BRADING HAVEN
BRADING HAVEN, As viewed from Bembridge Mill looking across to the Town of Brading, Nunwell, &c. ISLE OF WIGHT.
Exhibits during high water the beautiful appearance of an extensive lake: but at the recess of the tide, a mere waste of sand and ooze, comprehending above 800 acres.
As the sea comes through a very narrow inlet at St. Helen's, several unsuccessful attempts have been made to recover from its usurpation so valuable a tract of land:—in 1630 the famous Sir H. Middleton was engaged, and indeed succeeded for a short time, by means of a bank of peculiar construction. But the sea brought up so much sand, ooze, and weeds, as to choke up the passage for the discharge of the fresh water, which accumulating, in a wet season and a spring-tide, made an irreparable breach, and thus ended an experiment which then cost altogether about £7000. "And after all, the nature of the ground did not answer the expectations of the undertakers; for though that part adjoining Brading proved tolerably good, nearly one-half of it was found to be a light running sand." But it should be observed, that previous to the above attempt, several of the rich meadows contiguous to the haven were at different times taken in.
One circumstance was very remarkable: namely, a well, cased with stone, was discovered near the middle of the haven;—an incontestible evidence, that at some remote period, the spot was in a very different condition.
To the very remarkable change which appears (by the discovery of a well,) to have taken place in the condition of the haven—and the threatened existence of St. Helen's Church, from the "encroachment of the sea,"—we beg to call the attention of our more reflecting readers. History and tradition are silent as to the cause; and the popular opinion of the present day briefly dismisses the question by ascribing it to an increased elevation of the sea. But this hypothesis is not supported by the appearance of the coast immediately to the westward of the haven, where some creeks or inlets have become dry; a circumstance which induced the Rev. P. Wyndham, who wrote almost the first intelligent Guide to the island, to conclude that there actually had been a secession of tides in this quarter; yet, singular enough, he makes no allusion either to the haven or the church. Now as there is really no evidence whatever in the neighbourhood that would lead us to suppose in the slightest degree, that the sea has encroached upon the land by its gaining a higher general level (an idea deprecated by many eminent geologists), we must take the alternative in accounting for the phenomenon, and infer that the land of the haven must have sunk at some very distant period, and that more recently, the same fate attended the foundations of the church, which certainly could not have been originally built so very close to the water's edge, as to be constantly enveloped in sea-foam during every fresh breeze from the east.
Analagous to the above mutation in the state of the land, is the following singular fact related by Sir Rd. Worsley, of Appuldurcombe, who, living as it were on the spot, was not likely to be imposed upon. The reader is to picture to himself three very high downs standing nearly in a line,—St. Catharine's, Week, and Shanklin: the latter, when Sir Richard wrote the account in 1781, he guessed to be about 100 feet higher than Week Down, but which "was barely visible" over the latter from St. Catharine's, in the younger days of many of the old inhabitants of Chale, and who had also been told by their fathers that at one time Shanklin could be seen only from the top of the beacon on St. Catharine's. "This testimony, if allowed," says the worthy baronet, "argues either a sinking of the intermediate down, or a rising of one of the other hills, the causes of which are left for philosophical investigation:" and so with respect to the haven and the church, we leave it as a curious question to amuse our scientific friends—whether it is the sea that has risen, or the land which has subsided?