Rewilded 2023-24

This is an ongoing project to record many of the derelict and overgrown properties and industrial sites in the Island. In particular, the wreckage of a lost horticulture industry can be found across the north and west of the Island.

These bramble-clad snaking skeletons of old vineries that once housed lines of tomato plants seem to gradually sink lower to the ground after every storm. Long defunct industrial machinery, rusty steamers to sterilise the soil, and potting sheds, stand alongside the sagging timbers. Gradually enveloped by plant life, damp and decay over the decades, the shrouded outlines still convey a sense of the years of back-breaking labour and the traces of those who worked the land.

Further round the coast on the north-east tip, sits a solitary white building which can be seen for miles, surrounded by the spare khaki terrain of L’ancresse Common. Up close, its graffitied boarded up windows and doors give little clue to its history.

From 1910, this was the shore station of the nearby lighthouse - Platte Fougere. When the lighthouse was automated, the defunct station building became social housing for a few decades, until it was sold off by the government to a private owner. Today, in its abject state, the building stands like a cipher to our industrial seafaring and privateering past.