The Ash Project - Kent Downs

The Ash Archive. The Halpern Gallery, Chatham (2018). Photo: Elena Amoros

My Grandfather’s Tree by Max Lamb, as part of The Ash Archive at The Halpern Gallery, Chatham (2018). Photo: Elena Amoros.

Online Ash Archive

The Ash Archive. The Halpern Gallery, Chatham (2018). Photo: Elena Amoros

Review: The Ash Archive As An Urgent Historical Memory Exercise

The Ash Archive is an encapsulation that protects the memories from oblivion. The Ash Archive is the defence against the loss, death and ephemeral status of one of the main relics of our national heritage, but also, the epitaph of a foretold death.

Fraxinus worked fragment - Historic England

Objects

Charcoal Fragments

In 2013 Historic England Archaeology excavated a series of post-Medieval charcoal burning platforms in Barbon, Cumbria. These sites show the historic connection between ash and the production of charcoal across…

Hannah Brown, Washford Pyne, 13 2017-18 oil on linen. Photo: Peter Halpin

Artworks

Washford Pyne, 13 by Hannah Brown

Hannah Browns work was recently selected for the Whitechapel Gallery’s London Open and it is there that we saw her work, fell in love with its intimacy and detail and…

Artworks

Ash series: I by Colin Booth

Booth collected off-cuts of ash, beech and birch ply from a furniture factory in Hastings, collecting pieces which retained the traces of colour used by timber manufactures to protect the…

Abhainn Ashik to Yr Onnen by Ackroyd & Harvey. Photo: Gorm Ashurst

Artworks Writing

Abhainn Ashik to Yr Onnen by Ackroyd and Harvey

Ackroyd & Harvey undertook a wide ranging research and development period for The Ash Project, during this time the artists amassed considerable data showing how the ash tree is rooted…

Holy Trinity, (A Photographic Exchange). Photo: Maureen Jordan

Artworks Contributions

“ashes to go” by Maureen Jordan

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. In 2018 took part in a weekend workshop run by the performance-photographer Manuel Vason as part of The Ash…

frisson, (film still), 2018. Cydney Adams

Artworks

‘frisson’ by Cydney Adams

‘frisson’ is a photographic stop motion film motivated by the rapid decline of the Ash tree. The film documents human interaction with a forest and draws on the similarities between…

Artworks Writing

“Ash Tree” by Chris Poundwhite

In so few strides I circumambulate the tree, its centuries centred in rings of heartwood, sapwood – the circularity of years, charted seasons, bud & leaf-fall, bloom & icicle Myth…

Artworks

“Viritditas” Choral Work by Anil Sebastian and London Contemporary Voices

The piece begins and ends with the sound of sap rising through an ash tree recorded by Alex Metcalf. One by one, the choir members sing melodic fragments from ‘O Frondens…

Ash tree in the Kent Downs AONB. Photo: Ackroyd & Harvey

Artworks Writing

“Ash” by Jay Griffiths

Yesterday, out in the hills, a buzzard flew low overhead as it often does, and settled in the branches of one particular tree, as I had seen it do countless…

Artworks

My Grandfather’s Tree by Max Lamb

Monckton Walk Farm in the Yorkshire Wolds is run by Max Lamb’s grandfather, Dr. Robert Andrew Dunning. Next to his farm grew a female ash tree. The age of the…

Artworks

Ash Dome by David Nash

David Nash’s famous Ash Dome was planted as saplings in 1977 and is now a mature dome centered on a plot of woodland in North Wales in Nash’s ‘laboratory’ for…

The Ash Archive. Studio 3 Gallery, Canterbury (2018). Photo: University of Kent

Artworks

Transmission Spores by Magz Hall

In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil was an enormous ash tree that harboured all the life in the universe a signifier of its power and resilience. For the last ten years an…

The Ash Archive. Studio 3 Gallery, Canterbury (2018). Photo: Madeleine Hodge

Artworks

Autumn Richardson & Richard Skelton: Relics (Fraxinus)

Relics is a series of visual poems that conjure the ghost forests of Cumbria’s Furness Fells –now long gone but remembered in pollen drifts- a 12.000-year old alluvial record stretching…

Artworks

ash to ash (study) by Ackroyd & Harvey

Ackroyd & Harvey have been awarded a major commission by Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to create a sculptural artwork acting as both celebration and legacy of the…

Writing

The Man Who Made Things Out Of Trees by Robert Penn

Robert Penn cut down an ash tree to see how many things could be made from it. After all, ash is the tree we have made the greatest and most…

Objects

Dominoes

Like chess, dominoes is an Asian board game of hundreds of years of history. However, unlike chess and draughts, dominoes is not a strategy game and it’s suitable for all ages,…

Objects

Arrow shaft

The arrow is one of the oldest weapons in history. It works as a projectile, either thrown away with your bare hands, our launched with a bow. The earliest evidences…

The Ash Archive. Studio 3 Gallery, Canterbury (2018). Photo: Matt George

Objects

Cricket stumps

Wicket is the name given to the three vertical wooden sticks, or stumps, that are placed at the end of the cricket pitch. These stumps hold two different bails, and…

Artworks

Sheaf + Barley: Rune Set for Forespeaking

Runes, discovered and given to humans by a god, descending from the Phoenecian alphabet, were imbued with a material significance and aliveness in a way that modern writing is not.…

Objects

Catapult

This object is a classic Y-shaped catapult, usually associated to the mischievous school kid archetype, due to fictional characters like Dennis the Menace and Bart Simpson. However, this weapon comes in all…

Objects

Tent pegs

Yet many nature lovers and camping enthusiasts know how a tent peg looks like, not many people know that this hook used to be a wooden tool. Whilst technical advances…

Artworks

Ghost by Adam Chodzko

Ghost (2010) is a kayak; a sculpture as vessel, coffin, bed, costume and camera rig. It is designed to ferry people to the island of the dead. To initiate this process…

Objects

Charcoal

Scientifically speaking, charcoal is a form of graphitic carbon and ash residue hydrocarbon, usually obtained from heated wood. This process removes water and other different elements from the wood itself. The…

Objects

Axe and maul handle

Ash is a favoured wood for tool handles due its straight grained and hard wearing. Europeans first started fixing tool handles to rudimentary tools in7000BC, they were called “hafts” or…

Objects

Canoe paddle

This type of classic wooden paddle is usually held with both hands, drawn through the water from front to back to drive the boat forwards. Shorter than kayak paddles, canoe ones are frequently…

Objects

Spurtle

Of Scottish origin, a spurtle is also known as porridge spoon. This wooden utensil dates back from the 15th century and it is most generally used to stir soups, stews and…

Objects

Toboggan

A toboggan, also known as sledge and sled, is a vehicle used to transport passengers or cargo on ice or snow-covered surfaces. This little, kid-sized toboggan, has two parallel wood…

Objects

Spoon

The first traces of this utensil date from Ancient Egypt, as some examples of slate, ivory and wood spoons from that era are still preserved. Other civilisations, like the Greeks,…

Contributions

Scott Bloomfield: Ash on Ice

This piece called Ash on Ice is one of the many donations that The Ash Tree Project accepts in order to build a more diverse catalogue for The Ash Archive, our…

Contributions

The Ash Tree by M.R James

Read about The Ash Tree by celebrated British horror writer M. R. James, set in a large estate in Suffolk, it tells the tale of a man haunted by an ash tree in his garden.

Cartoon Ash Dieback 2012. Photo: Tony Harwood

Contributions

Cartoons from the first discovery of ash dieback

Aye, lad. Losing our elm then our ash trees was bad enough, but then the great wind turbine blight started in 2012…

The effects of ash Dieback, West Kent. Photo: John Miller.

Contributions

Ash Myths of the Folkestone Downs

Ash trees have long played an important role in our lives from the Stone Age to modern day. In Norse mythology the ash is the tree that represents Yggdrasil, the…

Places

Crundale ash tree: marked on the OS map

It was a clear Saturday morning when we set off on foot from Sidelands Farm in search of the Crundale ash tree. The walk took us into the heart of…

Writing

“Four Views of an Ash” collaborative poem

the ash-crown wind-swung & giddy in its height & while summer green makes summer shade, the leaves prepare for autumn & an orange striped wing lies still on the ash…

Writing

‘The Ash Grove’, by Edward Thomas, (1916)

The Ash Project seeks to celebrate the ash trees’ heritage before they are lost, this poem by Edward Thomas from 1916 is eerily prescient of our current landscapes.

Contributions

Ashes to ashes: Steves home

A poignant account of the touching memories and uncertain future of the ash tree sent in by Steve Walker, entitled ‘Ashes to Ashes’. Also pictured are two images of the ash trees around Steve’s house.