The working coast around the Isle of Sheppey was a busy commercial corridor until the late 1960s. The freight has gone; the things the freight left behind have not. A long walk along the foreshore with a man who has been collecting them for forty-one years.
Word of mouth, a clipboard at the gate, and a small fleet of regulars who come down from London on a Tuesday. A working portrait of a trade that has, by deliberate decision, refused to scale.
An antiques dealer on the Sheerness high street who works alone, sells perhaps a piece a week, and has done so for nineteen years.
What the building does now, and what it used to do.
Six small objects from a single afternoon's poking-around.
Where the official tour stops, and what is on the other side.
"A coast doesn't forget what it used to do. The trade goes, but the things stay, and the things keep telling the story."— Editorial Note, Issue 9
A hand-written ledger from the late Victorian period, recently rediscovered in the back office of a small Sheerness firm, that gives an unusually detailed record of what crossed the dock between 1893 and 1908.
One auctioneer, two hundred lots, and a small but persistent clientele who have been showing up on the second Saturday of every month for, in some cases, the past twenty-five years.