In summer 2024, electronic music producers Drs Sally Rodgers and Steve Jones (A Man Called Adam) transformed Saltburn's Valley Gardens into an immersive sonic journey. Coinciding with the popular Saltburn Food Festival, their commissioned artwork stretched approximately 800 meters through the picturesque valley.

The installation featured three interconnected zones across twenty sound stations, each representing a different chapter in Saltburn's rich history. These soundscapes—sometimes surprising, occasionally disorienting—blended seamlessly as visitors wandered through the gardens, experiencing the town's evolution as pure audio.

Central to the experience was an interactive "Toll Booth," a playful homage to the original Ha'penny Bridge that once spanned the valley and which demanded a halfpenny toll from pedestrians crossing – before its demolition in 1974. When visitors dropped coins into the mechanism, tuned metal plates amplified the sounds, creating an interactive musical sculpture.

This expressionistic audio adventure celebrated Henry Pease's 19th-century vision of creating an elegant seaside resort complete with hotels, funicular railway, pier, and meticulously landscaped gardens. Listeners journeyed through time—from Saltburn's rural origins as a landscape of fishing, farming and smuggling, through the rapid industrialization (on which Pease built his fortune), world wars, day trippers and demolition, to the vibrant contemporary town with its café culture, cycling, and surfing communities.

The Ha'penny Soundwalk invited participants to cross invisible temporal bridges, connecting to the layered history beneath their feet while celebrating the enduring community spirit that defines modern Saltburn-by-the-sea.

The project was commissioned and funded by BaseCamp Industries for Borderlands CPP as part of Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places programme.