ALTERATIONS OF COAST LINE. 395 



amounts to about four yards a year ; and farmers may be met with who have witnessed 

 the corn wave where the sea now prevails. The depredations of the ocean towards Spurn 

 Point, at the entrance of the Humber estuary, have been still more considerable ; nor is it 

 unlikely that the Point will ere long become an island. Ravenspur with the latter part 

 of which word the name Spurn seems to be connected, an important place in this locality 

 has long since been lost, with a number of other places in the vicinity, belonging to 

 Birstal Priory ; and the site of the priory itself has been totally swept away. Pennant 

 remarks : " The site, and even the very names of several places, once towns of note upon 

 the Humber, are now only recorded in history ; and Ravenspur was at one time a rival 

 to Hull, and a port so very considerable in 1332, that Edward Baliol and the con- 

 federated English barons sailed from hence to invade Scotland; and Henry IV., in 1399, 

 made choice of this port to land at, to effect the deposal of Richard II. ; yet the whole has 

 long since been devoured by the merciless ocean : extensive sands, dry at low water, are 

 to be seen in their stead." 



Mr. Lyell makes a remarkable statement respecting Sheringham, on the coast of Nor- 

 folk: "I ascertained, in 1829, some facts which throw light upon the rate at which the 

 sea gains on the land. It was computed, when the present inn was built, in 1805, that it 

 would require seventy years for the sea to reach the spot, the mean loss of land being 

 calculated, from previous observations, to be somewhat less than one yard annually. The 

 distance between the house and the sea was fifty yards ; but no allowance was made for 

 the slope of the ground being from the sea, in consequence of which the waste was 

 naturally accelerated every year, as the cliff grew lower, there being at every succeeding 

 period less matter to remove when portions of equal area fell down. Between the years 

 1824 and 1829, no less than seventeen yards were swept away, and only a small garden 

 was then left between the building and the sea. There is now a depth of twenty feet 

 sufficient to float a frigate at one point, in the harbour of that port, where, only forty- 

 eight years ago. there stood a cliff fifty feet high, with houses upon it. If once in half a 

 century an equal amount of change were produced at once by the momentary shock of an 

 earthquake, history would be filled with records of such wonderful revolutions of the 

 earth's surface ; but, if the conversion of high land into deep sea be gradual, it excites 

 only local attention. The flag-staff of the Preventive Service station, on the south side 

 of this harbour, has, within the last fifteen years, been thrice removed inland, in conse- 

 quence of the advance of the sea." 



Dunwich, on the coast of Suffolk, a small village containing about twenty houses and 

 a hundred inhabitants, was once one of the most important places upon our eastern shores, 

 and has been reduced to its present insignificance by the aggressions of the sea. While 

 East Anglia subsisted as a separate kingdom, it was the seat of the first East Anglican 

 bishopric, which may be considered as the predecessor of that now fixed at Norwich. 

 Two tracts of land which were taxed in the time of Edward the Confessor, had been 

 devoured by the ocean when the Doomsday survey was made. Ray states, that ancient 

 writings make mention of a wood a mile and a half to the east of the place, the site of 

 which must at present be so far within the sea, as it subsequently invaded the town. At 

 different periods a monastery has perished, seven churches, the old port, four hundred 

 houses at once, the town hall and gaol ; and coffins and skeletons have been exposed to 

 view in its cliffs, as the waves have reached its churchyards. A scene depicted in one of 

 Bewick's cuts, described in the following terms by Mr. Lyell, might have been suggested 

 by the fate of Dunwich : " On the verge of a cliff, which the sea has undermined, are 

 represented the unshaken tower and western end of an abbey. The eastern aisle is gone, 

 and the pillars of the cloister are soon to follow. The waves have almost isolated the 

 promontory, and invaded the cemetery, where they have made sport with the mortal 



