Lindisfarne, Northumberland

Reuse, recycle, repurpose

I’ve thought since my schooldays (learning about the history of the Anglo-Saxon period and the beginnings of Christianity in England) of the monastery of Lindisfarne and its wonderfully isolated position off the Northumberland coast. At long last, two weeks ago, the Resident Wise Woman and I finally made it there. We were, of course, delighted with the place – and glad we arrived early in the morning* a couple of hours before the hordes of other tourists turned up. Regular readers of this blog who know Lindisfarne will guess that as well as the obvious sites I wanted to look at the sheds near the harbour and near the castle that are ingeniously made of upturned boats.

I think it was probably a production of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes that introduced me to the idea of upturned boat sheds. The opera’s eponymous hero has such a shed – Grimes lives in Suffolk (the country both of Britten and of George Crabbe, author of the poem on which the composer based his opera), but the practice of reusing old and leaky boats as fishermen’s storage sheds was once common on many parts of the east coast. At Lindisfarne, there have been such sheds at least since the 19th century and a dozen remain at the harbour and there are a further three at the castle.

Of course many decommissioned fishing boats were broken up for scrap – a lot of the wood became firewood.† But upturning a boat and preserving its timbers with pitch or roofing felt or some sort of waterproof cloth produced a cheap shed for storing a fishermen’s gear. You could put nets in there, a dinghy, and whatever else you needed to store. And the result, provided the shed is well looked after, is an aesthetically pleasing combination of lines and curves – basic model: an upturned boat alone; taller version: an upturned boat propped on top of a wooden substructure. We are used to recycling – breaking up everything from cardboard boxes to old motor cars so that they can be turned into something else. We’re familiar with reuse – especially, if we’re interested in building conservation, in finding new uses for old buildings. Repurposing, turning one (redundant) thing into a different (useful) item, is equally important and transformative. These little sheds, modest buildings indeed, shine an old light on an ever-present problem.§

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*Two important rules when visiting Lindisfarne: check the tide tables so you don’t get cut off and if possible arrive before the crowds.

† Storing firewood was one of the uses of the sheds near the castle.

§ For another take on what to do with old boats, see this blog post from long ago.