Principles of Geology / or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of Geology

by Sir Charles Lyell

The incursions of the sea at Aldborough, were formerly very destructive, and this borough is known to have been once situated a quarter of a mile east of the present shore. The inhabitants continued to build farther inland, till they arrived at the extremity of their property, and then the town decayed greatly; but two sand-banks, thrown up at a short distance, now afford a temporary safeguard to the coast. Between these banks and the present shore, where the current now flows, the sea is twenty-four feet deep on the spot where the town formerly stood.

Essex.—Harwich is said to have owed its rise to the destruction of Orwell, a town which stood on the spot now called "the west rocks," and was overwhelmed by an inroad of the sea since the Conquest. Apprehensions have been entertained that the isthmus on which Harwich stands may at no remote period become an island, for the sea may be expected to make a breach near Lower Dover Court, where Beacon Cliff is composed of horizontal beds of London clay containing septaria. It had wasted away considerably between the years 1829 and 1838, at both which periods I examined this coast. In that short interval several gardens and many houses had been swept into the sea, and in April, 1838, a whole street was threatened with destruction. The advance of the sea is much accelerated by the traffic carried on in septaria, which are shipped off for cement as fast as they fall down upon the beach. These stones, if allowed to remain in heaps on the shore, would break the force of the waves and retard the conversion of the peninsula into an island, an event which might be followed by the destruction of the town of Harwich. Captain Washington, R. N., ascertained in 1847, that Beacon Cliff, above mentioned, which is about fifty feet high, had given way at the rate of forty feet in forty-seven years, between 1709 and 1756; eighty feet between 1756 and 1804; and three hundred and fifty feet between the latter period and 1841; showing a rapidly accelerated rate of destruction.[411]

Among other losses it is recorded that, since the year 1807, a field called the Vicar's Field, which belonged to the living of Harwich, has been overwhelmed;[412] and in the year 1820 there was a considerable space between the battery at Harwich, built in the beginning of the present century, and the sea; part of the fortification had been swept away in 1829, and the rest then overhung the water.

At Walton Naze, in the same county, the cliffs, composed of London clay, capped by the shelly sands of the crag, reach the height of about 100 feet, and are annually undermined by the waves. The old churchyard of Walton has been washed away, and the cliffs to the south are constantly disappearing.

Kent.—Isle of Sheppey.—On the coast bounding the estuary of the Thames, there are numerous examples both of the gain and loss of land. The Isle of Sheppey, which is now about six miles long by four in breadth, is composed of London clay. The cliffs on the north, which are from sixty to eighty feet high, decay rapidly, fifty acres having been lost in twenty years, between 1810 and 1830. The church at Minster, now near the coast, is said to have been in the middle of the island in 1780; and if the present rate of destruction should continue, we might calculate the period, and that not a very remote one, when the whole island will be annihilated. On the coast of the mainland, to the east of Sheppey, is Herne Bay: a place still retaining the name of a bay, although it is no longer appropriate, as the waves and currents have swept away the ancient headlands. There was formerly a small promontory in the line of the shoals where the present pier is built, by which the larger bay was divided into two, called the Upper and Lower.[413]

Fig. 33.

View of Reculver Church, taken in the year 1781.

1. Isle of Sheppey. 2. Ancient chapel now destroyed. The cottage between this chapel and the cliff was demolished by the sea, in 1782.

Still farther east stands the church of Reculver, upon a cliff composed of clay and sand, about twenty-five feet high. Reculver (Regulvium) was an important military station in the time of the Romans, and appears, from Leland's account, to have been, so late as Henry VIII.'s reign, nearly one mile distant from the sea. In the "Gentleman's Magazine," there is a view of it, taken in 1781, which still represents a considerable space as intervening between the north wall of the churchyard and the cliff.[414] Sometime before the year 1780, the waves had reached the site of the ancient Roman camp or fortification, the walls of which had continued for several years after they were undermined to overhang the sea, being firmly cemented into one mass. They were eighty yards nearer the sea than the church, and they are spoken of in the "Topographica Britannica," in the year 1780, as having recently fallen down. In 1804, part of the churchyard with some adjoining houses was washed away, and the ancient church, with its two spires, was dismantled and abandoned as a place of worship, but kept in repair as a landmark well known to mariners. I visited the spot in June, 1851, and saw human bones and part of a wooden coffin projecting from the cliff, near the top. The whole building would probably have been swept away long ere this, had not the force of the waves been checked by an artificial causeway of stones and large wooden piles driven into the sands on the beach to break the force of the waves.