Art » Alkerden Hub
Alkerden Hub, Whitecliffe, Ebbsfleet
Currently in production
Architects: HTA Design
Public Art Consultants: FrancisKnight Consultants
A significant permanent artwork in the atrium space of the new community hub. Due to be installed 2026-27
Read more about the project here Alkerden Hub
Between the end of the Jurassic and the beginning of the Tertiary Era a great amount of chalk was formed. It was such a striking episode that the whole period was called the Cretaceous Age. Minute and innumerable oceanic animals called foraminifera, floating about near the surface of the sea, sunk to the bottom when dead, and then accumulated in a slowly solidifying ooze.
We call the resultant accumulation Chalk.
If we examine a handful of it under a microscope we find that it consists of the casing of the foraminifera – really shells of the most delicate and beautiful design, six thousand to a square inch.
In view of the fact that such deposits are only found today at a depth of about twelve thousand feet, it would seem that this Dorset hill was once in the abysses of the sea whose surface flowed where the low flying clouds float now. We approach the white cliffs of Dover, and gaze upward at the seeming solid shows of earth and rock. It is well to realise the reality, that this too is water or chiefly water in another style, and that upon the backs of innumerable urchins of the sea our history is stayed.
QUOTE FROM - THE WORM FORGIVES THE PLOW BY JOHN STEWART COLLIS