‘Apart from the obvious things that look like a gorilla or a clown’s head, most of the figures are taken from antiquity and pre-history’, says Rory McCormack, a fisherman who has been working off of Brighton beach for over 20 years. We are standing in the enclosure that started out as his fishing store plot, and has become known locally as the “flint grotto”, a sort-of sculpture garden, cordoned off by wire fencing, fishing nets and rope.
Since McCormack started working as a fisherman, pulling his boat across the shingle beach each morning to catch sea bass, the surrounding area has transformed. The Victorian arches that run behind the beach like a turquoise lace trim have mostly been closed for a renovation that still hasn’t taken place, while new buildings crop up along the lower promenade, abutting the flint grotto with luxury fitness and fussy drinks. There is a new outdoor pool development, cafes, restaurants, and the nearby Palace Pier continues to churn out low-budget remixes, fluorescent lights, and the scent of hot sugar.
In 2015, the council threatened to demolish the flint grotto, but the place has instead become a local landmark, as McCormack has got on with his work. The resulting flint grotto is an increasingly rare example of what can happen when someone has the ingenuity, will and time to try things out and push against the turning tides of urban sprawl. ‘I was down here a lot making nets’, he says. ‘When all my efforts stopped going into fishing I had some time on my hands and I just started playing.’
McCormack is the last beach fisherman, the trade largely having moved to the marina further down the coast. The sea ahead of his plot is instead dappled with year-round swimmers and paddle-boarders: ‘I am not one to judge, but I would call that a narcissistic leisure activity’, McCormack says with a smirk. He built the fence enclosure when his fishing store was getting vandalised, as the area became more isolated when people moved away from working on the beach, and the night patrols stopped. ‘You couldn’t leave nets on the beach unattended’, McCormack tells me, standing between a grand flint and shell archway, which leads into his storage area. ‘Whatever I put down here wasn’t sufficient, until I built it up to a seven-foot fence. I couldn’t really add any more to it, except for barbed wire and explosives, but the situation has eased a great deal.’
Before McCormack started working as a beach fisherman in 2000, he trained as a dry stone waller. So when he needed a workbench for gutting his catch and repairing nets, he constructed one out of flint pebbles. As he waited for tides or strong winds to pass, he had time to decorate this workbench with nautilus and conch shells, before moving on to build flint statues based on Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Aztec figures. ‘I was interested, and if you really want to get under the skin of something like that, you make one and realise what went on when it was put together.’
Over the last ten years he has built up a haven for ancient deities and mischievous characters, continuing to add new statues until he ran out of space – at which point McCormack added ‘figures on figures, scattered about’ that clamber over the more ornate structures. ‘They amuse and satisfy me more than the big figures’, he says. ‘In an ideal world I would arrange it differently and swamp it with those little figures, like the characters that decorate Ecclesiastical buildings.’
McCormack now sees the project as complete. Having gone ‘beyond the realm of what was sensible’, he marked out the boundary with a flint path that runs between the statues, his fishing store and the plants in the middle of the enclosure. ‘I should go round and do the odd repair’, he says.
The garden is made up of bins that used to hold fishing nets, and the soil is from flower beds that got taken up as the surrounding area was closed off for redevelopment. ‘I didn’t need as much net, so I had some space’, McCormack says. ‘There is rhubarb, which grows by itself. Those little twigs, that is asparagus, and that grows particularly well. The little bits popping up there, that is horseradish, potatoes, sea kale’. There are two pieces of wood extending across the flint path, which McCormack tells us – as both a warning against tripping up and disturbing the equilibrium of the garden – are ‘not accidental’. Beneath the wood is a bramble, which he has been encouraging to grow towards the front of the grotto: ‘I have been trying to train it for years, and the bramble is finally deciding to oblige. They are indestructible, those things – they’ve got a will of their own.’
The grotto garden reflects McCormack’s approach to the statues, working with what he has to hand, and learning by trying things out and seeing what sticks. ‘I used to grow quite a lot down here’, he says, ‘but the bulk of it will reach its peak and then the rats will eat it. You have just got to learn to live and let live’. The rats have followed McCormack up to his allotment on the top of the hill behind the hospital – ‘amusing little things’ – where he is continuing on his statues, alongside gardening. ‘I am the world’s worst gardener’, he says. ‘Spuds are always safe. Tomatoes are a lot easier than you think. Assorted squashes. You’ve got your usual gardeners enemies, slugs, snails, pigeons, whatnot. You’re not going to beat them.’ There is a statue of an Egyptian hippopotamus goddess, one with a vulture on its head, a seated god with a bra “crown”, and a minotaur, among others.
He has brought the knowledge gained on the beach up to his allotment, and some of the materials. ‘There are a few bits and pieces that I now know don’t work’, he explains. ‘You can’t get too fanciful. It is no good having a set of fingers waving at the sea, because three years later they will drop off. Once you’ve done a lot you realise that some seashells are indestructible, others will weather and disappear. It is all just details that you pick up.’
While the fingers have dropped off, McCormack learnt which details would survive. The clown has iridescent seashell ears, there is a character playing panpipes, a Cypriot figure with rubber earrings and a lucky-find red stone belly button, and, standing on the flint wall, there is a stone head wearing a wig. The “totem”, made up of a few figures standing on each other’s head, ‘was just for fun’. While most of the materials are found on the beach, taking up to three months to gather enough of the right pieces to build a statue, some of the details are drawn from elsewhere. ‘The conch shells were thrown out from the aquarium’, McCormack says. ‘A piece of bright pink is a gift from God.’
While he has stated that the flint grotto is finished, McCormack envisions a low flint wall as the cherry on top of his project, and the lowering of its defences. The local council seems to have backed off, the arches still fenced off awaiting repair, and McCormack would like to be able to welcome people in. ‘Unfortunately, my hands are tied’, McCormack says, ‘because I have to spend so much time between here and Hove trying to look after Mother. Circumstances change, you are not always your own boss.’ On that note our time with McCormack is up, and after a few more portraits, where he sits on the back of a flint rubber duck, he is off – entrusting us as temporary keepers of the grotto, with detailed instructions on how to lock up.
Since McCormack started working as a fisherman, pulling his boat across the shingle beach each morning to catch sea bass, the surrounding area has transformed. The Victorian arches that run behind the beach like a turquoise lace trim have mostly been closed for a renovation that still hasn’t taken place, while new buildings crop up along the lower promenade, abutting the flint grotto with luxury fitness and fussy drinks. There is a new outdoor pool development, cafes, restaurants, and the nearby Palace Pier continues to churn out low-budget remixes, fluorescent lights, and the scent of hot sugar.
In 2015, the council threatened to demolish the flint grotto, but the place has instead become a local landmark, as McCormack has got on with his work. The resulting flint grotto is an increasingly rare example of what can happen when someone has the ingenuity, will and time to try things out and push against the turning tides of urban sprawl. ‘I was down here a lot making nets’, he says. ‘When all my efforts stopped going into fishing I had some time on my hands and I just started playing.’
McCormack is the last beach fisherman, the trade largely having moved to the marina further down the coast. The sea ahead of his plot is instead dappled with year-round swimmers and paddle-boarders: ‘I am not one to judge, but I would call that a narcissistic leisure activity’, McCormack says with a smirk. He built the fence enclosure when his fishing store was getting vandalised, as the area became more isolated when people moved away from working on the beach, and the night patrols stopped. ‘You couldn’t leave nets on the beach unattended’, McCormack tells me, standing between a grand flint and shell archway, which leads into his storage area. ‘Whatever I put down here wasn’t sufficient, until I built it up to a seven-foot fence. I couldn’t really add any more to it, except for barbed wire and explosives, but the situation has eased a great deal.’
Before McCormack started working as a beach fisherman in 2000, he trained as a dry stone waller. So when he needed a workbench for gutting his catch and repairing nets, he constructed one out of flint pebbles. As he waited for tides or strong winds to pass, he had time to decorate this workbench with nautilus and conch shells, before moving on to build flint statues based on Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Aztec figures. ‘I was interested, and if you really want to get under the skin of something like that, you make one and realise what went on when it was put together.’
Over the last ten years he has built up a haven for ancient deities and mischievous characters, continuing to add new statues until he ran out of space – at which point McCormack added ‘figures on figures, scattered about’ that clamber over the more ornate structures. ‘They amuse and satisfy me more than the big figures’, he says. ‘In an ideal world I would arrange it differently and swamp it with those little figures, like the characters that decorate Ecclesiastical buildings.’
McCormack now sees the project as complete. Having gone ‘beyond the realm of what was sensible’, he marked out the boundary with a flint path that runs between the statues, his fishing store and the plants in the middle of the enclosure. ‘I should go round and do the odd repair’, he says.
The garden is made up of bins that used to hold fishing nets, and the soil is from flower beds that got taken up as the surrounding area was closed off for redevelopment. ‘I didn’t need as much net, so I had some space’, McCormack says. ‘There is rhubarb, which grows by itself. Those little twigs, that is asparagus, and that grows particularly well. The little bits popping up there, that is horseradish, potatoes, sea kale’. There are two pieces of wood extending across the flint path, which McCormack tells us – as both a warning against tripping up and disturbing the equilibrium of the garden – are ‘not accidental’. Beneath the wood is a bramble, which he has been encouraging to grow towards the front of the grotto: ‘I have been trying to train it for years, and the bramble is finally deciding to oblige. They are indestructible, those things – they’ve got a will of their own.’
The grotto garden reflects McCormack’s approach to the statues, working with what he has to hand, and learning by trying things out and seeing what sticks. ‘I used to grow quite a lot down here’, he says, ‘but the bulk of it will reach its peak and then the rats will eat it. You have just got to learn to live and let live’. The rats have followed McCormack up to his allotment on the top of the hill behind the hospital – ‘amusing little things’ – where he is continuing on his statues, alongside gardening. ‘I am the world’s worst gardener’, he says. ‘Spuds are always safe. Tomatoes are a lot easier than you think. Assorted squashes. You’ve got your usual gardeners enemies, slugs, snails, pigeons, whatnot. You’re not going to beat them.’ There is a statue of an Egyptian hippopotamus goddess, one with a vulture on its head, a seated god with a bra “crown”, and a minotaur, among others.
He has brought the knowledge gained on the beach up to his allotment, and some of the materials. ‘There are a few bits and pieces that I now know don’t work’, he explains. ‘You can’t get too fanciful. It is no good having a set of fingers waving at the sea, because three years later they will drop off. Once you’ve done a lot you realise that some seashells are indestructible, others will weather and disappear. It is all just details that you pick up.’
While the fingers have dropped off, McCormack learnt which details would survive. The clown has iridescent seashell ears, there is a character playing panpipes, a Cypriot figure with rubber earrings and a lucky-find red stone belly button, and, standing on the flint wall, there is a stone head wearing a wig. The “totem”, made up of a few figures standing on each other’s head, ‘was just for fun’. While most of the materials are found on the beach, taking up to three months to gather enough of the right pieces to build a statue, some of the details are drawn from elsewhere. ‘The conch shells were thrown out from the aquarium’, McCormack says. ‘A piece of bright pink is a gift from God.’
While he has stated that the flint grotto is finished, McCormack envisions a low flint wall as the cherry on top of his project, and the lowering of its defences. The local council seems to have backed off, the arches still fenced off awaiting repair, and McCormack would like to be able to welcome people in. ‘Unfortunately, my hands are tied’, McCormack says, ‘because I have to spend so much time between here and Hove trying to look after Mother. Circumstances change, you are not always your own boss.’ On that note our time with McCormack is up, and after a few more portraits, where he sits on the back of a flint rubber duck, he is off – entrusting us as temporary keepers of the grotto, with detailed instructions on how to lock up.