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March 28, 2017 11:47 AM

East Yorkshire has the fastest-eroding coastline in Europe, already some three miles inland of where it stood in Roman days. More than two dozen towns have disappeared beneath the waves of the North Sea. More details here.
posted by Chrysostom (17 comments total)

We often joke that if my parents stay in their village long enough, it'll have a lovely sea view.
posted by halcyonday at 12:38 PM on March 28, 2017

Watch the grey waves pound the Yorkshire coast anywhere between Flamborough Head in the north and Spurn Head in the south, and you get a false sense of timelessness.

Evidence of recent erosion is pretty obvious along the Holderness coast. You would have to be a dull tool to miss the fact that some roads literally fall away into the sea. The cliffs are usually pretty plant sparse, testifying that they slip away with regularity.

Hence the rapid marine erosion, which sweeps away as much as two million tonnes of soil a year between Flamborough and Spurn Heads (2), which are made of sterner stuff. ... Spurn Head keeps growing as the coast to the north of it keeps shrinking.

Flamborough is solid rock, but Spurn is silt. Also, the sea has been working to destroy Spurn for some time, obvious by the former railway which is now half in the sea.
posted by Emma May Smith at 12:43 PM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Britannia rule the waves, indeed.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:04 PM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

P.S. Is any trace of the former villages still visible, at least on a relatively clear day? Google Maps isn't really showing anything.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:07 PM on March 28, 2017

They just turn to rubble as the shoreline is actually a cliff. The buildings crumble with the cliff, being washed away in chunks rather than submerged slowly. I am not aware that there are any lasting and coherent relics under the sea.
posted by Emma May Smith at 1:15 PM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

My grandma once claimed that she read in the Daily Mail that the coastline of Kent was falling into the sea at a rate of three metres a week.

Maybe not in her lifetime, but hey, maybe in mine.
posted by terretu at 1:18 PM on March 28, 2017

Britannia rule the waves, indeed.


In SOviet Britannia, waves rule you!
posted by ocschwar at 2:04 PM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Britannia rule the waves, indeed.

Its building up on the other side. Basically swapping out Yorkshire for more of Lancashire. Win-Win.
posted by biffa at 2:35 PM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Fruiting Bodies", one of Brian Lumley's better stories, takes place in such a soon-to-disappear cliffside village.
posted by kurumi at 2:52 PM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Its building up on the other side. Basically swapping out Yorkshire for more of Lancashire. Win-Win.

🌹
posted by leotrotsky at 2:56 PM on March 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Just as well, Lancashire has all those holes.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:04 PM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

My grandma once claimed that she read in the Daily Mail that the coastline of Kent was falling into the sea at a rate of three metres a week.

And this, this unelected sea is taking away Good British coastline at such a rate? Can nothing be done to stop this foreign, unwanted intrusion? For shame!
posted by Copronymus at 3:28 PM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

The silt from the Holderness coast isn't going as far as Lancashire. I think that most of it is either being (eventually) drawn away into the North Sea or dumped in the Humber firth and on the shore of Lincolnshire. It should be noted that, in the time Holderness has lost several miles to the sea, Lindsey to the south has gained a similar amount through reclamation (though it's not so simple as that). There's also a significant polder in the Humber itself, known as Sunk Island.
posted by Emma May Smith at 3:43 PM on March 28, 2017

I am not aware that there are any lasting and coherent relics under the sea.

Pls explain sound of church bells ringing out out from the sea on foggy nights then.

I mean, I don't know that there's a legend like that, but I'll be sorely disappointed if there isn't.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:21 PM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

The silt from the Holderness coast isn't going as far as Lancashire.

Yeah, I meant that the country was building up on the other side, not that there was a gang of industrious Lancastrians grabbing the dirt and barging it round to the Ribble.
posted by biffa at 1:37 AM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

>>I mean, I don't know that there's a legend like that, but I'll be sorely disappointed if there isn't.

Cathédrale engloutie
posted by sagwalla at 7:29 AM on March 29, 2017

Derwent Water is a reservoir in Derbyshire, its flooding inundated the village of Derwent and it is said the bells of its church can still be heard.
posted by biffa at 1:32 PM on March 30, 2017