The lady of Northumberlandia
If you’re a Countryfile regular on a Sunday evening, you might recognise our image this week. This amazing new attribute on the Northumberland landscape is the work of renowned artist Charles Jencks and featured on Countryfile back in March. Our Flying Unit recently captured the site with their 196 megapixel camera – although you might wonder how hard it is to capture what is now the world’s largest human form sculpted into the landscape.
Taken by our Vexcel XP camera on 5 April 2012, flying height is at 3000 ft
The sculpture on the Blagdon Estate is an impressive 400 by 254 metres and rises 34 metres above the ground. While the sculpture itself is complete, work continues on laying some 6.5 km of paths to allow future visitors to walk all parts of the sculpture. The planning has included viewpoint points – with panoramic 360 degree views from high points – as well as seating and water features.
If you’re wondering how such an enormous idea came about – Northumberlandia formed part of the planning submission to extract coal on the Blagdon Estate. It has involved moving an impressive 1.2 million tonnes of material to create the female form on the landscape. You can see from our ‘before’ picture below, just how dramatic this transformation has been.
The Northumberlandia park is planned to be open to the public from September this year.
Captured on our behalf by BLOM on 20 April 2009
Leisure, Using GI and maps
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aerial images, blagdon estate, northumberlandia, slag alice, where are we
Themocracy
What an amazing thing. I hadn’t heard of this before but it’s wonderful, next time I’m up that way I’ll definitely visit.
I laser scanned the maquette for this artwork years ago! Saw it on Countryfile and the photos above are stunning! Must make a trip down to wander over it now!
http://www.archaeoptics.co.uk/archives/2005/11/28/northumberlandia-goddess-of-the-north/
A.
That looks beautiful, is that 3 lakes too? What an inspired idea, love it!
Well 2 days after Annie opened it is still closed to the public .. what a waste of public money
It is only opened on a limited basis to locals at the moment. It will be open to everyone from October.
I visited on Wednesday, the public preview. It is breathtaking. I must go back in the Spring when she turns yellow with dandelion – and then white with clover.
Some pics are on my blog:
http://1513fusion.wordpress.com/
saw this on countryfile today. Awesome!!! My friends and I are already planning a visit.