Marshland: Dreams and Nightmares on the Edge of London

by Gareth E. Rees, Ada Jusic (Illustrator)

Cocker spaniel by his side, Rees wanders the marshes of Hackney, Leyton and Walthamstow, avoiding his family and the pressures of life. He discovers a lost world of Victorian filter plants, ancient grazing lands, dead toy factories and tidal rivers on the edgelands of a rapidly changing city. Ghosts are his friends. As strange tales of bears, crocodiles, magic narrowboats and apocalyptic tribes begin to manifest themselves, Rees embarks on a psychedelic journey across time and into the dark heart of London.

It soon becomes clear that the very existence of this unique landscape is at threat. For on all sides of the marshland, the developers are closing in…

Marshland is a deep map of the East London marshes, a blend of local history, folklore and weird fiction, where nothing is quite as it seems.

This book contains striking illustrations from artist Ada Jusic.

Genres: Fiction, London, Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Short Stories, Essays

325 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2013

About the author

Gareth E. Rees is a writer of fiction and non fiction. His books include Sunken Lands (Elliott & Thompson 2024), Terminal Zones (Influx Press 2022), Unofficial Britain (Elliott & Thompson, 2020), Car Park Life (Influx Press 2019), The Stone Tide (Influx Press, 2018). His first book 'Marshland' was reissued in 2024 by Influx Press in a new expanded edition.

‘What he seeks out is the magical in the mundane, the bizarre happenings in plain sight’
- Deborah Moggach, The Times

Reviews

[Jamie Delano · Rating 4 out of 5]

A haunted wandering in the liminal zone of the Hackney Marshes. Feel the black mud under your finger nails as you sift through wormy strata for tasty, timeless gobbets of the past present and future human experience of these edgelands. Melancholy, darkly humourous, mysterious and unsentimental: I bought this book at random at a bookfair and I'm happy that I did.

Recommended.

[Christina Dongowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked most of the book, but I think Rees forced coherence a bit too much, so that it feels a bit too contrived too me. But the parts, where the book is a sort of psychogeographical nature writing of this part of London are really great. I'm looking forward to The Stone Tide, the book Rees wrote after Marshland.

[Sophy H · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hmmmmm.

I can kind of see what Rees was trying to do with this but it just didn't work. The first few chapters of the book honestly were really good as a non-fiction; I was engaged and enthralled with all the descriptive aspects of the marshes and it felt like a well written nature journal. In some ways, I wish he'd have just written a non-fiction book and be done with it.

As it was, the "story" (and I use that term verrrrrry loosely!) descended into nonsensical madness. I felt like it was trying to be a kind of Marabou Stork Nightmares dystopian who knows what is real type palaver! But it failed, epically! The structuring was all over the show, there were no discernible "characters" as such and the stories of varying marsh folklore were too short and disjointed. What a mess.

I was really disappointed with this one. 1.5 stars and that's being generous.

One plus point though, the illustrations by Ada Jusic were amazing!

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard to write a considered review of a book that has affected one emotionally. This book is inspiring, emotive and eye-opening.

I have never been to Hackney. I fear London. There is a side of me that despises it. This is the seat of our utterly disappointing government, the home of evil bankers, vacuous celebrities and relentless musical theatre. London decides what to watch, what to visit, what is best and fashionable to wear, what to listen to, to read, to eat. It is faceless and monstrous, the twisted soul of our country.

I initially approached this book with some trepidation, did I want to spend days trawling through a text that explored an area of this city? After exploring the blurb and the fantastic quote pulled from its recesses:

"I had become a bit part in the dengue-fevered fantasy of a sick city."

I figured that the writer could be singing from the same hymn-sheet. In many ways his book reveals an attitude far more complex than that. Whilst he despairs at the encroaching development of London into the edges of the Marshland in Hackney it is also clear that were it not for earlier developments such as the railway it would not exist. Significantly it is the meeting of these two worlds - this island of nature and the bizarre mix of architecture and industry - that creates a synergy. A little universe in which the strange will occur. A world in which the mundane and the surreal collide. This little world sticks its middle finger up at the city with such defiance that it crackles with an other-worldly energy.

"Wherever you've got a margin between two types of culture and two types of landscape you often get a deeper awareness of the supernatural and the spiritual." - Revd. Tony Redman - (taken from M.R.James: Ghost Writer - BBC)

It is this margin that Gareth Rees explores. Like a 21st Century Kay Harker, he explores a world in which the lines between imagination and reality are continually blurred. In Masefield's "The Midnight Folk" we constantly question whether Kay is dreaming or awake and the sensation is similar here. By placing the real; the architecture, news reports and stringent historical research, alongside the unreal, we are plunged into a vortex of monsters, bears, time-slips, shamen and hallucination.

The book explores the geographic reality of the Hackney Marshes, but overlaying this in soft swirls of mystical graffiti are utterly compelling tales inspired by or pulled from Mr Rees' study of the area. It appears that his study is a mix of hard graft and rambling through the Marshes with his dog Hendrix.

Rees introduces us to a man who transforms into a bear, two unfortunate time-travellers and an unhappy couple who find themselves possessed and changing into the occupants of a demolished factory. We meet the occupants of a barge from London's netherworld, explore the legacy of the Olympic Village whilst visiting a mystical peddler in contraband antique books. This scratches the surface and I would urge you to seek out this book to discover more.

What strikes me about this book is how it has opened my eyes to my own town. I live in Reading which like many urban sprawls contains a weird mix of old and new. It was on finishing the final chapter that I took my children out for a walk. We have been to the nature reserve in Reading but on our way there we decided to try a different route and found ourselves on an old railway line. This ran high above the water meadows. On one side the beauty of the floods were framed by pink-grey tower blocks, while on the other streams and rivers snaked through swathes of green before the drab majesty of the town dump in the distance. We discovered:

dumped mattresses, ceiling fans and wheelbarrows vomited out of the backs of broken garden fences

the remnants of an old fire on the old railway bridge, made from its tumbling bricks

a lake of glass (my son's words)

two rusted metal fences that framed the path creating "a gate to Narnia" (my daughter's words)

It was into this margin that a deer ran across our path.

We were in the town yet not in the town.

We were in the country yet not in the country.

I had discovered the margin between worlds.

I hadn't looked for it before.

[Keen Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Discovering this place was like opening my back door to find a volcanic crater in the garden, blasting my face with lava heat, tipping reality topsy-turvy.”

I should start off by saying that one of the best books I read last year was written by Rees, “Car Park Life”. Go read that instead. So first of all let’s start with the positives, there is some great historical details and social history in here all wrapped up in lavish and evocative description, as well as some very interesting audio recommendations at the end.

This is a loose and rambling account of protest marches, capitalist greed, dog walkers, soundchronicities and varying views on progress, which all go on within the mysterious liminal spaces that make up the Marshland. The influence of Iain Sinclair and J.G. Ballard are obvious, though his attempts at emulating them don’t match up well for any length of time.

“Marshland” is a bold, self-indulgent mess, riddled with poor focus and over ambition. Rees often slips in and out of some invented world, a pseudo-poetic, magical realist pile of crap, which confuses, annoys and detracts from the really good stuff elsewhere. I was puzzled by the art work and thought it did nothing to enhance the text and seemed shoe horned in there to fill up the pages.

Elsewhere he makes a refreshing challenge to the dominant narrative of the London blitz with reference to the trekkers who regularly left the city for the sanctuary of the woods. The mystery surrounding various escapee and other unnamed beasts seen or imagined in and around the River Lea makes for good reading.

This is one of those books which tries too hard to be too many things and it ends up failing on all fronts, leaving a half-baked and confusing farce of a book, which doesn’t hold together well. I really wanted to like this as much as “Car Park Life” but too often this spiralled into a right swamp of self-indulgent rubbish and by the end I was glad to be over and done with it.

[Artur Nowrot · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book that mixes non-fiction, memoir, short stories, comics, and lots of other stuff in order to describe the Hackney Marshes. It really expanded my thinking about place writing and offered quite a few surprises, making me go: “wait, what?! You’re allowed to do that in this kind of book?!”

A very worthwhile read if you’re interested in psychogeography. After reading I am especially tempted to make my own attempt at soundchronicity (a walk with music turned down low, so that it blends with the sounds of your surroundings and created new impressions).

[Martin Cosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, written by Gareth E. Rees and illustrated by Ada Jusic, surprised me greatly. I was initially interested in it because, on the surface, it tells stories of and about the area around the Lea basin; and I grew up a short walk from the River Lea. I was therefore looking to reminisce, perhaps to learn a little more of the area's history.

However, Marshland, Dreams and Nightmares on the Edge of London is so much more than that.

I was not prepared for its broad scope. Part memoir, part historical document, part political commentary, part strange story collection... it works on so many levels. It even has a humorous aspect, with a very funny sequence involving social media, which made me laugh out loud. Although it's all of these things and more, Rees has pulled it all together remarkably well, and it is a thoroughly satisfying read.

Our protagonist wanders the Hackney marshes and the banks of the River Lea with his dog Hendrix. He reflects upon his life, the geography of the area, its history, and his own imagination. In this unique landscape he muses over the legacy of the London Olympics, the inland waterways, the disused filter beds, the fascinating story of Whipple and Hazlehurst, and much more. The reader is taken on a number of journeys where the past meets the present; and where they collide, ghosts are encountered and strangeness abounds.

These ghosts initially take the form of engineers from the Victorian era, haplessly time-travelling and way out of their depth, in The Most Peculiar Vanishing of Messrs Whipple & Hazlehurst. Rees expertly uses these characters from history to highlight the changes in the area both physically and socially. In The Ghost Factory, occupants of a trendy development built on the marshes find themselves transforming into the workers from a demolished factory. Marsh Meat sees Albie meeting a bear... but does the bear meet Albie? Of particular interest to me are the ongoing sightings of creatures in and on the banks of the Lea, as these reports formed part of my own childhood. We even visit the area as post-apocalyptic landscape in Naja's Ark, a fascinating prediction of the near-future; and in Endgames, the switch to the Gregorian calendar is pondered: 'The day Parliament stole time, things began to go wrong on the marshes.'

The illustrations work very well, even in the Kindle version which I purchased, adding another dimension to the book. Indeed, included is The Raving Dead, a stand-alone graphic tale involving zombies rising up from the Lea and haunting the marshes. What more could you want?

Marshland will make you look at your own environment in a different light. It combines fact with fiction, history with horror, temples with time travel. Rich pickings! I enjoyed the ride and I can't wait to read more from Gareth E. Rees.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was ten years old, my friend Richard and I made a raft from old oil cans and scrap wood. We wheeled it down the road to Lemsford Mill and launched it into the river Lea. Gradually we floated down the river through meadows where inquisitive cows watched our progress. We stared down into the clear water as we passed over streamers of water weed, watching sticklebacks and minnows darting along beside the raft. We passed along the edge of Welwyn Garden City and for a time ran alongside the swimming lido. This was in the time before they flooded the valley to make the boating lakes. After a while we passed under the bridge at Stanborough Lane. It was then we decided to abandon the raft. We paddled to the riverbank and jumped off into the reeds. Then, we pushed the raft back into the current. We watched as it floated off into the distance. Many years later and many miles further downstream, a man is walking his cocker spaniel on Hackney marsh. He is listening to an MP3 player. The music is something obscure that was recommended in the Wire magazine. Two hours of ambient rain noise, or some such. He stops for a while to consider a rusty oil can, that floats in a pool of stagnant water. The man has no idea that the can was once part of a child’s raft. He calls the dog and they walk on.

I came across Hackneymarshman through his blog and music mixes. I was immediately interested in his writings. I was put in mind of Lyle Watson who suggests: 'that matter has the capacity to absorb emotional “fingerprints,” the mental fossils that channel echoes from the past.’ Gareth’s writing certainly manifests elements of this investiture of inanimate objects with a life beyond the normal realm. In some respects I’ve no idea whether it was the intention, but I also found the writing reminded me of Japanese Shinto texts. Shinto is a religion with a respect for nature and sacred sites. Is the marshland a sacred site? In Shinto these sites were used to worship the sun, rock formations, trees, and sounds. Gareth certainly imbues Hackney Marsh with something beyond the realm of our senses. Something almost imperceptible. A life force, that inhabits an intersection between the knowing and the unknowing. As Bob Marley says: "He who feels it knows it."

So, if you are interested in spectral bears, crocodiles, Victorian filter beds, sexually alluring pylons, matchbox toys and general madness, in a factional stylee, I would heartily recommend this book.

[Michael Martin]

Well-researched book about the Lee Valley in London - interesting to read alongside The River by Esther Kinsky. Shocked though that he walks around with ear phones listening to music. He gives a reason but landscape isn't just what you see. If you don't hear the birdsong, wind in the reeds (or willows if you like), rushing of a weir, even other people's footsteps, motors, you've missed half of the experience. And he has the temerity to suggest a playlist.

[Alan Fricker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Preferred the history linked bitsbover some of the fiction

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part memoir, part psychogeographical exploration, part time travelling travelogue, part fiction, part graphic novel, along with illustrations, poetry, a libretto and even a soundtrack, all based on the liminal land between Clapton and Hackney Wick.

I first read Gareth Rees' work in Acquired for Development, his story of a man who fell in love with a pylon and I understood why. I too used to wander around the marshes and the Lower Lea valley, looking at the magic fish, the Hackney henge and the filter bed with its concrete hellmouth cover. It’s the kind of landscape that activates the imagination, the mixture of the rural and the industrial, the swans and the shopping trolleys, the trees, trains and traffic, the blackberry bushes and discarded rubbish, the dog walkers, the cows, the narrowboaters and petty and less petty criminals. Go into Wick Woodland and you’ll see a circular encampment and it’s not a great stretch of the imagination to imagine witches meeting at midnight.

[Dead John Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second of the three that I read by this weirdo. He writes like an amateur but somehow carries it off in that half arsed way that the British seem to breed into themselves. I say that in a nice way. He is definitely out there somewhere but I cannot quite figure out where.

There are strokes of absolute brilliance in this book, mind boggling transpositions and juxtapositions of fantasy and reality in ways that are really good. In some ways it is like coming across an original artwork in Tescos, mark you, Tescos not Marks & Spencer or Waitrose.

A clever weaving of history, the present day and an alternative reality that gels into something every readable and rewarding.

Probably a mystery if you are not British, and if you are not British this book should put you off getting too close to one.

[Gael Impiazzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd like to give this more than 5 stars.

I stumbled on this in the library last week and was intrigued by the blurb on the back. I lived in Hackney for a while in the '80s but never explored the Lea Valley. Now I want to.

This book is a fascinating mix of history, geography and Weird. I was both captured and blown away, like a kite tossed between the thermals and breezes across Hackney and Walthamstow Marshes.

I've reserved all the other Gareth. E. Rees books in the library catalogue. They're all 'in transit' already, and I suspect they will all arrive at the same time. I might have to take a week off work.

[Lewis Birchon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because it’s about an area of London I know well. I spent four years running through Hackney Marshes and the Lea Valley and the lyrical prose instantly transported me back to that city hinterland. The fictional experiments were less successful than the historiographical explorations.

The musical appendices have shape to my sense that reading the book was akin to taking a walk with Stuart Marconi’s Freak Zone playing in your ears.

[James Kinsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reading of this stalled for a long time, put off by chapter III Life Between Epochs, which I really disliked.
But I hate giving up on a book, so thought I'd at least try a couple more chapters. Read the rest of it in a day.
Not, traditionally, my sort of thing, but there is something enticing about the blend of history, fiction and mysticism that brings the landscape to life.

[Dave Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blends almost detached journalism, personal memoir, political commentary, post-apocalyptic horror, graphic novels, and other sources to produce a perspective on the marshes of East London that is both fantastical and believable.

Rees takes as his starting point a series of walks across the marshes of Hackney, Leyton, and Walthamstow with his cocker spaniel. Beginning with minor riffs into local history and events, then moving into what might be magical realism, he starts to reveal layers of mystery and excitement just beneath these ordinary parts of London. Moving further into fantasy, he oscillates between tales of every day life and apparent pure imagination. Then undercuts the reader’s perceptions by revealing that some of the fantastical elements were drawn from news reports.

Interspersed throughout the work are line drawings by Ada Jusic. Using the prose as an initial inspiration, these blur the line between illustration and interpretation, providing at turns a greater insight into events described and an alternative interpretation of them to Rees’ commentary.

This intertwining of prose and picture is used to the full in The Raving Dead, which functions equally well as a stand-alone graphic novel and as one chapter of the greater whole.

The shifting between ostensibly real and surely invented, with new chapters subverting or supporting others, conveys better than a dry listing of fact and experience how the marshes (and by extension anywhere) are a product of human interaction and perception: a piece of ground has financial or emotional value depending on what the viewer believes it to be; or lacks value to a viewer who only accepts objective existence as the measure of qualities.

This revelation of value allows Rees to tie together different stories and themes without losing the feeling of a coherent whole: detailed political analysis of building the Olympics sits next to time-travel yarns, united by the idea that what we think we see is the equal of what is there.

Rees has a definite talent for sketching character with a few quick words, making even the supporting cast immediately seem both deep and interesting. The recurring characters unfold from these short sketches into complex beings, often exposing unexpected qualities like the marshes they inhabit.

Rees is also not afraid to turn this whimsical knife on himself, skilfully casting himself as a narrator who is both unreliable and informative. This talent for – almost – self-parody, combined with the clear evidence objective truth is secondary to subjective values throughout the book, makes Rees-as-participant an Everyman figure; free to be baffled, petty, joyous, or sad, without requiring the reader to accept these as a judgement either on events or the reader’s perception of them.

After closing his immersive prose-scape with the libretto of an opera about Hackney, Rees puts aside Rees-as-participant and dons instead the role of Rees-as-academic, providing an appendix describing his experimental method, a bibliography, and additional reading. This provides readers, fantasists and sceptics alike, with the option to reproduce his experiences, making the book more than a modern incarnation of the dropping out and tuning in of earlier generations.

I enjoyed this book immensely. I recommend it to any reader who enjoys seeing the world through others eyes, who does not require strict documented accuracy for every moment of a narrative.

I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for a fair review.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to try to review this properly when I have a chance, but it's quite a book. Rees' cross-genre, hybrid approach of blending essays, stories, comics, and visual art (by Ada Jusic) is the perfect choice for a space that is never only one thing or another and a complicated hybrid itself. The book is smart, sometimes funny (including a magnificently delivered set piece joke about bloggers), richly descriptive, and deeply compelling. This is the kind of book I've been wanting to see more of from environmental writers, taking a place seriously in ALL its dimensions from the social to the artistic to the historical to the imaginative to the polluted.

[Kirstie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It gets a little confusing at times, but once you gt the hang of the narrative, it's a pretty easy read. If you are familiar the area, you know what he is writing about, but if you aren't you can always head over, and see the novel come ti life in front of your eyes.

[Rich Burt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect blend of local history and community based fiction.

[Schopflin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gets four stars from me although I am no great psychogeography fan because it's extremely well written and immensely evocative of place (one I know well). From the latter the only anomaly for me was the absence of the Chareidi community, who are a very visually present part of the area. But he gets half a star alone for the Victorian gentlemen who pass for hipsters.