The Loss and Gain of Land in Britain 45 



floods and of the patient work of man in embanking 

 rivers and protecting the sea coast from erosion. 



An authority on this question of coast erosion says, 

 "Every year we lose a tract of land the size of 

 Gibraltar.... In the last hundred years a fragment of 

 our kingdom as large as the county of London lies 

 buried beneath the sea.... For hundreds of miles on the 

 English coasts are buried once prosperous towns and 

 villages and mighty forests, where once roamed the red 

 deer, inclosed in lordly parks, and assuaging their 

 thirst in lakes long since vanished." 



So serious was this loss of coast that a Coast Erosion 

 Commission was appointed in the early years of the 

 twentieth century to consider the question. It appears 

 that before 1866 the Commissioners of Woods and 

 Forests had the management of the foreshore, but under 

 the Act of 1866 the rights were transferred to the 

 Board of Trade, who found that it was necessary to 

 preserve every yard of land in Great Britain. Owing 

 to want of funds the Board of Trade have not under- 

 taken any considerable work to defend the coasts, 

 but they prevent the removal of shingle which at one 

 time threatened to denude the coast, and they refuse 

 sanction to works which would have a similar effect. 



In 1906 the Coast Erosion Commission found that 

 the east coast of England had suffered most from loss 

 of land. In Yorkshire especially, from Bridlington for 

 a distance of at least 30 miles, the coast line had been 

 greatly affected. In Norfolk there had been much 

 destruction, notably at Cromer ; in Essex, near Clacton ; 

 whilst in Kent, at Herne Bay, at St Margaret's Bay, 

 near Dover, and at Folkestone, considerable attention 

 had to be given to the question of erosion. 



