Suffolk Coast
The crumbling coastline where flint knappers, net makers, and the last longshore fishermen work materials and methods unchanged in centuries.
3Subjects identified
3Traditions mapped
1Heritage Crafts Red List skill
The crumbling coastline where flint knappers, net makers, and the last longshore fishermen work materials and methods unchanged in centuries.
The Suffolk coast is eroding. Entire villages have fallen into the sea within living memory, and the coastline retreats further every year. Against this backdrop of physical disappearance, the remaining coastal craftspeople - flint knappers, net makers, longshore fishermen - work materials and methods that connect them to a landscape that is literally vanishing beneath their feet.
The flint knappers of Brandon are among the most endangered craftspeople in England. Flint knapping - the shaping of flint for building and decoration - appears on the Heritage Crafts Red List as a critically endangered skill. The few remaining practitioners supply the flint churches and buildings of East Anglia, but there are no apprentices coming through. The Archive documents these makers at the intersection of endangered craft and endangered landscape.
The Sussex trugg - a garden basket woven from sweet chestnut and willow. One man still makes them by hand on the Suffolk coast.