Graveyard of Lost Species

A slowly sinking wooden boat in the Leigh-on-Sea mud, carved with the names of vanished Thames species.

The Graveyard of Lost Species is an art installation hidden in the salt-marsh and mud-flats behind Leigh-on-Sea, the older fishing settlement at the western end of the modern city of Southend-on-Sea. It consists of a single decommissioned wooden bawley — the Souvenir — beached in the mud, her hull deeply carved with the names of fish, shellfish, birds, reptiles and marine plants that no longer live in the Thames Estuary.

The work, by the artist collective YoHa with local cocklers in 2016, will outlast no-one's lifetime — the boat is slowly subsiding into the mud and being colonised by samphire and barnacles. It is reached on foot from Leigh-on-Sea station along the seawall at low tide; check the tide tables first, and wear boots that you do not mind getting muddy.

things to do sight
A story
The Souvenir was a Thames bawley, a traditional inshore fishing boat once common at Leigh. In 2016 the artist collective YoHa, working with local cockle fishermen, lifted her one last time to be inscribed with the names of species — fish, birds, reptiles, plants — that have disappeared from the Thames Estuary, and then returned her to the mud at the back of Leigh creek to sink.