Suffolk, Kent, Yorkshire, Norfolk, Lancashire and Devon
I found the research for Lost to the Sea fascinating, so am starting this virtual scrapbook of things picked up along the way. Many surrounded me as I wrote: photos and quotes propped on shelves, tarmac chunks of lost road, sea charts and old postcards, a woolly rhino tooth trawled up from Doggerland.
Some of my favourites are the early postcards of places since lost to the sea.
Often faded to sepia, not only the buildings are now long gone, but also the ground they stood on (one is even postmarked 1904 by a post office that would later be lost in a storm).
I’ve begun gathering these remnants in the months before the book comes out, in part as it’s hard to let go of a project that’s obsessed me for the past three years.
Now, sorting through the piles of postcards and old booklets, beachcombings, cuttings and photographs, I am repeatedly drawn back into their stories.
While some made it into the book, many didn’t, although all helped conjure those vanished landscapes and communities. Over the coming months, I look forward to sharing some here.
