Changing Suffolk Coast

THE CHANGING SUFFOLK COAST B y HAROLD E . P .

SPENCER,

F.G.S.

Except in times of severe floods and landslides most people probably regard the geography of the district in which they live as something which always was and, perhaps, always will be.

For untold ages the seas have attacked the coasts wearing some parts away and building up others. Along the Suffolk coastline this process is proceeding with greater rapidity than in some parts of Britain where rocks are harder, and many minor changes have taken place within living memory. As an instance (within the memory of those who knew Felixstowe before 1914) the beach immediately west of Felixstowe Pier was very narrow and in rough weather tons of shingle were piled on to the promenade.

This made a job for casual labourers to shovel it back on to the beach. At the present time the beach is many times wider than in pre-1914 days.

This instance is a very minor one and much greater changes have affected the geography of Felixstowe. From South Hill the old cliff line recedes from the beach and passes south of the new housing estate and Peewit Hill to Walton Ferry, thence to Fagborough Cliff opposite Shotley. The flat area between the old cliffs and Landguard Point is composed of marshes and accumulations of shingle of geologically recent date. The latter were exposed in bomb craters during the war. All this flat area has probably been built up since Roman times and it is evident the River Stour formerly flowed eastward through a now silted up bed. Old maps of 1500, 1610 and 1648 show traces of this and the river mouth must once have been near the site of the pier. In 1676 Silas Taylor said, " It is believed the Stour discharged into the sea at Hoasley Bay," betwixt the Highlands of Walton and Felixstowe. Landguard was once an island and formerly an administrative part of Essex.

During Roman times a fort was built as a protection against raids by " Saxon pirates " on land which then existed between Cobbold's Point and Felixstowe Ferry. Nothing can be more certain than that the site commanded a view of both estuaries and this implies that the Roman beach may have been at least half a mile further seaward than at present. Cobbold's Point may now represent this promontory which has receded and become smaller through the centuries.

At the mouth of the River Deben to-day we are able to witness the conditions which probably prevailed about a thousand years ago at the mouth of the Aide. Twenty years ago the Red Crag cliffs of Bawdsey (which must have lost much to the sea in the last

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two thousand years) were being rapidly eroded and the beach was sandy but by the end of the 1939-45 war, shingle, which had by-passed the Orford spit, had accumulated and the high storm crest formed by the shingle now protects the soft cliffs against further attacks by the sea. Bawdsey cliffs in all probability formed a headland on the south side of Hollesley Bay which then included all the present marshland, the coast approximating to the present twenty-five foot contour line. The Deben will (if the accumulation of shingle is continued) be diverted southward into Felixstowe Bay. The construction of a jetty similar to that made in 1866 at Landguard would stabilise the shingle and greatly improve the conditions for boats entering and leaving the river mouth.

Shingle follows a zig-zag course along the coast, the waves throwing it diagonally up the beach and gravity rolling it straight down as the water recedes.

Orford was not originally a river port cut off from the sea and the southward diversion of the River Aide has occurred during historical times. Old maps exist which show stages in the growth of the shingle spit now extending about twelve miles south of Aldeburgh. The spit seems to have attained a condition of stasis, accumulations of shingle being carried away by storms and passed along the Shingle Street beach to Bawdsey and the Deben mouth. Aldeburgh probably formed another headland, the place having been built on Coralline Crag, a slightly more resistant rock. However, this town was much larger in Tudor times than at present. A plan dated 1559 shows the church about a mile from the sea ; at present it is about a tenth of that distance.

There were extensive dunes between the town and the sea, but these and at least two streets which formerly existed between the Moot Hall and the beach were lost during the reign of Elizabeth I. Thorpeness must have been a more prominent headland in mediaeval times and the Minsmere River, once a more considerable stream than at present, had in all probability an estuary.

Dunwich was a considerable " c i t y " during Norman and Plantagenet times having been fined 1,060 marks by Richard I, while Ipswich and Yarmouth paid only 200 marks for the same offence. In 1286 several churches and many houses were swept away and in 1327 the port was rendered useless. Within about twenty years shops, windmills and four hundred houses were washed away. An old map showed the town built on a headland which, if the old scale was correct, extended some three miles east of the present beach. That is approximately the five fathom line as indicted on the one inch Ordnance Survey map. The harbour on which the port depended for its prosperity was on the northern side and ran inland in a southwesterly direction. At the present time the soft sandy cliffs are being eroded at the rate of two feet a year. The port was transferred to Blythburgh which

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enjoyed some prosperity up to the fifteenth Century and there was much rivalry with Southwold. The sites of Southwold and Easton Bavents must once have been some distance from the sea and the latter is still being rapidly eaten away.

Testimony to the receding shore along the whole section of the Suffolk Coast between Aldeburgh and Lowestoft may be seen in the number of streams with mouths blocked with beach material; these either empty into the sea through sluices or seep through the shingle. This is also indicated by the roads which either terminate at the cliff top as at Covehithe and Kessingland or on the beach as at Sizewell. The former prosperity and populous character of Covehithe and Walberswick are shown by the ruins of fifteenth Century churches of magnificent proportions. Covehithe cliff appears to be rapidly wasting away, but as a contrast little more than a mile to the north at Benacre Ness the sea appears to be building up the ness at present, but it remains to be seen if the new sea defences at Kessingland have an adverse effect.

Within living memory much of Pakefield has been lost through the crumbling of the cliff owing to the attacks of the sea but there has been an improvement since the construction of sea defences.

From present indications Lowestoft seems relatively unchanged, though there has been a little accumulation north of the harbour mouth. To the north the cliffs at Corton and Hopton are being slowly eroded. Great Yarmouth is largely built on a spit like that at Orford Ness which formerly extended further to the south.

This spit was cut through at Gorleston and as a result of the construction of the harbour works the south end was washed away.

The greatest change in the geography of this area is the silting up of the small inland sea which is now Broadland. It has been recorded that herrings were formerly taken near Norwich. The growth of reeds and other aquatic Vegetation caused rapid silting and thick beds of peat were formed. It was the extensive digging of this peat for fuel which made the hollows, which having later become water-filled are now called Broads.

At a still earlier epoch the bed of the North Sea was largely a dry piain, perhaps with lakes and marshes. On this land there were large numbers of wild horses, varieties of deer ; a species of rhinoceros and the Mammoth (Elephas primigenius) also lived there and their bones are sometimes brought up in the trawls of fishermen. As a proof of this a well preserved and nearly complete skull of a Mammoth taken from the sea thirty miles east of Lowestoft may be seen in the Ipswich Museum.