Earth mother's curves are emerging from Northumberland's soil

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Earth mother's curves are emerging from Northumberland's soil

The Guardian, August 12, 2011CRAMLINGTON, Northumberland, U.K. –

Talk of the English landscape changing forever has been rife in comments on this week's troubles. An exaggeration as ever. But in one part of the north, it is literally true.

     Work is humming along on the moulding of 1,500,000 tons of soil and clay into the curvaceous form of Northumberlandia, the cumbrously-named 'Goddess of the North' who will soon join a very fine list of the country's earthworks.

     As a small boy in exile, I used to gaze fondly at the British Camp, or Herefordshire Beacon, which was tiered into the shape of a wedding cake by our ancestors in the Iron Age and mediaeval times. Another excellent example of 'earth art' is Gale Common spoil heap by the M62 in West Yorkshire, which the Coal Board engineered in the style of Maiden Castle.

     Like the Britons' old fort on the Malvern Hills, Gale Common serves a practical purpose, taking the slag from Kellingley's 'Big K' colliery in a triangular system which includes Eggborough power station and is served by barges along the Aire and Calder navigation. That side to these mighty earthworks gives them an added appeal – as opposed to giant art which is there just for art's sake – and Northumberlandia has it too.

     Designed by the noted American landscape architect Jencks, she is emerging on the Blagdon estate from opencast mining material salvaged at nearby Shotton. As high as an eight story building at the tip of her nose, she is 400 metres long and has a circular path approaching a mile long, snaking round her curves and a couple of small lakes.

     This makes her the biggest sculpted human form in the world, according to Jencks, and her rather sober features suggest that she takes this responsibility seriously. Work started last year and passers-by can now make out the basic shape of her face and other growing bits.

     Jencks, the excavators' Banks Group and the Blagdon estate are reckoning on 200,000 visitors a year when the goddess embraces the world in 2013. She will join Gormley's Angel of the North and The Duchess of Northumberland's garden at Alnwick castle as remarkably original additions to England's most northerly county.