WOODLAND water music has helped a rural arts group scoop a top award for the third time in 14 years.

The remarkable hat-trick by Stour Valley Arts is unique in the history of the pioneering Rouse Kent Public Art Award, founded by the developer of Kings Hill, West Malling.

The three awards have all been for unusual artistic creations in woodland settings.

This year’s winner A Score for a Hole in the Ground features a giant steel horn in King’s Wood, Challock. It collects water and channels the drips to create music.

The work consists of a steel horn - modelled on the trumpet of an old gramophone - rising seven metres above the ground amongst the beech trees deep in the wood, a seven metre deep chamber and a pond, eight metres in diameter.

The horn amplifies droplets of falling water in the concrete chamber beneath, producing a bell-like sound.

The weather changes the music – for example in a torrential downpour its reaches a crescendo while in the drought it is silent, except for the effects of the breeze brushing against the instruments.

Richard Cork, the art critic, called it "magical, mysterious and slightly surreal".

"The work has extraordinary presence," he said. "It is almost as if the wood has discovered its own voice and is playing its own music.

"It has a slightly surrealist feeling and is not what you expect to come across in an English wood, but it has wide appeal as everyone can grasp it at their own level."

The work, which cost £87,000, was commissioned by Stour Valley Arts and created by London-based Jem Finer.

Sandra Drew, Stour Valley Arts director, was delighted after sitting for the third time in the winner’s carved Rouse chair.

She said: "It’s by far the biggest project we’ve ever done. We had £50,000 to built it with and very quickly we ran out of money. We had to use more money from the Arts Council and Henry Moore Foundation to get it completed."

She added that it was work in progress, and the £5,000 prize money - a similar sum went to the artist - would create a performance site and expand the number of musical instruments visible to the public. "A lot of the work of art is in the hole and you can’t see it."

The Erith Fish - a sculpture of three intertwined fish rising up in a column and coated with brightly patterned glass mosaic for a roundabout site in Erith -was runner-up with a prize of £5,000 shared between artist Gary Drostle and commissioning Bexley Council.

The award is supported by Liberty Property Trust UK (formerly Rouse Kent), Kent County Council and Arts Council England, South East.