Quote:
Originally Posted by Cybermat47
Bloody hell, when did that happen?!
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It started in 1236 and continues to this day. It didn't all go at once, but bit by bit, the river that housed the ship-building industry moved and so the city went into decline and the primitive coastal defences, such as they were, were abandoned and thus the erosion was allowed to continue.
The great surges that have come down the North Sea didn't help much either.
After that, it's death by a thousand cliff falls, take for example the church of All Saints:
Every year another meter or so goes into the sea, sometimes more. When I first visited Dunwich back in around the mid-1990s you could walk through the old grave-yard of All Saints Church and see some of the old headstones there. That's gone now.
It's the Daily Fail, but there's a reasonable overview of Dunwich in this article with some cool pics:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...n-Dunwich.html
Funnily enough, the sediment that was washed down the coast from Dunwich ended up screwing up the ship building industry in the town that I currently live in, once upon a time the river went straight out into the sea but then when the sediment from Dunwich came down the coast it created a spit across the river and fouled up the industry. Thus forcing the town to switch to fishing and agriculture as its main industry.
EDIT: Huh, talk about timing, the local rag has a story about the lighthouse just south of the town which is likely to fall into the sea within a year unless £10k can be raised to improve sea defences around it. The lighthouse was decommed a few years ago because of the sea encroaching and the fear of the environmental damage that the mercury that the lenses sat on fell into the sea would cause. It's been there since 1792, and I hope that they can save it, I see it on my walk home from work and it always makes me smile, I do like lighthouses.
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/on_the_br...week_1_4367264
Also, word has it that the road up to the local Martello tower which runs along the top of the sea wall has partially collapsed due to water undermining it. This winter may have been mild, but it's certainly doing a number on the water front.