Beached

‘Beached’ is a very temporary installation on the beach at St Bees. Over 3,000 sandcastles, each bearing a small red flag, are built along a 150m length of the beach. The piece was built by over 100 volunteers between tides.

St Bees lies at the far western end of the line of Hadrian’s Wall and the site of a defence from the sea. the installation also happened on the 50th anniversary of the Seascale disaster - the biggest nuclear accident in the UK to date. This stretch of coastline is notoriously the most radioactively polluted as a result of the nuclear power and reprocessing industry a few miles down the coast. The castles can be seen as a reference to both the Roman fortifications with the flags resonating with the contaminated coastline. However there are many ways to read the piece - all of them valid.

The piece faced west and was timed to coincide with the high tide at sunset - the installation washing away as the sun set. By dawn the next day there was no trace.