Principles of Geology Part 24

"In cradle of the rude imperious surge."

Of these cemeteries no remains can now be seen. Ray also says, "that ancient writings make mention of a wood a mile and a half to the east of Dunwich, the site of which must at present be so far within the sea."[409] This city, once so flourishing and populous, is now a small village, with about twenty houses, and one hundred inhabitants.

There is an old tradition, "that the tailors sat in their shops at Dunwich, and saw the ships in Yarmouth Bay;" but when we consider how far the coast at Lowestoff Ness projects between these places, we cannot give credit to the tale, which, nevertheless, proves how much the inroads of the sea in times of old had prompted men of lively imagination to indulge their taste for the marvellous.

Gardner's description of the cemeteries laid open by the waves reminds us of the scene which has been so well depicted by Bewick,[410] and of which numerous points on the same coast might have suggested the idea.

On the verge of a cliff, which the sea has undermined, are represented the unshaken tower and western end of an abbey. The eastern aisle is gone, and the pillars of the cloister are soon to follow. The waves have almost isolated the promontory, and invaded the cemetery, where they have made sport with the mortal relics, and thrown up a skull upon the beach. In the foreground is seen a broken tombstone, erected, as its legend tells, "to _perpetuate_ the memory"--of one whose name is obliterated, as is that of the county for which he was "Custos Rotulorum." A cormorant is perched on the monument, defiling it, as if to remind some moralizer like Hamlet, of "the base uses" to which things sacred may be turned. Had this excellent artist desired to satirize certain popular theories of geology, he might have inscribed the stone to the memory of some philosopher who taught "the permanency of existing continents"--"the era of repose"--"the impotence of modern causes."

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 sh.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e, where the current now flows, the sea is twenty-four feet deep on the spot where the town formerly stood.

_Ess.e.x._--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 sh.o.r.e, would break the force of the waves and r.e.t.a.r.d 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 s.p.a.ce 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 sh.e.l.ly 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.s.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 34.

Reculver Church, in 1834.]

_Isle of Thanet._--The isle of Thanet was, in the time of the Romans, separated from the rest of Kent by a navigable channel, through which the Roman fleets sailed on their way to and from London. Bede describes this small estuary as being, in the beginning of the eighth century, three furlongs in breadth; and it is supposed that it began to grow shallow about the period of the Norman conquest. It was so far silted up in the year 1485, that an act was then obtained to build a bridge across it; and it has since become marsh land with small streams running through it. On the coast, Bedlam Farm, belonging to the hospital of that name, lost eight acres in the twenty years preceding 1830, the land being composed of chalk from forty to fifty feet above the level of the sea. It has been computed that the average waste of the cliff between the North Foreland and the Reculvers, a distance of about eleven miles, is not less than two feet per annum. The chalk cliffs on the south of Thanet, between Ramsgate and Pegwell Bay, have on an average lost three feet per annum for the last ten years (preceding 1830).

_Goodwin Sands._--The Goodwin Sands lie opposite this part of the Kentish coast. They are about ten miles in length, and are in some parts three, and in others seven, miles distant from the sh.o.r.e; and, for a certain s.p.a.ce, are laid bare at low water. That they are a remnant of land, and not "a mere acc.u.mulation of sea sand," as Rennell imagined,[415] may be presumed from the fact that, when the erection of a lighthouse on this shoal was in contemplation by the Trinity Board in the year 1817, it was found, by borings, that the bank consisted of fifteen feet of sand, resting on blue clay; and, by subsequent borings, the subjacent chalk has been reached. An obscure tradition has come down to us, that the estates of Earl Goodwin, the father of Harold, who died in the year 1053, were situated here, and some have conjectured that they were overwhelmed by the flood mentioned in the Saxon chronicle, _sub anno 1099_. The last remains of an island, consisting, like Sheppey, of clay, may perhaps have been carried away about that time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 35.

Shakspeare's Cliff in 1836, seen from the northeast.]

There are other records of waste in the county of Kent, as at Deal; and at Dover, where Shakspeare's Cliff, composed entirely of chalk, has suffered greatly, and continually diminishes in height, the slope of the hill being towards the land. (See fig. 35.) There was an immense landslip from this cliff in 1810, by which Dover was shaken as if by an earthquake, and a still greater one in 1772.[416] We may suppose, therefore, that the view from the top of the precipice in the year 1600, when the tragedy of King Lear was written, was more "fearful and dizzy"

than it is now. The best antiquarian authorities are agreed, that Dover Harbor was formerly an estuary, the sea flowing up a valley between the chalk hills. The remains found in different excavations confirm the description of the spot given by Caesar and Antoninus, and there is clear historical evidence to prove that at an early period there was no shingle at all at Dover.[417]

_Straits of Dover._--In proceeding from the northern parts of the German Ocean towards the Straits of Dover, the water becomes gradually more shallow, so that, in the distance of about two hundred leagues, we pa.s.s from a depth of 120 to that of 58, 38, 18, and even less than 2 fathoms.

The shallowest part follows a line drawn between Romney Marsh and Boulogne. From this point the English Channel again deepens progressively as we proceed westward, so that the Straits of Dover may be said to part two seas.[418]

Whether England was formerly united with France has often been a favorite subject of speculation. So early as 1605 our countryman Verstegan, in his "Antiquities of the English Nation," observed that many preceding writers had maintained this opinion, but without supporting it by any weighty reasons. He accordingly endeavors himself to confirm it by various arguments, the princ.i.p.al of which are, first, the proximity and ident.i.ty of the composition of the opposite cliffs and sh.o.r.es of Albion and Gallia, which, whether flat and sandy, or steep and chalky, correspond exactly with each other; secondly the occurrence of a submarine ridge, called "our Lady's Sand," extending from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e at no great depth, and which, from its composition, appears to be the original basis of the isthmus; thirdly, the ident.i.ty of the noxious animals in France and England, which could neither have swum across, nor have been introduced by man. Thus no one, he says, would have imported wolves, therefore "these wicked beasts did of themselves pa.s.s over." He supposes the ancient isthmus to have been about six English miles in breadth, composed entirely of chalk and flint, and in some places of no great height above the sea-level. The operation of the waves and tides, he says, would have been more powerful when the straits were narrower, and even now they are destroying cliffs composed of similar materials.

He suggests the possible co-operation of earthquakes; and when we consider how many submarine forests skirt the southern and eastern sh.o.r.es of England, and that there are raised beaches at many points above the sea-level, containing fossil sh.e.l.ls of recent species, it seems reasonable to suppose that such upward and downward movements, taking place perhaps as slowly as those now in progress in Sweden and Greenland, may have greatly a.s.sisted the denuding force of "the ocean stream," ??ta??? e?a s?e??? O?ea??t?.

_Folkstone._--At Folkstone, the sea undermines the chalk and subjacent strata. About the year 1716 there was a remarkable sinking of a tract of land near the sea, so that houses became visible from certain points at sea, and from particular spots on the sea cliffs, from whence they could not be seen previously. In the description of this subsidence in the Phil. Trans. 1716, it is said, "that the land consisted of a solid stony ma.s.s (chalk), resting on wet clay (gault), so that it slid forwards towards the sea, just as a ship is launched on tallowed planks." It is also stated that, within the memory of persons then living, the cliff there had been washed away to the extent of ten rods.

Encroachments of the sea at Hythe are also on record; but between this point and Rye there has been a gain of land within the times of history; the rich level tract called Romney Marsh, or Dungeness, about ten miles in width and five in breadth, and formed of silt, having received great accession. It has been necessary, however, to protect it from the sea, from the earliest periods, by embankments, the towns of Lydd and Romney being the only parts of the marsh above the level of the highest tides.[419] Mr. Redman has cited numerous old charts and trustworthy authorities to prove that the average annual increase of the promontory of shingle called Dungeness amounted for two centuries, previous to 1844, to nearly six yards. Its progress, however, has fluctuated during that period; for between 1689 and 1794, a term of 105 years, the rate was as much as 8 yards per annum.[420] It is ascertained that the shingle is derived from the westward. Whether the pebbles are stopped by the meeting of the tide from the north flowing through the Straits of Dover, with that which comes up the Channel from the west, as was formerly held, or by the check given to the tidal current by the waters of the Rother, as some maintain, is still a disputed question.

Rye, situated to the south of Romney Marsh, was once destroyed by the sea, but it is now two miles distant from it. The neighboring town of Winchelsea was destroyed in the reign of Edward I., the mouth of the Rother stopped up, and the river diverted into another channel. In its old bed, an ancient vessel, apparently a Dutch merchantman, was found about the year 1824. It was built entirely of oak, and much blackened.[421] Large quant.i.ties of hazel-nuts, peat, and wood are found in digging in Romney Marsh.

_South coast of England._--Westward of Hastings, or of St. Leonard's, the sh.o.r.e line has been giving way as far as Pevensey Bay, where formerly there existed a haven now entirely blocked up by shingle. The degradation has equalled for a series of years seven feet per annum in some places, and several martello towers had in consequence, before 1851, been removed by the Ordnance.[422] At the promontory of Beachy Head a ma.s.s of chalk, three hundred feet in length, and from seventy to eighty in breadth, fell in the year 1813 with a tremendous crash; and similar slips have since been frequent.[423]

About a mile to the west of the town of Newhaven, the remains of an ancient intrenchment are seen on the brow of Castle Hill. This earth-work, supposed to be Roman, was evidently once of considerable extent and of an oval form, but the greater part has been cut away by the sea. The cliffs, which are undermined here, are high; more than one hundred feet of chalk being covered by tertiary clay and sand, from sixty to seventy feet in thickness. In a few centuries the last vestiges of the plastic clay formation on the southern borders of the chalk of the South Downs on this coast will probably be annihilated, and future geologists will learn, from historical doc.u.ments, the ancient geographical boundaries of this group of strata in that direction. On the opposite side of the estuary of the Ouse, on the east of Newhaven harbor, a bed of shingle, composed of chalk flints derived from the waste of the adjoining cliffs, had acc.u.mulated at Seaford for several centuries. In the great storm of November, 1824, this bank was entirely swept away, and the town of Seaford inundated. Another great beach of shingle is now forming from fresh materials.

The whole coast of Suss.e.x has been incessantly encroached upon by the sea from time immemorial; and, although sudden inundations only, which overwhelmed fertile or inhabited tracts, are noticed in history, the records attest an extraordinary amount of loss. During a period of no more than eighty years, there are notices of about _twenty_ inroads, in which tracts of land of from twenty to _four hundred acres_ in extent were overwhelmed at once, the value of the t.i.thes being mentioned in the Taxatio Ecclesiastica.[424] In the reign of Elizabeth, the town of Brighton was situated on that tract where the chain pier now extends into the sea. In the year 1665, twenty-two tenements had been destroyed under the cliff. At that period there still remained under the cliff 113 tenements, the whole of which were overwhelmed in 1703 and 1705. No traces of the ancient town are now perceptible, yet there is evidence that the sea has merely resumed its ancient position at the base of the cliffs, the site of the whole town having been merely a beach abandoned by the ocean for ages.

_Hampshire.--Isle of Wight._--It would be endless to allude to all the localities on the Suss.e.x and Hampshire coasts where the land has given way; but I may point out the relation which the geological structure of the Isle of Wight bears to its present shape, as attesting that the coast owes its outline to the continued action of the sea. Through the middle of the island runs a high ridge of chalk strata, in a vertical position, and in a direction east and west. This chalk forms the projecting promontory of Culver Cliff on the east, and of the Needles on the west; while Sandown Bay on the one side, and Compton Bay on the other, have been hollowed out of the softer sands and argillaceous strata, which are inferior, in geological position, to the chalk.

The same phenomena are repeated in the Isle of Purbeck, where the line of vertical chalk forms the projecting promontory of Handfast Point; and Swanage Bay marks the deep excavation made by the waves in the softer strata, corresponding to those of Sandown Bay.

_Hurst Castle bank--progressive motion of sea beaches._--Although the loose pebbles and grains of sand composing any given line of sea-beach are carried sometimes one way, sometimes another, they have, nevertheless, an ultimate motion in one particular direction.[425] Their progress, for example, on the south coast of England, is from west to east, which is owing partly to the action of the waves driven eastwards by the prevailing wind, and partly to the current, or the motion of the general body of water caused by the tides and winds. The force of the waves gives motion to pebbles which the velocity of the currents alone would be unable to carry forwards; but as the pebbles are finally reduced to sand or mud, by continual attrition, they are brought within the influence of a current; and this cause must determine the course which the main body of matter derived from wasting cliffs will eventually take.

It appears, from the observations of Mr. Palmer and others, that if a pier or groin be erected anywhere on our southern or southeastern coast to stop the progress of the beach, a heap of shingle soon collects on the western side of such artificial barriers. The pebbles continue to acc.u.mulate till they rise as high as the pier or groin, after which they pour over in great numbers during heavy gales.[426]

The western entrance of the Channel, called the Solent, is crossed for more than two-thirds of its width by the shingle-bank of Hurst Castle, which is about two miles long, seventy yards broad, and twelve feet high, presenting an inclined plane to the west. This singular bar consists of a bed of rounded chalk flints, resting on a submarine argillaceous base. The flints and a few other pebbles, intermixed, are derived from the waste of Hordwell, and other cliffs to the westward, where tertiary strata, capped with a covering of broken chalk flints, from five to fifty feet thick, are rapidly undermined. In the great storm of November, 1824, this bank of shingle was moved bodily forwards for forty yards towards the northeast; and certain piles, which served to mark the boundaries of two manors, were found after the storm on the opposite side of the bar. At the same time many acres of pasture land were covered by shingle, on the farm of Westover, near Lymington. But the bar was soon restored in its old position by pebbles drifted from the west; and it appears from ancient maps that it has preserved the same general outline and position for centuries.[427]

Mr. Austen remarks that, as a general rule, it is only when high tides concur with a gale of wind, that the sea reaches the base of cliffs so as to undermine them and throw down earth and stone. But the waves are perpetually employed in abrading and fashioning the materials already strewed over the beach. Much of the gravel and shingle is always travelling up and down, between high-water mark and a slight depth below the level of the lowest tides, and occasionally the materials are swept away and carried into deeper water. Owing to these movements every portion of our southern coast may be seen at one time or other in the condition of bare rock. Yet other beds of sand and shingle soon collect, and, although composed of new materials, invariably exhibit on the same spots precisely similar characters.[428]

The cliffs between Hurst Shingle Bar and Christchurch are undermined continually, the sea having often encroached for a series of years at the rate of a yard annually. Within the memory of persons now living, it has been necessary thrice to remove the coast-road farther inland. The tradition, therefore, is probably true, that the church of Hordwell was once in the middle of that parish, although now (1830) very near the sea. The promontory of Christchurch Head gives way slowly. It is the only point between Lymington and Poole Harbor, in Dorsetshire, where any hard stony ma.s.ses occur in the cliffs. Five layers of large ferruginous concretions, somewhat like the septaria of the London clay, have occasioned a resistance at this point, to which we may ascribe this headland. In the mean time, the waves have cut deeply into the soft sands and loam of Poole Bay; and, after severe frosts, great landslips take place, which by degrees become enlarged into narrow ravines, or chines, as they are called, with vertical sides. One of these chines, near Bos...o...b.. has been deepened twenty feet within a few years. At the head of each there is a spring, the waters of which have been chiefly instrumental in producing these narrow excavations, which are sometimes from 100 to 150 feet deep.

_Isle of Portland._--The peninsulas of Purbeck and Portland are continually wasting away. In the latter, the soft argillaceous substratum (Kimmeridge clay) hastens the dilapidation of the superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s of limestone.

In 1655 the cliffs adjoining the princ.i.p.al quarries in Portland gave way to the extent of one hundred yards, and fell into the sea; and in December, 1734, a slide to the extent of 150 yards occurred on the east side of the isle, by which several skeletons buried between slabs of stone, were discovered. But a much more memorable occurrence of this nature, in 1792, occasioned probably by the undermining of the cliffs, is thus described in Hutchin's History of Dorsetshire:--"Early in the morning the road was observed to crack: this continued increasing, and before two o'clock the ground had sunk several feet, and was in one continued motion, but attended with no other noise than what was occasioned by the separation of the roots and brambles, and now and then a falling rock. At night it seemed to stop a little, but soon moved again; and, before morning, the ground from the top of the cliff to the water-side had sunk in some places fifty feet perpendicular. The extent of ground that moved was about _a mile and a quarter_ from north to south, and 600 yards from east to west."

_Formation of the Chesil Bank._--Portland is connected with the mainland by the Chesil Bank, a ridge of shingle about seventeen miles in length, and, in most places, nearly a quarter of a mile in breadth. The pebbles forming this immense barrier are chiefly siliceous, all loosely thrown together, and rising to the height of from twenty to thirty feet above the ordinary high-water mark; and at the southeastern end, which is nearest the Isle of Portland, where the pebbles are largest, forty feet.

The fundamental rocks whereon the shingle rests are found at the depth of a few yards only below the level of the sea. The formation of that part of the bar which attaches Portland to the mainland may have been due to an original shoal or reef, or to the set of the tides in the narrow channel, by which the course of the pebbles, which are always coming from the west, has been arrested. It is a singular fact that, throughout the Chesil Bank, the pebbles increase gradually in size as we proceed southeastward, or as we go farther from the quarter which supplied them. Had the case been reversed, we should naturally have attributed the circ.u.mstance to the constant wearing down of the pebbles by friction, as they are rolled along a beach seventeen miles in length.

But the true explanation of the phenomenon is doubtless this: the tidal current runs strongest from west to east, and its power is greater in the more open channel or farther from the land. In other words its force increases southwards, and as the direction of the bank is from northwest to southeast, the size of the ma.s.ses coming from the westward and thrown ash.o.r.e must always be largest where the motion of the water is most violent. Colonel Reid states that all calcareous stones rolled along from the west are soon ground into sand, and in this form they pa.s.s round Portland Island.[429]

The storm of 1824 burst over the Chesil Bank with great fury, and the village of Chesilton, built upon its southern extremity, was overwhelmed, with many of the inhabitants. The same storm carried away part of the Breakwater at Plymouth, and huge ma.s.ses of rock, from two to five tons in weight, were lifted from the bottom of the weather side, and rolled fairly to the top of the pile. One block of limestone, weighing seven tons, was washed round the western extremity of the Breakwater, and carried 150 feet.[430] The propelling power is derived in these cases from the breaking of the waves, which run fastest in shallow water, and for a short s.p.a.ce far exceed the most rapid currents in swiftness. It was in the same month, and also during a spring-tide, that a great flood is mentioned on the coasts of England, in the year 1099. Florence of Worcester says, "On the third day of the nones of Nov.

1099, the sea came out upon the sh.o.r.e and buried towns and men very many, and oxen and sheep innumerable." We also read in the Saxon Chronicle, for the year 1099, "This year eke on St. Martin's ma.s.s day, the 11th of Novembre, sprung up so much of the sea flood, and so myckle harm did, as no man minded that it ever afore did, and there was the ylk day a new moon."

South of the Bill, or southern point of Portland, is a remarkable shoal in the channel at the depth of seven fathoms, called "the Shambles,"

consisting entirely of rolled and broken sh.e.l.ls of Purpura lapillus, Mytilus edulis, and other species now living. This ma.s.s of light materials is always in motion, varying in height from day to day, and yet the shoal remains constant.

_Dorsetshire.--Devonshire._--At Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, the "Church Cliffs," as they are called, consisting of lias about one hundred feet in height, gradually fell away at the rate of one yard a year, from 1800 to 1829.[431]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 36.