Northumberlandia - World’s Largest Human Shaped Land Art

Note: This post is an updated post of an earlier post which was made when the art form was still being built.
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World’s largest Human shaped land art is located 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. She is about 400 metres (quarter of a mile) long and the highest point of her anatomy, her forehead, is 34 metres (about 111 feet) high. In comparison the gigantic Sphinx is only 73.5 metres (241 ft) long and 20.22 metres (66 ft) 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. About 1.5 million tonnes of dug up earth from coal mine was used to create this colossal piece of public art.

Work on the project was started in 2010 and it was officially opened by Princess Anne on 29 August 2012. The lady is the star attraction of the 14.5 hectare public park with rolling hills, causeways, lakes, willow islands, and viewing pavilions.

The project had many critics also, who felt that the owners and the mining operator, by creating this giant land art, were 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;

She is so huge that her full form can only be visualized in the Satellite View;


Image: geograph.co.uk / Andrew Curtis

Image from Wikimedia Commons is by AWhiteC

Image: geograph.co.uk / Andrew Curtis

Image from Flickr is by Glen Bowman

View location in Google Earth / Google Maps

Main source of info and more info:

1. Wikipedia
2. Daily Mail Online
3. Geograph snippet by Andrew Curtis
4. Official Website northumberlandia.com

Credits: I am thankful to Andrew Curtis who not only informed me about this 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 10,000 photographs in his Geograph collection.

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