The changing coastline at Cromer

A regular reader of this blog recently, and very kindly, sent me the link to an article in the Daily Mail about a significant underwater archaeological survey at Cromer on the north Norfolk coast. 

Cromer from the present beach

Image: The Guardian

Cromer today sits on low cliffs above the beach with Georgian houses clustered around its fine late medieval parish church, together with Edwardian features such as an elegant pier from its time as a genteel resort.

However, as  the article explains, the coastline has retreated significantly in historic time, and the underwater survey has revealed remains of what was once the northern extension of the town. This was Shipden which was clearly flourishing in the time of the Domesday Survey but which gradually declined in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A major storm in January 1362 may have hastened its disappearance, although in 1390 there seem to have been moves to stabilise the coast.

The eastern coast of England from Flamborough Head to the Solent has witnessed significant coastal erosion over the centuries, and it is a continuous process. News reports quite frequently cover this, notably these days at the north-eastern tip of Norfolk. 

Soft clays and winter tidal surges have eroded the coastline, but also created new features such as Sunk Island on the north shore of the Humber, Orford Ness and Dungeness. Islands which appear to have still existed off the Lincolnshire coast in the early thirteenth century were subsequently washed away, but the Isle of Thanet has become physically attached to Kent. 

  

Numerous Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk villages have been lost to the sea, most notably Dunwich, and half of Aldeburgh, in Suffolk.

I think that at Dunwich similar surveys have picked up street patterns and church sites.

The article about the investigation can be read at Diver explores lost British town under sea that vanished 700 years ago

The work is also reported upon I find by Heritage Daily   at Divers investigate submerged medieval town lost beneath the North Sea