MEDIEVAL kingdoms. Notorious pirate towns. Drowned churches. Infested swamps.

In her latest book ‘Lost to the Sea’, photographer and author Lisa Woollett takes us on an illuminating journey, bringing to life the places where mythology and reality meet at the very edges of Britain and Ireland.

Based around a series of coastal walks, each chapter reveals wonders: from Bronze Age settlements on the Isles of Scilly and submerged prehistoric forests in Wales, to a Victorian amusement park on the Isle of Wight and castles in the air off County Clare. Lisa draws together archaeology, meetings with locals and tales from folklore to reveal how the sea has forged, shaped and often overwhelmed these landscapes and communities.

Lisa Woollett grew up on the cliffs of the Isle of Sheppey, with stories of local pubs and churches that had been lost to the tides. 

She’s lived in Lansallos for the past 20 years, combining beachcombing, photography, painting and a later-found talent for writing to create a series of unusual and beautiful books.

“A major inspiration for this book was seeing trees from the submerged prehistoric forest at Millendreath, revealed by the 2014 storms,” she says. “Similar prehistoric trees are also occasionally uncovered in other bays around Cornwall.

“In Mounts Bay, a submerged forest between four and six thousand years old lies beneath the low-tide sands. Its old Cornish name, Karrek Loos yn Koos, means the Grey Rock in the Wood.”

In her journeys around the coastline researching the book, Lisa discovered similar magical scenes revealed as the water recedes. In Cardigan Bay, Wales lies another submerged forest; on the island of Bryher, Scilly, prehistoric field walls rise up through the haze when the tide is at its lowest.

There are also places such as the village of Hallsands, in Devon, where in 1917 easterly gales and high waters forced a community to abandon their homes.

Writer Philip Hoare 'describes Lost to the Sea as 'Wondrous, elegant and haunting, a fascinating alternative history of the fractured, flooded and eroded edges of Britain and Ireland'.