DIMINISHING ENGLAND.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 58, 4 March 1912, Page 7

DIMINISHING ENGLAND.

I Jho forces of Nature have once | more been at work on the “white j dills of Old 'England.” Last mouth j the most extensive landslip for a gcuj oration occurred, hundreds of thoui sands of tons of chalk falling into the j sea from Abbot’s Cliff, between .Dover j and Folkstone, setting up conditions j resembling a tidal wave for miles, and j causing crafts in Dover Harbour to drag their anchors and break loose from their moorings at the quays. The front of the cliff presents an extraordinary spectacle. A great causeway of chalk extends 400, yards out to sea for about 200 yards along the cliff. It is thirty feot high in some places. The face of the Abbot’s Oiifl is changed entirely. Local geologist's declare that the fall is duo to the abnormal rainfall of the last fow months, and it is feared that many more landslips like that of Abbot’s Cliff will take place along the coast. A Royal Commission declared some years ago that the Gault day which is the foundation of the white chalk is “easily eroded.” Apparently nothing can he done to prevent the sea slides taking place. Wo may erect expensive seawalls and by doing so mitigate the assaults of the Channel waves upon the base of the cliffs, but Nature lias anotjier and very effective weapon in her destructive armoury. While we build seawalls and plant groynes tho rains are prccolating through the chalk down to the clay bed, , whose surface they turn into a slippery inclined plane, and then one winter’s day the last gicat fall followed a deluge of Deceml>er rain—the whole mass slides down into the sea. All along our southern coasts, wherever this particular goolical formation exists, the same, calamity follows. Sandgate has seen its coast slide into the sea; the middle of Inst century the cliffs near Lyme Regis thundered down. , Historically this phenomena is interesting. Geologists 'toll ns that Brighton cliffs are a thousand yards farther from the French coast than in Elizabeth’s days, and that tho Kent r ish cliffs .are nearly four miles further removed from Cape Grisnez than in Julius Caesar’s time. So in, spite of tho “entente cordiale” the breach between France and England is widening, and we are becoming daily more insular. But though Dame Nature is robbing ns in one place she always gives compensation. Whilst the waves are taking toll in Kent and periodically annexing a putting green from the golf course at ICromer, acres of good solid land are being taken from them elsewhere round the coast. The Roman dyke round Wisbech, built ‘to keep out the waters of the estuary, is now fifteen miles from the sea. In process of time new towns will be built, and the seor’s vision will be once more realised—“There where the long street roars has been the silence of the central sea.” While Kent loses, Cambridge and Lincolnshire gain; while the cliff falls, the level flats increase.