From scrap yard to creative community: the evolution of Rockaway Park

Going down to Rockaway Park for the first time is, for most people, a revelatory experience.

Tucked away behind an unassuming country lane near Temple Cloud, it is the site of a former quarry, with a large central yard backed by stoney cliffs, encircled by fields on one side, and a steep-sided forest garden on the other.

Within minutes of arriving, Mark Wilson wanders over and excitedly shows my children a treasure trove of rescued and reused objects, from fairground ephemera and repurposed scrap metal trikes, to an actual dolphin skeleton.

We meet artists at work in their studios; a knife maker, a carpenter and a creative workshop repurposing tyres.

Mutant vehicles abound: a rocket with giant wheels; a van shell ornately sculpted into a beautiful rusty forest; a car reimagined as a mosaic of smashed mirrors. A palm tree of cones and delicate metal palm fronds made from roadsigns, hangs overhead.

Wilson bought the land 20 years ago and successfully ran it as a scrap yard for over a decade, until such a time as the financial outlook changed, and the business ended up going bankrupt.

For him, that bankruptcy was a reckoning. “I thought, if only I could hang on to the place, what I’d really like to do was to turn it into a creative zone where diverse talents could coexist. I had a vision of what we’ve got now, but I didn’t know that’s what it was – I just knew it had to be something really different, interesting, and much more in keeping with who I really am”.

Inflatable – photo: Rockaway Park

“I’d always worked with artists, collecting scrap for them or finding things I thought they might like for sculpture, because I had somewhere I could stash things that other people had no room for. So we started collecting lumps of metal with an eye towards becoming festival pieces or being made into something else.

“I knew the direction that we wanted to go, and the sheds that were here were all full of vehicle parts and things. Initially we just made one unit for artists to rent, and it made me think ‘I can do this’.”

Himself influenced by The Clash, Wilson was lead singer of anarcho-punk London band The Mob in the late 70’s and early ‘80s, before they disbanded and he moved to the countryside to be further away from mainstream society.

Doug Francisco of The Invisible Circus, who has lived at Rockaway for 10 years, was “one of the first people that could see the vision for what the place could be”. He first learned about Wilson after buying a copy of Punk Lives, which featured The Mob on the cover.

Unbeknownst to Wilson in the early days of the band, they would go on to be an inspiration for pioneering musicians and creatives of the future including Jamie Hince of the Kills – for whom, in 2012, The Mob played a secret gig (their first in London for 28 years) as part of his ‘stag night’ before marrying Kate Moss.

Truck and Graffiti wall – photo: Rockaway Park

After decades apart, the band reformed in 2011. In the exalted company of Rob Del Naja (Massive Attack), Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream), Debbie Goodge (MBV), and a host of other celebs, they played to an audience packed with old friends, many of whom they hadn’t seen in 30 years.

“It was highly, highly emotional” recalls Wilson. He even had the surreal experience of introducing his daughter to his own guitar hero Mick Jones of The Clash, who was also (miraculously) in the crowd that night.

That profound, full circle moment occurred against a backdrop of financial insolvency. But those who have spent some any amount of time at Rockaway Park will tell you that it seems to be shot through with unlikely stories. The place bears the maxim “would those who say it can’t be done, please stand clear of those doing it”. And all around, the beautiful spaces being built are testament to that ethos.

“At the core of the community based here, in this disused quarry, is a belief that collaboration and collectivism, sharing work, vision and ideas, are how all great creations take hold and manifest.”

Acting as a vital hub to help foster connections, the Rockaway Café is open through the week, with different meal options on weekends – including monthly vegan Sunday roasts.

And around the centre of the site, there are dotted numerous studios, cabins, the so-called ‘main shed’ where Wilson can often be found tinkering with found objects, the terrace, and the recently formed classroom for a local forest school.

The Main Shed – photo: Rockaway Park

All the areas are visualised and built from whatever recycled materials were available at the time. “You don’t know what you’re going to have to build it with until it appears, and that changes constantly,” explains Wilson. “And for me, it’s got to be something different or exciting.

“So yesterday I went to look at two bus shelters in the scrap yard down the road with curved roofs, and as soon as I looked at them I thought, ‘they look like they could be greenhouses!’”

Of all the unusual and ingenious spaces that are being created at Rockaway Park, perhaps the most arresting is the church – dubbed ‘The Chapel of Unrest’, which Wilson visualises as a monument to protest, though it is designed as a versatile space that would also suit a cinema, dining hall, meeting or workshop space.

Framed by its would-be stained glass windows made from compacted recycled cans and gabion baskets of stone from the old quarry, it is dominated by a huge ‘A’ wrought from a fire-damaged oak tree that had to be felled on site years before.

Finely carved by chain saw carver and sculptor Hannah Morris-Coole of OMNA Studios, the wood is banded together by a giant iron strap, on which has been stamped a quote from the Spanish anarchist, Buenaventura Durutti:

We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie may blast and burn its own world before it finally leaves the stage of history. We are not afraid of ruins. We who ploughed the prairies and built the cities can build again, only better next time. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.

Today, Rockaway Park is home to about 30 studios, utilised for a diverse array of work including collage, glass blowing, low watt solar installations, printing, painting, jewellery, and teaching (Wilson’s grandson is one of the children at the on-site forest school).

To walk around the site, the sense of industry is palpable. But though Wilson eschews the idea of having a ringfenced plan for the future, there is nevertheless perpetual forward motion.

Regular events are held at Rockaway, from yoga sessions to gigs, courses, workshops, or open studios. Wilson regularly works with people across generations on projects at the site, and remains passionate about the space for meaningful connection that Rockaway provides.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CXGUuBDMnp4/

“When I was a kid,” he recalls, “we went to see Joan Baez in the forest in Canada where we lived. We walked through the woods for miles and miles, and then it opened up into this clearing and there was music, and stages and lights, a small scale festival – it was a really powerful memory from my youth.

“And so when I came here, I imagined it as that place where you walk through an organic forest garden, through a kitchen where people are making beautiful food, and then it opens into some madhouse of scrap and art and creativity and woodwork, and hopefully somewhere along that journey it sows a seed in some kid’s head like mine, that there is a different way of doing things.”

Sitting back in the cosy shell of the Bedford Embassy bus he is slowly restoring, Wilson is in typically optimistic mood as we end our conversation. “I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, but most people here love being here; anyone who comes here sees a magic in it,” he grins.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all on paper. If I talk to old friends, I have to say ‘look, you have to come and see the place for yourself, or you won’t understand anything about it at all’.”

Van in trees at night – photo: Rockaway Park

More information about Rockaway Park and the Rockaway Café is available at www.rockawaypark.co.uk. For more details about forthcoming events, subscribe to the newsletter.

Main photo: Rockaway Park

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