is, 
A474 H. G. SPEARING ON THE RECENT ENCROACHMENT 
33. On the Recent Encroacument of the Sza at Wesrwarp Ho!, 
Norra Devon. By Hersert Green Sprartne, Esq., M.A. 
(Read May 28, 1884.) 
(Communicated by Prof. Prestwicu, M.A., F.R.S., V.P.G.S.) 
For the last nine years the sea has been encroaching on the land 
near Westward Ho! at the rate of about 30 feet a year. This 
encroachment only affects about a mile of the coast-line, but it is of 
special interest both on account of the formations which it exposes 
and the rapidity with which the sea has eaten into a district which 
had hitherto been apparently but little injured by it. 
I have not been able to obtain any correct map of the district 
older than the parish map of Northam, and that does not give the 
actual limits of high tide with any accuracy, so that it is impossible 
to say how much further the land may have extended seaward 
when Westward Ho! was still unnamed and almost uninhabited. 
A very old inhabitant, however, told me that the grass used to extend 
for several yards beyond the old road leading from the ladies’ baths 
to the Burrows, which was still in existence in 1875, when I first 
went to Westward Ho! 
The accompanying map is reduced from one constructed from an 
Map showing Recent Encroachments of the Sea at Westward Ho! 
- 
SUILDING LAND 
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actual survey that I made in 1879, but the line of the top of the former 
ridge in 1875 was sketched in from memory, aided by the parish map. 
The district which is principally affected by the encroachment 1s 
a large sandy common called the Northam Burrows. This common 
is the southern part of the delta of the united rivers Taw and 
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