Ramsgate market

On quite an overcast and blustery day, I was trying to record the sound of the wind blowing through the full summer leaf of the large trees in Ellington park.

Ellington Park

I wanted to try to record the sound of the sea, and decided the best place to do that was on the promenade on Ramsgate's seawall.  Here the sea directly meets the concrete of the walkway and as there was quite a strong breeze the waves were quite large.  As I was walking down to my recording point, several times the waves broke over the barrier, so I was hoping to be able to record some of the patter of the water landing onto the concrete.  In an effort to stay dry, that didn't work so well.

The Sea, Ramsgate

I was waiting for a good time to record in one of my favourite places in Ramsgate, and then it appeared.  The clouds broke and the wind died down, so I scuttled over there.  The cemetery itself is barely used today for new burials, so visitors are quite few and far between - other than council workers, cemetery volunteers and the odd person enjoying the stillness.  There are many intriguing things about it, including the public toilets without taps, the three (count them) memorial chapels (two of which seem permanently locked), the tree-lined boulevards and random shapes of the gravestones.  

A note about the recording - I'm not sure what was making the fairly regular but faint tapping.  I don't think it was the wind, possibly it was a strap knocking against the chair where I was sitting.

Ramsgate Cemetery

I felt oddly uncomfortable during the recording of this one.  Even though I was trying to be as quiet and still as I possibly could be (and if anyone had come into the chapel, I would have stopped recording immediately and left), I still felt like I was intruding on someone else's grief.  Not much danger of that in the short time I was there - the flowers are mostly dead and it doesn't look like anyone else came in all day.

  In the end, I think this is the nearest silence that I've yet recorded - other than the wail of an ambulance in the distance and the slam of the door, some time after I'd entered - the only sounds are from me.  

Cemetery Chapel of Rememberance

So for this recording I was sitting on a bench right at one end of the Harbour Wall, which is a circular area near to the lighthouse.  It is very close to the channel the boats use to enter the outer harbour.   During the first minute you can hear the should of a sea bird trying to crack a shell very close to where I was sitting and other sounds of the harbour.

Ramsgate Harbour Wall

Somewhat improbably, this was recorded at Ramsgate's second station, Dumpton Park.  It is on the main line, however the majority of trains rush by and only a few stop.  It is a strangely empty place (at least compared to the other 6 stations in Thanet), with no furniture or notices and few passengers. Or trains, whilst I was there.

Dumpton Park Railway Station

This little patch of land lies behind a supermarket and next to a car park and comprises of little more than a path, a couple of benches, some unkempt grass and some railings.  In this recording we hear boys playing football in the street nearby, buses and cars moving past, the chatter from passers-by and noises from a nearby house.  

The patch

This recording is from another of my favourite places in my time, this time the churchyard of St Laurence in (strangely enough), St Lawrence.  That the church and the place have different spellings is strange enough, but the churchyard is a bizarre, overgrown jumble of very large gravestones, crypts and memorials,  The sounds are mostly muffled traffic noise, birds, aeroplanes, insects, the chime of the church clock... and not much else.  

St Laurence churchyard

There is a bit more deliberate noise in this recording than normal - the Warre recreation ground is quite large and I could have sat somewhere else.  I thought the noise of the skaters was quite interesting, if not slightly hypnotic.

Ramsgate Skate park

Working on a silence project - mapping the 'absence of noise' in different places around my town.

joetnr

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