered by a housing development, and even more impossible to imagine was that one day we would make our home in one of the new  houses  by the river. 

The ‘dry dock’ became a centre feature of the new development; a shallow boat-shaped lake which is usually no more than a receptacle for leaves and rubbish blown in from the surrounding area.  This is the site of the original dry dock’ where magnificent vessels were built in the past. Today, all there remains is a fancy granite podium inscribed in gold commemorating the ship building that took place on the site, but strangely, there is no mention of  ‘Cap Pilar’.   Cap Pilar was a 295 ton, three masted yacht, famous for having sailed around the world in the years between 1936 and 1938.  In the latter stages of her life, she was moved here, where she continued to relinquish.  The shipyard closed in 1961 and the site was adapted into a port.   The port had no need for a dry dock and wanted it filled in, but it was still occupied by the debilitated Cap Pilar.  It was decided that she should be broken up by the use of explosives.  Her destruction proved more difficult than anticipated, and her keel, lower frames and garboard  remained intact, so eventually her remains  were encased in concrete, forming a kind of a tomb which still lies underneath the ‘dry dock’ lake, unbeknownst to most of the people living in the new houses that overlook it.  For a long time I hoped, that she might have visited Iceland on her journey across the oceans, but eventually I found out that she hadn’t.

Even after I’d decided that I preferred living in England to living in Iceland, a part of my genetic make-up still had a problem with living in a flat country.  The landscape along the river Colne  is soft and mellow; gentle slopes and magical woods  incorporate every hue of green imaginable  It is so tame and  so tranquil that at times I would  have lost my mind from the lack of  ‘proper’ landscape, if it wasn’t for the river.   

The river  changes according to the moon and the stars, continually moving back and forth; swelling and receding,  and  every hour the water changes colour as the tide changes direction.   The sky and the river collide to produce that particular estuary light, white and  translucent,  the sky and the water are interwoven and at times it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. 

Eventually the desolation was behind us and I felt I could finally breathe. Suddenly we came upon a row  of pretty pastel coloured cottages with equally colourful names;  Quayside Cottage, Maple Cottage, Trinity House and Anchor House, all more beautiful than the next, like girls trying to outdo each other at a beauty pageant. I felt like an intruder waking the small road that separated the houses from their front gardens where boats lay moored. 

Then the buildings became taller and sterner.  ‘Sail-lofts’, my love said, ‘sail-lofts and grain stores, and of course, The Rose and Crown.’  The Storehouse, the Nottage, Quay House  and the Granary stood tall and imposing like the  theatrical backdrop of a stage.  Then the  path narrowed and became potholed and muddy.  ‘Harding’s Yard’, he said pointing at half-built boats, then more  pretty cottages also facing the river with boats moored in their front gardens.

We kept walking,  and our steps crunched the gravel under foot.

Suddenly there was another fenced off area. My heart sank all over again, although not quite as deep this time as I was beginning to  forgive the monstrosity by the station.  

‘What is this? I asked holding my breath. 

‘This is the other shipyard, Cook’s shipyard; the ‘downstream shipyard.’ My love answered, his face  beaming.

This time some of the buildings still remained.  Signpost pointed to washrooms and placards told that smoking was forbidden and that drivers should sign in with the foreman.  Sheets of corrugated iron were strewn across this field of broken buildings and I felt a lump forming in my throat.  Traditional Icelandic housed are covered in corrugated iron and then painted in vibrant blues, reds and greens, but  I had never come across this in England before.  Perhaps this was a sign.  I couldn’t be sure but I grinned as he clasped  my hand in his and we ran laughing through the derelict building, praying  that the whole shebang wouldn’t fall on top of us.

The landscape around Wivenhoe doesn’t allow the heart to beat harder, and it doesn’t let the mind race with the fear of an impending volcanic eruptions.   Icebergs do not rip bridges away from their foundations as they travel from the glacier down to the estuary.  Colossal boulders do not tumble down steep mountain slopes, blocking roads so entire communities are cut of from the rest of the world for days.  In Wivenhoe there are no snow-capped mountains, no rushing waterfalls, no volcanoes and no earthquakes.  Or so I thought.

Many years later, as we walked that same route  along the quay, my love who was now my husband pointed at the pretty Anchor House, and casually remarked as if it was of no particular significance; ‘Apparently the roof fell off during the earthquake.’ As soon as he said it, I knew that this was it!  This was what I had been looking for.   I had finally found the connection that I had been looking for and I had been right all along and I really did belong here.  To me it was a revelation of almost biblical proportions.  The possibility that this landscape had hidden depths and hidden dramas; that this village really wasn’t as tame as it looked, and underneath the picture postcard quayside lay a coiled serpent, my Midgard serpent,  a monstrous force that could any moment stir rip the earth open.  I almost wept with relief as suddenly I didn’t have to question my choices any more.  I had allowed myself to  be guided to this place, and this revelation confirmed that I had not been wrong.

The largest earthquake that I have experienced took place when I was nine years old. 

I had had to accompany my father to a lecture hall at the University where he was giving a seminar.  The hall had been partitioned in half, and in one part  my dad was speaking and the other half was empty and that is where I waited.  I was  plodding up and down, waiting for dad to finish so that we could go home, when suddenly there was a loud but strangely low-pitched rumbling noise like a lorry shedding a load of gravel.  Before I could run for cover under a table or in a doorway as we had been trained to do, the parquet floor at the furthest end of the hall lifted and proceeded to roll in waves until it reached me and I had to jump to let the wave pass under my feet.  There were shouts and clanging noises beyond the partition as chairs crashed on to the floor and people toppled over.  The floor continued to move and I fell down on my knees and covered my head as I feared that the ceiling would come crashing down.  Then as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.  The quiet after an earthquake is deafening as everyone holds their breath, animals as well as humans.

An earthquake hit Wivenhoe at 9:18 am on Tuesday 22^nd of April 1884.  This was the strongest quake ever experienced in England in recorded time, estimated at anything between 4.5 and 6.0 on Richter scale. Wivenhoe, and especially the quay area, has the little known claim to fame of being the most earthquake damaged town in England.

The earthquake was unexpected as of course there were no seismic monitors in 1884, but immediately afterwards people tried to point to strange events that could have served as a premonition and a warning, if anyone had taken note. 

Farmers spoke of having noticed their livestock lying down immediately before the quake struck and  there were reports of strange weather phenomena in the preceding days.

A prediction that went un-noticed came from the unlikely camp of Astrology.  ‘The London Daily Echo’s’ astrology column during the first week of April, stated that during April ‘there would be an upheaval in Eastern England of a kind not before experienced.’  (p137 The great earthq)  This could of course mean anything but is interesting all the same. 

In 2003, the astrologer Ruth Baker, set a chart for 9.18 GMT on the 22^nd of April 1884, and she notes:  …the signs on the angles are of earth and water.  The Moon in the 10^th house occupies the sign of Pisces.  As the gaping fissures in the ground widened, huge waves  engulfed tiny river boats causing fishermen and sailors to fall headlong into the churning water’.  Further on she observes ‘Peregrin Mercury in the earth sign of Taurus rules the hour.  The reputedly evil star Algol conjuncts Mercury who also rules the 4^th house of the ground and the 12^th of sorrow. To compound matters the fixed star Sharatan, associated with destruction by earthquake conjuncts with the Sun, giver of life.’

Regardless of what one thinks of Astrology, it emphasises the notion that man is not really in control of anything; the moon and the stars influence the  sea, and the sea influences the earth, but at the end of the day,  the earth governs it self. All the seismic monitors in the world cannot control or prevent earthquakes, but only tell us when they are going to happen.

Not one building along the quay was left untouched by the quake, but the ones most damaged were the row of pretty cottages and the Anchor Pub.  One of the eyewitness accounts given was that of Lord Alfred Paget.  He had just boarded his yacht, the impressive two masted steam yacht Santa Cecilia, for inspection as the yacht had just returned from an Atlantic crossing from America two hours earlier. 

He was never able to explain what made him glance towards the shore, but at exactly 9.18 am,  ‘As I looked towards the village there was this terrible loud rumbling noise.  Immediately the vessel began to shake and the people around me fell like ninepins.’ He continued to describe how the entire village seemed to rise up, the roofs moving like they were the waves of the sea.  Then, one after the other, chimneystacks toppled over, crashing on to the roofs, and slates rained on the streets below. 

A huge wave swept across the Colne, throwing men on to decks and forcing others to grab masts for dear life.  Lord Paget was thrown and as he lay on the deck, he observed: ‘And as I fell I saw part of the church steeple, which towers over the village, sway and then topple into the mass of the devastation.’ The earthquake lasted no more than five or six seconds and although the devastation was immense, miraculously, no lives were lost either in Wivenhoe or elsewhere, although one person was said to have died from ‘shock’.  The timing of the quake undoubtedly saved many lives, as if it had taken place a few hours earlier, many people might have perished in their beds.  As it was, most people were already out and about, going about their daily business.  Reports from the time state that nearly every single building in Wivenhoe was damaged in some way.  That might have been an exaggeration, but there was certainly a lot of minor damage such as missing roof tiles and fallen bricks.  The community rallied around to help those whose houses had been damaged and in a relatively short time most buildings had been repaired.  A suggestion was made from a Dr Wallace of Colchester, that a few buildings should be left un-repaired for the next three months, to give visitors better idea of the destruction.  Tourists had flocked to Colchester and Wivenhoe to see the damage, and Dr Wallace felt that they could be charged for viewing the buildings and thus contributing to a repair fund.  His idea went unsupported and it was like so often the case, that people caught up in historic events do not realise the enormity of what has happened.  So it is, that nothing remains of this momentous natural event apart from a few photographs.

I have  visited one of the buildings on the quay most damaged by the quake, in the hope of finding some physical evidence of the destruction.  I wanted to see if there were collapsed doorways or cracks in  walls, like in my childhood home where deep fissures lined the walls and just days after being laid, the new linoleum floor cover in the hall was split right through by a relatively minor earthquake.  In the house I visited, no evidence remained, and as the owner politely pointed out to me, slightly bewildered by my strange obsession, that  over hundred years had passed since the quake.           

That first day when I stepped of the train, although I didn’t know it,  my life had already been ordered.  The clouds lifted and the river came to life and I decided that this might be the place for me. And every time I walk along the river, I think about the quake of 1884. I don’t wish  anyone to experience an earthquake, but knowing that it happened makes my heart beat a little bit faster  and it confirms that there is more to Wivenhoe than meets the eye.

Ripples on water

Movement in soil

River rising

Earth rising

Water falling

Increasing angles

Of earth and water