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The City That Fell Off a Cliff
- Lio 4y agoAs a side note for anyone interested in present day Dunwich, the next Dunwich Dynamo ride is on 1st July 2023. It's a free annual bike ride where 1000s ride from Hackney in East London through the night to Dunwich beach. With many pubs along the way staying open all night and locals putting out little candles it's a magical ride that anyone can do. (Oh, and it's pronounced Dun-ige to rhyme with midge not Dun-which for anyone wondering.) https://www.dunwichdynamo.co.uk/ https://www.dunwichdynamo.co.uk/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunwich_Dynamo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunwich_Dynamo
- ljf 4y agoI highly recommend this ride, it is so much fun. Just make sure you book the transport back and don't hope to get a train or public transport, just too many people!
- DonaldFisk 4y ago> it's a magical ride that anyone can do. It's 180km, so you do need to be reasonably fit. I was on it each year from 2008-2014. Options on the way back are (were?) book a seat on a bus, ride to Saxmundham and get the train from there, ride to Ipswich and get the train from there, or (if you're really fit), ride home. There are a few things to see when you get there, the ruins of Greyfriars Priory, a leper hospital, and a museum.
- Maursault 4y agoThere are many ways to preserve and even extend shoreline. It's just too bad that coastal engineering technology was 400 years too late for this old town.
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- truculent 4y agoMore like 700 years from the sounds of things. > This city was once the same physical size as the City of London with a population, in its late-thirteenth-century heyday, of around ten thousand, before it was savagely diminished by two calamitous sea-storms in 1288 and 1328 initiating a process of coastal erosion that would plunge much of the city off the cliff in the succeeding, sorrowful centuries.
- knodi123 4y agomy uncle used to say, invest in land, it's the only thing they're not making any more of. he would probably call volcanic islands the exception that proves the rule.
- rikroots 4y agoThe late 13th century was a time for some epic storms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_England_flood_of_February_1287 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_England_flood_of_Februar...
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- wahern 4y agoThe map in that article was very confusing as compared to Google Maps until I realized that the "dashed lines" representing the modern coastline are the dashed black lines, not the dashed red lines. Moreover, the land area grew.
- zabzonk 4y ago> There are many ways to preserve and even extend shoreline. None seem to be effective here: https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/tiny-yorkshire-village-homes-disappear-24437808 https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/tiny-yorkshir... (lots of other examples on the English East Coast). You may be able to slow things, but in the end, the sea is going to win.
- blowski 4y agoIn 2019, coastal defences were significantly improved in Bacton, which is just up the road from Dunwich. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58919791 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58919791
- playingalong 4y agoSimilar thing with a church in NW Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruins_of_the_church_in_Trz%C4%99sacz#Photo_gallery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruins_of_the_church_in_Trz%C4%...
- interfixus 4y agoA Danish one, too, teetering on the brink. If you walk down the stairs to the right of the church, down on the beach you can make out a thin, greyish horizontal line in the white chalk of the cliffs, gunsmoke from the big thing which disturbed dinosaur tranquility. This is one of the places the Alvarez'es went - around 1980 - to collect their evidence. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:H%C3%B8jerup_Gamle_Kirke https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:H%C3%B8jerup_Gam...
- MoSattler 4y agoOne of the maps in the article is titled "Northern Sea or German Ocean". I never heard "German Ocean" before. Did they mean the "Deutsche Bucht" (German Bay)?
- scatters 4y ago> Before the adoption of "North Sea", the names used in English were "German Sea" or "German Ocean", referred to as the Latin names "Mare Germanicum" and "Oceanus Germanicus", and these persisted in use until the First World War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea#cite_ref-106 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea#cite_ref-106
- gumby 4y agoWith a name like Dunwich it shouldn’t be a surprise.
- bell-cot 4y agoImportant Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_England#Superficial_deposits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_England#Superficial... The "land" that was (and is) being eaten away by the sea - at a seemingly furious pace - is not good bedrock. Nor even "White Cliffs of Dover" soft chalk. It is a mix of sand, clay, random rocks, and such - which glacial action piled up during ice ages. And is now washing away like a big sand castle on the beach, as gravity and a bit of wave action do their natural duties.
- hinkley 4y agoI'm rehabilitating a piece of severely compacted alluvial sand/silt. On a dry day I damaged a pick trying to take soil samples. It was like concrete. I could see how someone would think it was stable enough to build upon. But now it's wet much of the year, and soft and squishy. I can dig holes with a trowel, and a delivery truck left ruts trying to drop off materials. Not so stable after all.
- readthenotes1 4y agoIt could be worse: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dh.aspx https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dh.aspx