135 



secured and placed in the Photographic Album of the East Kent 

 Natural History Society. Illustrations also appeared in the news- 

 papers of the day. 



The sad accident that happened under the chalk escarpment 

 below Harpinge, on 21st January, 1891,* by which three lives 

 were lost, was not due to a landslip so much as to an avalanche, 

 for the frozen chalk, usually so pervious to water, allowed a large 

 accumulation to take place on the top of the Downs. When the 

 frozen ban-ier gave way, it rushed down the combe and destroying 

 the cottage swept the wreckage of it to the other side of the road, 

 killing a man and his wife with their infant, and carrying the 

 roof with three children sixty yards into the fields below. 



Among the few recorded landslips of the neighbourhood are 

 the following : — 



It is stated in the Phil. Trans, for 1716, that a great 

 subsidence of the Cliff had taken place at East Wear Bay, near 

 Folkestone. Sailors, on returning to that port, were astonished to 

 see houses that had not before been visible from the sea, exposed 

 to view by the sliding down of the Cliff. 



The older inhabitants of Eolkestone also tell us, that at one 

 time Terlingham House, situated at the back of Caesar's Camp, 

 and about 500 feet above the sea, was hidden or masked by the 

 intervening heights from sight from Folkestone, but by the sinking 

 of the hills, near Caesar's Camp, which are now only 400 feet, it 

 was exposed to view. 



In the Ladies' Magazine for 1801, it is stated that on the 

 8th March an immense fall of the cliff, about a quarter of a mile 

 from Folkestone, took place, carrying with it the footpath to 

 Sandgate. 



In 1772, there was an extensive slip from the well known 

 Shakespeare Cliff ; and another in 1810, that is said to have shaken 

 Dover like an earthquake. 



I am indebted to Mr. J. B. Hambrook for the two following 

 notes : — A heavy fall noar Holy Trinity Church, took place on 

 20th January, 1853, about three in the afternoon. It was 

 probably due to the undermining and weakening of the foundation 

 of the Cliff by the number of caves that tlie inhabitants had made 

 in its base. The dust of this fall was carried as far as the Market 

 place, and it covered objects there. The weather had previously 



* See also S. E. Naturalist, part 3, page 97. 



