Alan Silvester

The CROW (Countryside and Rights of Way) Act, or "Right to Roam" Act, excludes the right of access to land known as “excepted land” even if it appears as open access land on maps. These restrictions vary from military bylaws to areas inhabited by structures like electricity substations, wind turbines or telephone masts.

Using the act as a basis for research, Excepted Land is a project that explores the boundary of permissible land access revealing the functional purpose behind a collection of structural forms. At times contentious and periodically covert, the structures make challenging, intermittently hostile subjects.

The project is bound by a fascination with structural forms and their inextricable link to the natural world which envelopes each subject. Inspired by the complexities of our right to roam, Excepted Land confronts disparate systems embedded within the British Landscape, revealing critical technological processes at play. 

Images

0135N041120A – Trent VOR/DME (TNT) is situated about five miles northeast of Ashbourne in the Derbyshire Dales. The DVOR is a navigational aid for air traffic and part of a wider system of arrays used for aviation mapping across the UK.

When the receiving unit collects these radio signals (up to 200 miles from the transmitter), they can pinpoint their position and enable the aircraft to remain on course.

CF014234 – Swanscombe Marshes has restricted access due to planned development by London Resort Holding Company (LHRC), who have applied to build the “UK’s Disneyland”. The London Resort – which includes a 1,245-acre theme park, hotels and a water park – is proposed to be constructed on the Swanscombe Peninsula, between Dartford and Gravesend, with a view to opening in 2024. It is also home to the tallest electricity pylon in the UK. The 400 kV Thames Crossing is an overhead power line reaching across the River Thames between Botany Marshes in Swanscombe and West Thurrock. The span is 1372m and the minimum height of the conductors over the river is 76m.

CF014373 - RAF Fylingdales is an MoD owned ballistic missile early warning system (BMEWS) on Snod Hill in the North York Moors. The radar base is part of an intelligence sharing arrangement with the United States and is primarily tasked to warn of inbound ballistic missile attacks.

The primary radars of RAF Fylingdales are active electronically scanned array (AESA) phased array radars, mounted on each face of a truncated tetrahedron, typically referred to as the "pyramid" or the SSPAR (Solid State Phased Array). The tetrahedron covers a full 360 degrees, each of the three arrays is 26 m across and contains around 2560 transmit/receive modules, with a tracking range of 3,000 nautical miles.

Fylingdales is also part of the Space Surveillance Network, tasked with detection and tracking of orbiting objects in space, referred to as Space Situational Awareness (SSA); designed to provide accurate information regarding the space environment, particularly hazards to both in orbit and ground infrastructure.

CF014261 – Fobbing Flood Defence Barrier straddles Vange Creek on a junction of converging waterways that feed into the River Thames between Canvey Island and London Gateway. The barrier is designed to prevent flooding on Fobbing and Pitsea Marshes immediately adjacent to Coryton Refinery.

 CF014308 – Tunstead Quarry works in Derbyshire are estimated to be the largest limestone quarry in Western Europe and has been worked since 1929. The site is 2km long and 1km wide and produces 6m tonnes of limestone products annually. It remains the largest producer of limestone in the Peak District.

0108N200719G – Sizewell B on the Suffolk coast has a single pressurised water reactor and is the United Kingdom's newest nuclear power station. The strategic target is for a 20-year life extension for Sizewell B, beyond the current accounting closure date of 2035. This would mean the plant remaining in operation until 2055.

0121N180120A – Dowlow Works is a quarry in High Peak, Derbyshire near the village of Earl Sterndale.

0014N091217C – Lowther Hill radar lies roughly one mile southeast of Wanlockhead. The hill is the second highest peak of the Lowther Hills, part of the Southern Uplands of Scotland, rising to some 725m at the summit. Primarily a civilian operation for the UK, all operations are fully integrated with the military to ensure air safety in both controlled and uncontrolled airspace.

0096N290319E – The Ffestiniog Power Station is a 360-megawatt (480,000 hp) pumped-storage hydroelectricity scheme near Ffestiniog in Gwynedd, North West Wales. The power station at the lower reservoir has four water turbines, which can generate 360 megawatts of electricity within 60 seconds of the need arising. The scheme has the capacity to power the whole of North Wales for several hours. Llyn Stwlan, the upper reservoir, discharges 27 cubic metres of water per second to the turbine generators at the power station on the bank of the Tan-y-Grisiau reservoir.

0099N060419C – The Trawsfynydd nuclear power station is scheduled to be returned to a pre-nuclear state by 2083, 124 years after construction began. The site ceased electricity generation during a routine outage in 1991 after 26 years of operation; permanent shutdown was subsequently announced in 1993. In 2020, a new decommissioning plan was proposed to deconstruct the concrete towers and switch from a safe enclosure – or deferred dismantling – to dry cask storage using an underground geological storage facility. To date, an underground geological storage facility location is still to be established by the UK government. The image, taken at two hours past sunset, captures 15 minutes in the lifespan of this monolith. Despite its indeterminate future, the structure emphasises the permanence of nuclear energy as it has the potential to stand in the Welsh landscape for 124 years, outlasting the generation that conceived it.

0096N290319C – Claxby National Air Traffic Services (NATS) radar is situated at the summit of Wolds Top, the name sometimes given to the highest point of the Lincolnshire Wolds with an elevation of 168m. It lies some distance to the north of the village of Normanby le Wold in Lincolnshire. The radar controls and guides UK civil Aircraft.

0123N080220F – Lovell Telescope construction was finished in 1957, and at the time the Cheshire-based equipment was the largest steerable dish radio telescope in the world at 76.2m in diameter. It is now the third-largest, after the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, United States, and the Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope in Germany.

0112N110819F – Saltend Chemicals Park in Hull produces acetic acid, acetic anhydride, ammonia, bio-butanol, bio-ethanol, ethyl acetate (ETAC) and ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer (EVOH). Animal feed is also generated on site.

0084N101118C – Dungeness A is a legacy Magnox power station that was connected to the National Grid in 1965 and has reached the end of its life. On 31 December 2006, the Kent coast station ceased power generation and defueling was complete in June 2012. By 2015, the demolition of the turbine hall was concluded. It is expected to enter the “care and maintenance” stage of decommissioning in 2027 with demolition of reactor buildings and final site clearance planned for 2088 to 2098.

0110N300719E – Royal Air Force Menwith Hill is a Royal Air Force station acting as a communications intercept and missile warning site for the United Kingdom and United States. It has been described as the largest electronic monitoring station in the world. In 1954, the British War Office purchased land at Nessfield Farm, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, with the intention of building a surveillance station in collaboration with the United States Department of Defence. The US considered the location suitable for gathering signals intelligence because of the low-level background radio noise emanating from the Yorkshire Dales. The subsequent years have seen numerous regulatory changes leading to a myriad of claims regarding the true nature of the station’s role in global strategic defence. The image, taken at two hours past sunset, is a 15-minute exposure shot at one and a half miles from the base.

0024N301217I – Great Dun Fell radar station in Cumbria is at the end of a mountain pass elevated 850m above sea level. The private five-mile single track leading to the station is Britain’s highest road. The station is managed by the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) and is part of a network of radar systems that distribute air traffic information across the United Kingdom. Great Dun Fell provides 250-mile radius signal coverage, but the subarctic conditions make accessing the radar station challenging.

0128D250520J – The Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (MRAO) is located near Cambridge and is home to a number of the largest and most advanced aperture synthesis radio telescopes in the world, including the One-Mile Telescope, Ryle Telescope and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager.

0098N300319A – The Capel Dewi field site is located east of Aberystwyth, Wales, at the base of a small, wooded valley. The site is maintained by the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory and is home to the United Kingdom’s Mesosphere-Stratosphere-Troposphere (MST) radar, a NERC national facility which is also used by the Met Office for operational wind measurements. It is the UK's most powerful and most versatile wind-profiling instrument.