Moorcroft Angel Ascent

The RSPB Rainham Marshes Collection

Just beyond the Thames Barrier in East London, RSPB Rainham Marshes, once a Ministry of Defence firing range, now explodes with wildlife which thrives on the ancient grazing mashes of the Thames Estuary. Its mix of shallow lagoons, scrub, lowland grazing marsh dissected by ditches, reedbed and woodland provides habitat for a wide range of birds and scarce wetland plants and insects.

The mysterious and ecologically important RSPB Rainham Marshes, which set the natural drama for Charles Dickens to write Great Expectations, is a wetland world of mists and mud flats of some 870 astounding acres. With sheer pride, Moorcroft now unveils this great RSPB success story in the new RSPB Rainham Marshes Collection, allowing you to quite literally stroll along the boardwalks and viewing platforms. It is here where old shooting butts become viewing posts for herons; teals bathe in tranquil lagoons; Red-Listed birds, like Lapwings, thrive along the muddy banks, and curious little Water Voles scuttle within the reed beds as the Shrill Carder bees buzz in air filled with Ruddy Darters and Brimstones.

Angel Ascent

Designer: Vicky Lovatt

Shape: 7/7

Edition: 10

RSPB Rainham Marshes hosts Brimstone butterflies, known for their large greyish-green body and veiny, pointed wings. Delicately, Moorcroft’s artists transform these butterflies into ethereal angels with a miniscule hint of yellow-green, as they dart up towards seeded reeds.

 Below, male Ruddy Darter dragonflies, whose blood-red, club-shaped abdomens are almost hidden by their soft, blossom-pink and white wings, flank an extremely rare, migrant Lesser Emperor dragonfly, recently found colonising at Rainham Marshes. The Lesser Emperor dragonfly holds wings out at right angles to its body, like a first world war biplane, as its abdomen with black lines running up the centre, act as markers, to the most beautiful cornflower-blue colouration near the top.