FALL OF A CLIFF. 



it befell not within the limits of this parish, yet as it 

 was within the hundred of Selborne, and as the cir- 

 cumstances were singular, may fairly claim a place in 

 a work of this nature. 



The months of January and February, in the year 

 1774, were remarkable for great melting snows and 

 vast gluts of rain, so that, by the end of the latter 

 month, the land-springs, or levants, began to pre- 

 vail, and to be near as high as in the memorable 

 winter of 1764. The beginning of March also went 

 on in the same tenor, when, in the night between 

 the 8th and 9th of that month, a considerable part 

 of the great woody hanger at Hawkley was torn 

 from its place, and fell down, leaving a high free- 

 stone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep 

 side of a chalk pit. It appears that this huge frag- 

 ment, being, perhaps, sapped and undermined by 

 waters, foundered, and was ingulfed, going down in 

 a perpendicular direction ; for a gate, which stood 

 in the field on the top of the hill, after sinking with 

 its posts for thirty or forty feet, remained in so true 

 and upright a position, as to open and shut with 

 great exactness, just as in its first situation. Several 

 oaks also are still standing, and in a state of vege- 

 tation, after taking the same desperate leap. That 

 great part of this prodigious mass was absorbed in 

 some gulf below, is plain also from the inclining 

 ground at the bottom of the hill, which is free and 

 unencumbered, but would have been buried in heaps 

 of rubbish, had the fragment parted and fallen for- 

 ward. About a hundred yards from the foot of 

 this hanging coppice, stood a cottage by the side 

 of a lane ; and two hundred yards lower, on the 

 other side of the lane, was a farm-house, in which 

 lived a labourer and his family ; and just by, a stout 

 new barn. The cottage was inhabited by an old 

 woman and her son, and his wife. These people, 



