What the Dickens?
North Kent has a rich cultural heritage that would be significantly affected by the loss of the marshes to industrial development. North Kent is the historical and cultural home of Charles Dickens.
St James Church on the Hoo Peninsula provides the setting at the start of Great Expectations when Pip unexpectedly encounters Magwitch.
St James Church on the Hoo Peninsula provides the setting at the start of Great Expectations when Pip unexpectedly encounters Magwitch
Dickens, writing some 140 years ago, described the marshes he knew and loved - today threatened by an airport twice the size of Heathrow:
‘Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.
At such a time I found out... that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea.’ – Charles Dickens, 'Great Expectations'
Read Chapter 1 of "Great Expectations" by clicking on the banner below
his page outlines the potential damage to cultural heritage of the proposed airport at Cliffe
