Actress

BAFTA Award winning actress with a multitude of film and TV roles, including two Harry Potter films, Blackadder and The Age of Innocence (1993).

Miriam Margolyes, who owns a house in St Margaret’s Bay, has written directly to the DHB to plead for the board to stop this “dangerous enterprise”.

She said:

I own a house on the cliff top at St Margaret’s Bay and we already have to face terrifying cliff erosion.

It seems you have no sense of what damage your project will cause to local people and to the environment.

I would like to place on record my profound disgust at this brutal application and urge you to drop the whole idea.

I’ve always believed in the harbour board until now and have defended the docks and the people who try to earn their living here in the depressed South East, but this is a dangerous and appalling project, which will threaten the whole coastline.

You have become destroyers of what makes this area so wonderful.

She said her objections were based on the sea life that could be destroyed or negatively affected, including 350 grey seals that would be disturbed by the noise and vibration and the impact on their food source.

She claims lowering the seabed could cause coastal erosion and leave sea defences less effective.

Ms Margolyes also said that the buried wrecks of the Admiral Gardner and possibly a German U12 submarine and the remains of Battle of Britain planes and pilots could be disturbed and desecrated.

Extract from http://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/goodwin-sands-campaign-gains-momentum-98945/ 14th July 2016.

Deborah Moggach’s work includes writing “These Foolish Things” (2004) which was adapted into the movie “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and script for the 2005 version of “Pride and Prejudice” starring Keira Knightley.

Author and screenplay writer Deborah Moggach, who has a holiday home in Kingsdown, has appealed to the Marine Management Organisation, which is reviewing the application to dredge.

She said:

Myself and my family would like to make the strongest possible objection to this application, to dredge from this very fragile and special ecosystem. There is nowhere like the Goodwin Sands, and to disturb it would do huge damage to the wildlife there – the colony of seals, the spawning fish and the marine life in general.

This site has been recommended by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as a Marine Conservation Zone and must be protected for future generations.

Dredging on such a scale would further add to the erosion along the coast, by altering the sea currents. The knock-on effects could be calamitous.

Please, please turn down this application. This wild, unique and magical place would be ruined.

Extract from http://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/goodwin-sands-campaign-gains-momentum-98945/ 14th July 2016.

Actor, Theatre Director and Playwright

Oscar and BAFTA winning star with recent roles including Dunkirk, Bridge of Spies, The BFG and Wolf Hall. He was knighted for services to theatre in 2017.

Statement from August 2017

During the filming of Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk, I was at times at sea a few hundred yards off the actual beach of Dunkirk. I was very aware that we were reenacting a real and horrific tragedy for tens of thousands of brave young men who never made it home but died and fell to their resting places in the sand beneath our little boats. The memory of their all too brief lives was almost palpable in the shallow waters surrounding the beach of Dunkirk.

I wondered what the outcry would be in England if it was announced that France was going to dredge the sands of Dunkirk to make concrete and other construction products. Outrage I imagine.

Yet, here we are still fighting to defend the last resting place of many such brave young men who perished off the coast of Dover. I have to ask, What is the problem with us, that we are so disrespectful of these honourable souls who perished in the English channel defending the rest of us from fascism? Who is responsible for this insulting ongoing enquiry? Let it conclude as soon as possible and let there be apologies from all involved for the poor behaviour towards our fallen youth.

Statement from July 2016

Dunkirk, BFG and Wolf Hall star Mr Rylance, who was born in Ashford, said:

My great-grandfather was a resident of Dover. He was the captain of a cross-Channel ferry.

On one occasion he even sailed the king across the channel. My grandmother grew up in Dover.

I am sure they would have supported the campaign to save the Goodwin Sands from dredging for all the very good reasons that the campaign has argued. I support it too.

It is particularly important today that we honour our past and ancestors as part of what we truly are now.

We are an island and our coast and shore is as important an aspect of our landscape as any green field or hill. Would they dredge an ancient graveyard or battlefield?

Our historical relationship with ships and the wide oceans of the world is a vital part of our culture and our connection to so many other different cultures.

Extract from http://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/goodwin-sands-campaign-gains-momentum-98945/ 14th July 2016.