Last Acre
Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan
single screen HD video, 11.25 mins., 2016

A documentary portrait centred on a remote settlement of self-built shed and cabin homes, located on the sand dunes of England’s north west coastline, near Barrow-in-Furness. The film explores the social and ecological topography of this off-grid, outlying community.

Existing on the margins of a rural, seaside idyll, and its surrounding industrial landscape, this unique place is an example of a ‘Plotland’ development: the improvised homes built in the early 20th century, on neglected, marginal or squatted sites, in response to increasing urbanisation and financial hardship.

The film interweaves history, people and habitat; with a soundtrack featuring Peter Warlock’s pastoral composition The Curlew (1922), based on the bird’s plaintive call and the poetry of W.B Yeats. Voice-over script based on 'Arcadia for All: The Legacy of a Makeshift Landscape' by Dennis Hardy & Colin Ward.

Voiceover narration by Judy May

With thanks to Stuart Bastik