©Chris Rice
On an island like Britain coastal erosion is a feature of life for millions. It is estimated that of the 4,500km of English coast, 1,800km are at risk from erosion of some sort. Much of this is very slow, some of it rather fast – in some spots the coast is disappearing by up to 1.8 metres a year. In 2009 about 200 people’s homes were identified as being at risk and a further 2,000 will become at risk in the next 20 years; equally worrying is the 15km of major road and rail infrastructure that is likely, in due course, to end up at the bottom of the sea.
This is a big problem for people living in rapidly eroding coastal zones. Based on government predictions, the residents of Beach Road in Happisburgh on the north Norfolk coast know that their houses are doomed: their homes now have no value and even undertaking repairs seems hardly worth it. The British government, along with many across the world, has had to make it clear that it will not be possible or practical to defend every inch of coastline and compensation will be minimal. In the UK choices have been made about which bits to protect and which areas will succumb to natural processes and be swept away. The system devised by the government-funded Environment Agency operates on the basis of scores that are given to each mile of coastline. They take into account a variety of factors, but ultimately lead to the decision to save or abandon stretches of coastline. Clearly such a system, while strategic and fair, leaves some people very unhappy.
What is so impressive is that rather than giving up, some communities threatened with complete or partial oblivion have been taking matters into their own hands. In places with historic buildings or rich natural habitats, individuals, charitable trusts and now even commercial operators are investing in areas under dire threat of inundation.
The pretty village of Walberswick in Suffolk, on England’s east coast, site of many happy bucket-and-spade holidays, is a case in point. Behind a shingle bank that keeps out the sea is a national nature reserve with a range of habitats harbouring rare plants and birds, both a local amenity and a tourist draw. Local people, disappointed by the reluctance of government to repair the shingle bank that has been repeatedly breached by the sea, have formed a trust. In future they intend to raise money and take the sea defences into their own hands.
Another solution was developed not far away by the owners of a Martello Tower at Bawdsey. Martello Towers are nine-metre-high cylindrical gun platforms built during Britain’s struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte between 1805 and 1812. They were designed to repel a seaborne invasion and so are dotted around the English coast. The Bawdsey tower was converted into a home in 1986 but by 2006 it looked as if it would have to be demolished – the coast had been eaten away and the government was not going to pay for defences to save it. So a charitable trust, local landowners and the local authority came together to build three small residential developments nearby, the profits of which bought 22,000 tonnes of Norwegian boulders to create a barrier against the sea.
These measures might seem extreme to save just one 19th-century gun platform, but they were as nothing to the efforts of the Landmark Trust in saving Clavell Tower in Dorset. Built in 1830, this important historic folly sits on the Jurassic Coast world heritage site on the beautiful but fatally friable Kimmeridge Shales. As it got close to toppling over the edge of the cliff, the noble Landmark Trust splashed out £889,000 to move it 25m inland.
The trust now lets the tower as holiday accommodation, demonstrating that one man’s threat is another’s opportunity. Clarenco, which operates an exclusive holiday business, recently bought the entrancing Happisburgh Manor not far from the houses mentioned above. All the predictions are that this Grade II* listed arts and crafts building, designed by architect Detmar Blow, will be in the sea within 40 years. Thanks to the company the house with its flint, pebble and brick walls and enormous thatch roof can be rented as a luxurious retreat – for the next 40 years maybe. The owners appear to have accepted that, after that, the property will plunge into the cold waters of the North Sea.
I see these measures as inspirational – and I say this as someone who lives on the sea. Many historic and beautiful places are being saved and not by government action reliant on ongoing and unsustainable public funding. This is a shift from the postwar expectation that government must pay for everything to the welcome idea that individuals and communities can determine their own destiny.
Dr Simon Thurley is chief executive of English Heritage