Orford Ness is a

cuspate foreland Cuspate forelands, also known as cuspate barriers or nesses in Britain, are geographical features found on coastlines and lakeshores that are created primarily by longshore drift.Craig-Smith, S. J., Cuspate Forelands. In: M. L. Schwartz, ed. 2005. ...

shingle spit on the

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

coast in Great Britain, linked to the mainland at

Aldeburgh Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town in the English county, county of Suffolk, England. Located to the north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the composer Benjamin Britten and remains the centre of the int ...

and stretching along the coast to Orford and down to North Weir Point, opposite

Shingle Street Shingle Street is a coastal settlement on the North Sea coast of the English county of Suffolk. It is north-east of Felixstowe and east of Ipswich at the mouth of the River Ore and opposite the tip of Orford Ness. It is within the parish of ...

. It is divided from the mainland by the

River Alde The River Alde and River Ore form a river system in Suffolk, England passing by Snape and Aldeburgh. The River Alde and River Ore meet northwest of Blaxhall. From there downriver the combined river is known as the River Alde past Snape and A ...

, and was formed by

longshore drift Longshore drift from longshore current is a geological process that consists of the transportation of sediments (clay, silt, pebbles, sand, shingle) along a coast parallel to the shoreline, which is dependent on the angle incoming wave direction ...

along the coast. The material of the spit comes from places further north, such as

Dunwich Dunwich is a village and civil parish in Suffolk, England. It is in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB around north-east of London, south of Southwold and north of Leiston, on the North Sea coast. In the Anglo-Saxon period, Dunwich was t ...

. Near the middle point of its length, at the foreland point or 'Ness', once stood

Orfordness Lighthouse Orfordness Lighthouse was a lighthouse on Orford Ness, in Suffolk, England. The tower was completed in 1792. Work began on demolition in July 2020, and was completed in August. The light had a range of . It was equipped with an AIS transmit ...

, demolished in summer 2020 owing to the encroaching sea. In the name of the lighthouse (and the radio transmitting station – see below), 'Orfordness' is written as one word.

Description

Orford Ness is an internationally important site for nature conservation. It contains a significant portion of the European reserve of vegetated shingle habitat, which is internationally scarce, highly fragile, and very easily damaged. Together with

Havergate Island Havergate Island is the only island in the county of Suffolk, England. It is found at the confluence of the River Ore and the Butley River near the village of Orford. It is a marshy nature reserve run by the Royal Society for the Protection ...

the site is a designated National Nature Reserve and forms part of: the Alde-Ore Estuary

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of ...

(SSSI); the Alde, Ore & Butley Estuaries and the Orfordness-Shingle Street

Special Area of Conservation A Special Area of Conservation (SAC) is defined in the European Union's Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), also known as the ''Directive on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora''. They are to protect the 220 habitats and ap ...

(SAC); the Alde-Ore Estuary

Special Protection Area A Special Protection Area (SPA) is a designation under the European Union Directive on the Conservation of Wild Birds. Under the Directive, Member States of the European Union (EU) have a duty to safeguard the habitats of migratory birds and cert ...

(SPA); the Alde-Ore Estuary

Ramsar Site A Ramsar site is a wetland site designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention,8 ha (O) *** Permanent 8 ha (P) *** Seasonal Intermittent < 8 ha(Ts) **

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; , AHNE) is an area of countryside in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, that has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Areas are designated in recognition of thei ...

(AONB); and the Suffolk Heritage Coast. It is also listed as of national importance in the

Geological Conservation Review The Geological Conservation Review (GCR) is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological a ...

(GC), as a grade 1 site in the

Nature Conservation Review ''A Nature Conservation Review'' is a two-volume work by Derek Ratcliffe, published by Cambridge University Press in 1977. It set out to identify the most important places for nature conservation in Great Britain. It is often known by the initial ...

. (NCR) and qualifies for the DEFRA Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) scheme.

History

The peninsula was formerly administered by the

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...

, which conducted secret military tests during both world wars and the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

. The site was selected as the location for the

Orfordness Beacon The Orfordness Rotating Wireless Beacon, known simply as the Orfordness Beacon or sometimes the Black Beacon, was an early radio navigation system introduced by the United Kingdom in July 1929. It allowed the angle to the station to be measured ...

, one of the earliest experiments in long-range

radio navigation Radio navigation or radionavigation is the application of radio frequencies to determine a position of an object on the Earth, either the vessel or an obstruction. Like radiolocation, it is a type of radiodetermination. The basic principles a ...

. The Beacon was set up in 1929 and used in the pre-war era. In the 1930s Orford Ness was the site of the first purpose-built experiments on the defence system that would later be known as radar. Having proved the technology on Orford Ness,

Robert Watson-Watt Sir Robert Alexander Watson Watt (13 April 1892 – 5 December 1973) was a Scottish pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology. Watt began his career in radio physics with a job at the Met Office, where he began looking for accura ...

and his team moved to nearby

Bawdsey Manor Bawdsey Manor stands at a prominent position at the mouth of the River Deben close to the village of Bawdsey in Suffolk, England, about northeast of London. Built in 1886, it was enlarged in 1895 as the principal residence of Sir William C ...

and developed the

Chain Home Chain Home, or CH for short, was the codename for the ring of coastal Early Warning radar stations built by the Royal Air Force (RAF) before and during the Second World War to detect and track aircraft. Initially known as RDF, and given the off ...

radar system in time for its vital role in the Battle of Britain. The Atomic Weapons Research Establishment had a base on the site, used for environmental testing, i.e. when a laboratory test is conducted to determine the functional performance of a component or system under conditions that simulate the real environment in which the component or system is expected to operate. Many of the buildings from this time remain clearly visible from the

quay A wharf, quay (, also ), staith, or staithe is a structure on the shore of a harbour or on the bank of a river or canal where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers. Such a structure includes one or more berths (mooring location ...

at Orford, including the distinctive 'pagodas'. In the late 1960s an experimental Anglo-American military

over-the-horizon radar Over-the-horizon radar (OTH), sometimes called beyond the horizon radar (BTH), is a type of radar system with the ability to detect targets at very long ranges, typically hundreds to thousands of kilometres, beyond the radar horizon, which is ...

known as

Cobra Mist Cobra Mist was the codename for an Anglo-American experimental over-the-horizon radar station at Orford Ness, England. It was known technically as AN/FPS-95 and sometimes referred to as System 441a; a reference to the project as a whole. Cobra ...

was built on the peninsula. It closed in 1973, and in the late 1970s and early 1980s the site and building were re-used for the

Orfordness transmitting station The Orfordness transmitting station was a major radio broadcasting facility at Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast in the United Kingdom able to broadcast to much of Europe. It closed in May 2012 after more than 30 years of service. In 2017 Radio C ...

. This powerful medium-wave radio station – originally owned and run by the

Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * Unit ...

, then the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

and, after privatisation in the 1990s, a series of private companies – was best known for transmitting the

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...

in English around the clock to continental Europe on 648 kHz from September 1982 until March 2011. The following year, the site became disused until

Radio Caroline Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. ...

began broadcasting from it in December 2017. Orford Ness is now owned by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

and is open to the public under the name Orford Ness National Nature Reserve, though access is strictly controlled to protect the fragile habitats and due to a residual danger to the public from the site's former use by the military. Access is available only by the National Trust ferry from Orford Quay on designated open days.

Urban explorers Urban exploration (often shortened as UE, urbex and sometimes known as roof and tunnel hacking) is the exploration of manmade structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment. Photography and historical inter ...

have also visited the site. Rachel Woodward writes:

It is a place of strange contrasts. For the National Trust, its 'elemental nature' contrasts with the 'inherent dangers' of this place, a 'hostile and potentially dangerous site'. Military structures – the Bomb Ballistics Building, the Black Beacon, the 'pagodas' used for explosive design – have been converted into viewing spots. This is not a celebratory site, however; there is ambivalence and doubt here, with regard to what is being physically and ideologically conserved.

Owing to its military history, its stark appearance and the fact that it was closed to the public for many decades, several apocryphal stories have circulated about Orford Ness. The best-known is the suggestion that

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

troops attempted to invade England and actually disembarked at the tip of the peninsula near

, before being repelled with a wall of fire. Official sources denied that any such attempted invasion took place, an assertion confirmed by classified documents released in 1993. More recently, the flashes of the lighthouse were implicated in the Rendlesham Forest UFO sightings of late December 1980. In 2013,

Trinity House "Three In One" , formation = , founding_location = Deptford, London, England , status = Royal Charter corporation and registered charity , purpose = Maintenance of lighthouses, buoys and beacons , he ...

announced that the lighthouse was to be decommissioned as an aid to navigation and marked on UKHO charts as disused. It was demolished in summer 2020. File:Ferry,_Orford_Ness_-_geograph.org.uk_-_535535.jpg, View from the Orford Ness dock towards Orford Quay. File:The_Radar_Tower,_Orfordness_-_geograph.org.uk_-_287811.jpg, The 'Black Beacon' radio navigation tower and the lighthouse File:Orfordness_transmitting_station.jpg, Aerial view of the

File:Orfordness Lighthouse - geograph.org.uk - 2600984.jpg, The lighthouse File:Orford_Ness_pagoda_exterior.jpg, Exterior of two 'pagodas' File:Orford_Ness_pagoda_interior.jpg, Interior of a 'pagoda'

Geography

Orford Ness is Europe's largest vegetated shingle spit. It is approximately long,Annex 06: Orfordness in: and the site covers a total area of approximately . Forty percent of this (890 acres) is shingle, 25 percent (556 acres) tidal rivers, mud flats, sand flats, and lagoons, eighteen percent (400 acres) grassland, and fifteen percent (330 acres) salt marsh. The spit formed almost entirely of flint deposited by waves through the process of long-shore drift. The main influence on its formation has been storm waves throwing shingle over the top of the beach crest, where it is protected from ordinary wave action. Over time, this process leads to the formation of stable ridges of fine particles, and swails of coarser shingle. The size and shape of the spit fluctuate over time (see map). Estimated growth rates range from 64 m per year in 1962 to 1967, to 183 m per year in 1804 to 1812. Between 1812 and 1821, the total length fluctuated by . As a result of the dynamically changing nature of the spit, the true age of its formation is unknown. However, before about 1200, Orford is thought to have been a port facing the open sea.

Notes

References

External links

LIFE+ project; Alde-Ore future for wildlifeOrford Ness National Nature Reserve information at the National Trust
– Lady Florence, Orford Quay, Suffolk
''My Orford'' by Charlie Underwood
– An interesting insight into village life in Orford
English Heritage survey report on AWRE Orford Ness
includes history from First World War onwards (2009). {{Coord, 52, 04, 53, N, 01, 33, 31, E, type:landmark, display=title Landforms of Suffolk National Trust properties in Suffolk Nature Conservation Review sites Tourist attractions in Suffolk Spits of England Orford, Suffolk Beaches of Suffolk