22 LANDSCAPE IN HISTORY 



yards is washed away in a single year. Holderness, 

 once a wide and populous district, is losing a strip 

 of ground about two and a quarter yards broad, or 

 in all about thirty-four acres annually. Its coast-line 

 is computed to have receded between two and three 

 miles since the time of the Romans — a notable amount 

 of change, if we would try to picture what were the 

 area and form of the coast-line of eastern Yorkshire 

 at the beginning of the historic period. 



But though the general result of the action of the 

 sea along our eastern border has been destructive, it 

 has not been so everywhere. In sheltered bays and 

 creeks some of the material, washed away from more 

 exposed tracts, is cast ashore again. In this way 

 part of the mud and sand swept from off the cliffs 

 of Holderness is carried southward into the Wash, 

 and is laid down in that wide recess which it is 

 gradually filling up. Along the coasts of Norfolk 

 and Suffolk, inlets which in Roman and later times 

 were navigable channels, and which allowed the ships 

 of the Danish Vikings to penetrate far into the 

 interior of the country, are now effaced. On the 

 shores of Kent, also, wide tracts of low land have 

 been gained from the sea. Islands, between which 

 and the shore Roman galleys and Saxon war-boats 

 made their way, are now, like the Isle of Thanet, 

 joined to the mainland. Harbours and towns, such 

 as Sandwich, Richborough, Winchelsea, Pevensey, and 

 Porchester, which once stood at the edge of the sea, 

 are now, in some cases, three miles inland. There 

 appears also to have been some gain of land on 

 parts of the south coast of Sussex, whereby the 



