484 Coast-cliff Denudations. 



borough Head and Kilnsea, the strata are composed of 

 drift or boulder-clay, sometimes of more than a hundred 

 feet in known thickness, and forming well-marked sea 

 cliffs. This district is called Holderness, and many 

 towns, long ago built upon the coast, have been forced 

 by degrees to migrate landwards because of the en- 

 croachment of the sea. ' The materials,' says Professor 

 Phillips, ' which fall from the wasting cliff' (a length 

 of 36 miles) 'are sorted by the tide, the whole shore 

 is in motion, every cliff is hastening to its fall, the 

 parishes are contracted, the churches wasted away.' The 

 whole area on which Ravenspur stood, once an impor- 

 tant town in Yorkshire, where Bolingbroke, afterwards 

 Henry IV., landed in 1399, is now fairly out at sea. 

 The same may be said of many another town and farm- 

 stead, and the sea is ever muddy with the wasting of the 

 unsolid land. In like manner, all the soft coast cliffs, 

 from the Humber to the mouth of the Thames, are 

 suffering similar destruction in places at an average 

 rate of from two to four yards a year. The line of coast 

 from Hunstanton to Cromer and Mausley, and much 

 further south, is wasting away at a rate estimated by 

 Mr. Reid of the Geological Survey, at probably not less 

 than an average of about two yards a year east and 

 west of Cromer. The strata consist of boulder-clay, 

 laminated clays, fresh-water and marine, and soft sands 

 and gravels. The cliffs are often lofty, and vast land- 

 slips are of frequent occurrence down to the shore, where 

 the restless waves rapidly dispose of the material. High 

 up on the edges of the cliff we see the relics of old 

 brick-built walls, that once belonged to vanished farm- 

 houses, and strongly-built tunnels, now in ruins, that 

 descended to the sea, and were once used by fishermen, 

 gape high on the cliffs, themselves a greater ruin. One 



