Ahead of EDITH: A Performance at St John’s on Bethnal Green  in the East End Film Festival I recall the day I spent with Andrew Kötting’s merry band of Mummers as they started out on their 100-mile pilgrimage to Hastings from Waltham Abbey

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The bird, a raven a rook a crow?, sits on Iain Sinclair’s arm. Iain tells Andrew Kötting it’s ‘a corpse feeder, an eye pecker’, he’ll find Harold on the battlefield, or in this case Andrew buried up to his neck on Hastings beach. Andrew’s suit is a collaboration with his daughter Eden, decorated and annotated for the Jack in the Green festival in Deptford and Hastings. Iain suggests Andrew should be barefoot, ‘What for 100 miles’, Kötting retorts.

I’d met up with David Aylward and Jem Finer just off the train out of Stratford – easily identifying them on the platform at Waltham Cross – Jem with his custom-built shopping trolley mounted recorded device, Dave dressed in camouflage fluro. We stop off on the walk into town to pick up some WD40 to lubricate the squeeking sound coming from Jem’s audio jalopy, now wondering about the reality of dragging this thing 100 miles to Hastings.

We gather around the modest stone monument behind Waltham Abbey that claims to be the final resting place of at least some of Harold’s remains. Anonymous Bosch takes pin-hole photos whilst we mooch around the graveyard. From afar the group has the look of a bizarre wedding party milling around before the service, excited anticipation, taking photos, catching up small talk. These are the final moments before their epic schlepp to Hastings retracing the footsteps of Edith Swan-neck to sort through the hacked rotting corpses on the battlefield at Hastings looking for the remains of her beloved Harold.

photo by Andrew Kotting

My own journey will end at Enfield Lock, cut short by the necessities of parenthood, but Andrew has invited me to gather some footage for possible inclusion in our London Overground film with him and Iain as a mad side journey, ‘Treat it as some kind of crazed vision’, Andrew advises. It found its home in the film with Andrew dressed as the Straw Bear in Brompton Cemetery talking about the experience of walking with Iain Sinclair, how it alters your idea of time, the images of Andrew’s troupe of Mummers wandering through the fly-tipping beneath the M25 fly-over just south of Waltham Abbey perfectly illustrating this sentiment. Some of the footage also ended up more appropriately housed in the film Kötting made of their expedition, Edith Walks.

Claudia Barton chats idly to Jem Finer about the real historical Edith Swan-neck and her link to the shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk, ‘I like the idea of her being a little bit spiritual and a little bit nut nut. All women in those days knew the power of herbs and a little bit of sorcerey’, she says with a smile. Gliding along the Lea Navigation towpath in flowing white gown she stops to inspect the flowers in the hedgerow channeling Edith’s plant lore.

David Aylward is turning every solid object we pass into a percussive instrument, jumping onto a moored industrial barge knocking out an infectious rhythm. Passing cyclists wonder what madness they have stumbled upon, thinking better of asking and peddling on bemused.

Passing beneath the M25 with Iain Sinclair I have to call along the path, ‘Iain, look, it’s your road’, he smiles and we stop to chat about his millenial yomp around the M25. Iain leads us up the footpath beside the viaduct to a grassy area next to the road barriers battered by London Orbital traffic noise. Anonymous Bosch reclines in the grass taking snaps and shooting video on various devices, I spot at least three.

I was gutted to wave them off at Enfield Lock. Iain and Andrew suggested I could rendezvous with them further down the route but it isn’t to be. Claudia/Edith picks up the hem of her flowing white wedding gown out of the Lea Valley trail dust, Jem tinkers with his audio device and off they go to Hastings.

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Edith: A performance at the East End Film Festival Sunday 25th June 8.00pm.

For 50% off ‘friends list’ use the code: EDITH

Andrew Kötting and author Iain Sinclair take another epic journey through England’s buried history in EDITH. Following on from Swandown and By Our Selves (both screened by EEFF) Kötting and Sinclair embarked on a 108 mile walk from Waltham Abbey to St Leonards-on-Sea in memory of Edith Swan Neck, the mistress of King Harold.
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Reconnecting and consoling historic lovers after nearly 1,000 years, the experience has inspired a film (Edith Walks), bookwork and this special live film-music-performance event, incorporating spoken word from Iain Sinclair, with music and soundscapes by David Aylward, Claudia Barton, Jem Finer and Andrew Kötting, set to the spectral images of Kötting’s film. A chance to experience an extraordinary project in the atmosphere of St. Johns on Bethnal Green, with EDITH as their hallucination.

The film Edith Walks is on general release across the UK from 23rd June