Northumberlandia - World’s Largest Human Shaped Land Art (Under Construction)

Note: This post has been updated and the revised post can be seen in this link.
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World’s largest Human shaped land art is under construction close to an opencast coal mine near Cramlington, Northumberland, North East England.

The gigantic land form christened as 'Northumberlandia' is in the shape of a recumbent naked female, with her hairs spread out, upper portion of her body in supine position and her lower torso (hip downwards) twisted towards her left.

On completion she will be about 400 metres (quarter of a mile) long and the highest point of her anatomy, her forehead, will be 34 metres (about 111 feet) high.

The 'Northumberlandia' is the brain child of Charles Jencks, landscape architect and designer, who was approached by Banks Mining Group, (who are carrying out the coal mining operations) and Blagdon Estate (owners of the land) to suggest ways and means of disposal of dug up soil, clay and slag from the mining operations.

Work on the project was started in 2010 and likely to be completed by mid 2013. The lady will be the star attraction of the 14.5 hectare public park with surrounding lakes and rolling hills and about 1.5 million tonnes of dug up earth from coal mine will be used to create this colossal piece of public art.

The project has many critics also, who feel that the owners and the mining operator, by creating this giant land art, are circumventing the requirement to move back the dug up material, when mining operations are over.

The locals have given many names to the lady - Slag Alice, Fat Slag, Big Bird, Slag of the North, Goddess of The North etc.

As the lady is made of the natural materials she is expected to remain in existence for thousands of years and may even become Sphinx of the West. Her size, shape and purpose will be an enigma for future archaeologists. To quote Daily Mail Online;

"Many thousands of years hence, archaeologists may wonder what on earth the ancients were up to in a North-Eastern corner of the European sub-province once known as England.

What had driven them, in the latter stages of the Oil Age, to create the largest replica of the human body ever seen on Earth — a reclining female figure a quarter of a mile long and weighing 1.5 million tons.

Was she a burial mound or a deity? Was she supposed to send messages to other planets? Or was she simply a monument to the obesity of 21st century England? Perhaps they will even stumble across the truth - that she was none of the above."

Here is the designer's rendering of the final land form;

Since the Google Earth imagery is old, the land form cannot be seen in the Satellite/Street View, however the body form has started taking shape and the human face is clearly recognisable in the recent images;

 Image: geograph.co.uk / Andrew Curtis

 Image: geograph.co.uk / Andrew Curtis

View location in Google Earth / Google Maps

Main source of info: Daily Mail Online / Geograph Snippet by Andrew Curtis

Credits: I am thankful to Andrew Curtis who not only informed me about the remarkable and unique piece of land art but also posted its images under Creative Commons licence in geograph.org.uk. He has a remarkable collection in Geograph, both qualitatively and quantitatively, with more than 5200 photographs in his Geograph collection.

Note: Image from charlesjencks.com is presumably under copyright of the website. There is no copyright information or contact information on the website. I will correct the copyright info or remove the image from here in case there is any objection by the copyright holder.