‘Seaside Town Seeks Sculptor’
January 2023: Deal Town Council advertises an open submission for ideas “to create a work of art that would enhance the beauty of the town“.
A local resident, Billy Elliott, had left money in his will to the town for a sculpture to be sited in a prominent place, such as the seafront. It would have to “capture the essence of the town in a beautiful installation that would stand for generations to come“.
With a deadline just two months away, sculptors and artists entered a wide variety of ideas. The Sound Mirror made the final shortlist of two in late Spring.
Steel versus Bronze
In December 2023, the Council awarded the commission to the Sound Mirror Project. Preparations began before Christmas, with hopes that all construction could take place locally. A decision was made in late 2023 to make the Sound Mirror in bronze rather than an earlier plan for Corten Steel, which can be very striking in appearance but comes with one significant drawback: if deployed in coastal areas, surfaces may never seal properly, leading to extensive staining and corrosion.
Michael’s original design for bronze throughout was re-instated, having earlier been shelved owing to cost. A search for fabricators then began in earnest. It quickly became apparent that no bronze casting expertise was available in the Deal area, not could any foundry in London produce it within budget. Specialist foundries in England, Scotland and Wales were tracked down and commissioned. Virtually the whole budget has been committed to casting, fabrication and installation.
Maths, Waterjet & Clay
The Sound Mirror is a scaled-down version of those constructed between the two World Wars, mainly around the south-east coast of England. Though much smaller than these large dishes, it should reflect sound back to anyone standing at its focal point, located about 1.8 metres (6′) in front. The bronze casting needed to be accurately formed in the shape of a parabola, identical to satellite dishes and reflecting telescopes. A vector shape was drawn using Adobe Illustrator from a mathematical formula which allowed a template to be cut from rigid material using a computer-controlled water-jet process.
The Casting
The foundry, Powderhall Bronze in Edinburgh, used the template to extrude a pattern in clay by rotating the template (above). This was used to cast the mirror in bronze (below). Weighing 170 kilos and just over 1.6 metres in diameter, in August it was transported to Castle Fine Arts, Oswestry, for final assembly in late 2024.
The wreck data
To create a new, accurate map, a number of datasets were brought together with the help of Paul Day of SCGIS Ltd, a bathymetric mapping specialist. Starting from a simple chart using Admiralty data, more and more wrecks were added, building up the number to display around 600 with known positions and dates of sinking. There were contributions from Goodwin Sands Conservation Trust and historical records, digitised using Ai techniques. Previous published maps were largely guesswork, some are partly fabricated. (To protect copyright, unhelpfully). Admiralty data showed the greatest amount of up-to-date detail. The full version of the final dataset will be available on this site at a later date, detailing the construction year, size and cargo, if carried. Some entries show the circumstances of sinking (some examples, below).
HMS Northumberland: “Built in 1679 by Bailey, Bristol. 3rd rate, 70 guns. Driven ashore on The Goodwins in the Great Storm of 1703. All hands lost. Most of the wreck uncovered in the early 1980’s.”
Sunk 27th November 1703
Britannia: Built in 1806 by Wells &Co, London. Owned at the time of loss by English East India Co. Passage Thames for Madras. Blown on to the Goodwins during a gale, while sheltering awaiting fair wind”
Sunk 25th January 1809
Lancaster bomber: “Ditched on approach to Manston airfield. The Lanc is generally accepted to be JB278, PM-L of 103 Squadron which ditched on approach to Manston on 25th April 1944”
Downed 25 April 1944
Greatstone Sound Mirrors
We recently visited the three sound mirrors at Greatstone, near Dungeness on the Kent coast. Open for a few days each year, the site is next to the RSPB Dungeness Nature Reserve, accessed by a long walk over shingle, but well worth the effort. Ranging in size from 20 feet (6 metres) to 200 feet (61 metres), they were built between 1928 and 1930, part of Britain’s national defence strategy. The sound mirrors are a scheduled ancient monument, sadly now in a poor state of preservation.
Map nears completion
