234 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



Auburn, Hartburn, and Hyde, in Yorkshire, are now 

 sandbanks in the sea. Owthorne and Kilnsea, ravaged 

 by the waves, have been rebuilt inland. But Nor- 

 folk and Suffolk suffer in equal extent with York- 

 shire itself. 



Speaking of Sherringham, Sir Charles Lyell tells 

 us that in 1829, when he investigated the rate of sea- 

 waste there represented, some seventeen yards had 

 been swept away in five years. The inn, built in 

 1805, had fifty yards between it and the sea; but in 

 1829 only a small garden was left; the builders of 

 the house having vainly supposed that the sea would 

 take at least seventy years to reach the inn. In 1829, 

 we are further informed, there was a depth of water 

 sufficient to float a frigate 20 feet at least in the 

 harbour, where, only forty-eight years previously, a 

 cliff 50 feet high, with houses upon it, had stood. 



Ancient Cromer, it may be related, is now swallowed 

 up in the German Ocean, and the Cromer cliffs are 

 still being worn away. But the history of the parish 

 and village of Eccles, and the villages of Shipden and 

 Wimpwell, is as instructive as any that may be re- 

 lated of this ceaseless attack upon our coasts. The 

 three villages have themselves disappeared, and the 

 whole coast-line of Norfolk for a length of twenty 

 miles in this locality has presented from time im- 

 memorial illustrations of rapid sea-wear. 



Of Eccles we read that in 1605, when pedantic 

 James had come to the English throne, the good folk 

 of Eccles petitioned the King for a reduction of taxes. 

 Their ground of claim was very just and reasonable. 

 No fewer than 300 acres of their land had been swept 

 away by the sea, and all their houses, save fourteen, 

 had disappeared. Lyell tells us that not 150 acres 



