'Desolate abandonment' is a term that aptly describes both the mood and composition of - as well as the aftermath of lone urban encroachments upon - the Horsingdon landscape. In the latter regard, all too often one discovers below some isolated cleft, over the rise of some unfrequented hill, or in some secluded part of the woods, the unexpected remnant of prior habitation. Invariably the question then arises: 'who would live here, and why'?
Each of these dilapidated structures have, of course, their own singular, neglected histories; even so, an underlying lattice of tragedy - often with more than a hint of the praeternatural hard at its heels - typically binds their disparate stories into a unifying narrative: of things invoked that should not have been; of rituals enacted regardless of the consequence; of a witch unintentionally slighted; or of a stubborn intrusion into a solitary space best left uncolonised.
It is as if, in all these instances, there exists a secret intention to provoke - seemingly in as spectacular and grotesque a fashion as possible - the malice of the landscape; but perhaps that is also why we choose to live here - and perhaps this is the very thing which Horsingdon seeks to draw out of us.
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