Swallowed by the sea

 

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When Nicola Bayless’s parents bought a house in Happisburgh, an idyllic coastal village in Norfolk, England, they were told it would be 150 years before erosion of the nearby cliff might threaten it. “They said, ‘We’ll be long dead and so will you,’” Bayless says. “But here we are.” 

That was 23 years ago. Today Bayless’s house is on the second-to-last plot on the road; its front windows look out on an empty lot that used to be a neighbor’s home until it was demolished in October. Just beyond that is the cliff, which Bayless says has retreated by eight meters in the past 18 months. The erosion has happened so quickly that Google’s Street View of the road, last taken in 2009, still shows it disappearing into the distance beyond her house. In 2023, though, there’s nothing but a “Road Closed” barrier followed by a sheer drop.

On England’s east coast, locals have been fighting a losing battle against the sea for generations. In Happisburgh, which faces ferocious weather from its perch on the North Sea, an estimated 250 meters of land was lost to erosion between 1600 and 1850. Locals have grown accustomed to storms, landslides and sometimes deadly floods. But over the past few decades, things have been changing faster than residents expected, and scientists are trying to understand how global warming might be making the destruction worse. 

Left: Google’s Street View of Beach Road, last taken in 2009. Right: Beach Road in January 2023. The wooden gate on the right of each picture is the same. Photographer: Olivia Rudgard

Losing the place you call home to an inexorable process is a unique kind of grief, but in Happisburgh that grief is compounded by centuries of history. Axes, flints and other tools as much as 950,000 years old have been discovered on its beach, including a set of footprints dating back 800,000 years, the oldest found in Europe.

Happisburgh also boasts a 14th century church, a beautiful stretch of bucket-and-spade coastline and a lighthouse built in 1790. The village’s local pub, The Hill House, dates back to at least 1540 and once hosted Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle (it inspired his story “The Adventure of the Dancing Men”). The constant thump of the sea against the cliff is audible from its rooms, where leaflets tell guests The Hill House will be “preserved for as long as the sea does not engulf Happisburgh.” 

“This is our house and our business,” says Clive Stockton, who has owned the pub with his wife Sue for the past 31 years. “When this goes we are destitute.” Stockton estimates The Hill House has about 20 years left.

Clive Stockton has owned The Hill House with his wife for the past 31 years.  Photographer: Nick Ballon for Bloomberg Green

The problem is the cliff. In Happisburgh, and along the rest of a 21-mile stretch of north Norfolk coast, it’s made up of sand, clay and silt — not solid enough to hold back the volatile North Sea, where heavier rain, higher tides and rising sea levels are predicted due to climate change. By 2100 local sea levels are expected to increase by at least a foot, and as much as three feet. Coastal erosion maps published by the North Norfolk District Council show a large swathe of the village threatened by 2055. By 2105 both the pub and church will be underwater.

In the early 2000s, the district council decided not to renew the sea defenses protecting the village. Today there is a rock “bund,” crowdfunded by the community in the 1990s, that protects the foot of the cliff and bought residents some time. But other engineered defenses would cost many millions. Ironically, the cliff’s archaeological value has also earned it a special designation, “site of special scientific interest,” which means the land has to be allowed to erode so that further discoveries can emerge. 

Many residents are angry at the decision. “We do seem to be the patsy,” says Stockton. “We seem to be stuck with a pre-ordained decision that Happisburgh cannot be defended.” 

Rising sea levels are expected to change tides and wave heights, which could accelerate things. Heavier rain in a warmer climate can also lead to more cliff collapse, though the overall impact of climate change is complex and site-specific, says Laurent Amoudry, principal scientist at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre. Usually, natural features like dunes would have the space to move landwards while maintaining their size, but in the UK, “where very little on the coast is actually natural anymore… you don’t have the space to roll back,” Amoudry says. 

Happisburgh Beach, where erosion is rapidly changing the coastline. Photographer: Nick Ballon for Bloomberg Green

Britain’s Committee on Climate Change, a government advisory body, has been blunt in its assessment that many coastal communities like Happisburgh are “unviable.” Last year, a report found that almost 200,000 properties around England may have to be abandoned because they are in places where defenses are too expensive or technically impossible. 

“There are these difficult decisions to make. Our current approach is not sustainable in the long term under intensifying climate change and rising sea levels,” says Richard Dawson, a member of the committee and professor of earth systems engineering at Newcastle University. “We have to start to plan out for these transitions now.”

See more photos from Happisburgh on Bloomberg.com