RATE OF EROSION OF THE SEA-COASTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 415 
were formerly at Beachy Head three pinnacles of chalk projecting from the cliff top, 
known as the ‘Three Charleses.’ These are mentioned as early as 1717 (in Dr. 
or’s paper before quoted), and though the last remaining fell into ruins in 1852, 
e bases of two of them still remain, showing how little of the cliff has perished 
in 150 years. : 
As to erosion before 1717, it seems impossible to obtain any accurate information, 
Sir Wm. Burrell (in the Burrell MSS. in the British Museum) mentions a survey of 
this neighbourhood, made by Sir Edward Burton in 1630, which he had consulted. 
_ But the agents of the present owner of Compton Place (the Duke of Devonshire) can 
give me no information about it, and it appears to be lost. This survey might have 
It is noteworthy that Dr. Tabor says that even at the beginning of the last century 
_ the sea was ‘ always gaining on the land’ at Eastbourne. 
In Roman work at Pevensey Castle (i.e., as early as the third or fourth century 
A.D.) unmistakable pieces of seashore rocks are built in belonging to the Upper Green 
nd, or the Cretaceous stone immediately overlying it ; some are rounded by water, 
d bear calcareous worm-casts, and some are perforated by lithodomi. This shows 
that as long ago as this date, the sea was washing the beds of the Upper Green 
Sand. It is, however, difficult to calculate the direction of these beds under the 
sea. There is no reef now existing hereabouts at any distance from the shore, the 
furthest being a reef of small rocks about a quarter of a mile from high-water mark, 
which is exposed at low tides. If this point were capable of being ascertained with 
any exactness it would afford a satisfactory chronological index. 
_ With regard to the erosion of the whole of this part of the coast, from Beachy 
Head eastward to Langney Point, the consideration of most importance is the 
Langney shingle beds. For if we judge by the rate of waste of these beds since 
1813, it is plain that they must once have extended some way eastward of their pre- 
sent limits. Additional evidence of this is found— 
_=(a) In the Elizabethan survey, 1587, in which ‘The Beache’ is marked as con- 
(®) Camden speaks of ‘the promontory called the Beach, from its gravelly beach,’ 
as if the shingle reached actually to the headland in those days (Camden’s ‘ Britannia,’ 
. Gough, i. 189). 
__(¢) In1728 the Commissioners appointed to survey the coast of Great Britain say : 
‘The high ridge of beach runs on to a point of land beyond Bourn west, and there 
ends; which point, for that very reason, is called Beach Head, or Beachy Head’ 
(quoted in ‘Sussex Arch. Collections,’ xi.). 
_ The shelter afforded by Beachy Head, and the reef which runs out from it like a 
natural breakwater, if not the original cause of the formation of these shingle beds, 
May well have helped in their formation. 
The sea-front at Eastbourne is now protected by a sea-wall and a system of 
wooden groynes, the spaces between which are soon filled by shingle washing from 
the west. 
For some years past, in front of the Wish Tower, it has been the practice to allow 
rocks of the Upper Green Sandstone to be removed, and whole reefs, about half-way 
between high and low tide, have been thus removed. The authorities say that the 
removal of these rocks has greatly facilitated the washing up of the shingle into the 
oynes. But itis noticeable that where a large reef has been removed in the last 
D.—The Coast of East Kent. 
By GrorGE DowKEeR, F.G,S., Stourmouth, Wingham, Kent. 
____ The district to which this Report refers is comprised within a line from Dover to 
Whitstable to the west, and the parts of Kent east of that line. 
The shore line from Dover to Walmer on the south is composed of Chalk cliffs, 
ontaining flints, and ranging in height from two hundred feet to fifty; from 
Walmer to Deal, of clay, about twenty feet; from Deal to Pegwell Bay, of low 
ma ies as towards the shore by the sand-hills, averaging about fifteen feet, and 
_ @ sea-beach. 
az 
