English Coast News

The historic Clavell Tower in Dorset was due to reopen on August 29 after being rebuilt brick by brick to stop it falling in to the sea. The monument was built by the Rev John Richards Clavell in 1830 as an observatory and folly, with four storeys, including a basement, and a distinctive Tuscan colonnade.

The tower was situated close to the cliff edge at Kimmeridge Bay on the World Heritage Jurassic Coast, but an 18-month project has seen the historic monument dismantled by specialist builders. The tower was then rebuilt 82ft inland using as much of the original materials as possible. The leaseholders, the Landmark Trust launched an appeal in 2004 to raise money to save the tower, later securing a £436,000 lottery grant. As with their other properties, they plan to make the tower available for holiday lets.

Peter Pearce, director at the trust, said: “The tower’s future is secure and it can now resume its role as sentinel on this stretch of coastline. Its familiar silhouette will continue to welcome the many thousands of people who visit and walk in Kimmeridge Bay each year.”

Source: Dorset Echo, The Independent

The government has approved a plan to site one of the largest offshore windfarms in the UK off the Cumbrian coast at Duddon Sands (Walney Island). The developers Morecambe Wind say the turbines will power 372,000 homes.

Energy Secretary John Hutton has also approved updated plans for a separate 30 turbine windfarm near the island. He said: “These windfarms demonstrate our commitment to dramatically increase the amount of energy we generate from renewable sources, helping to cut the UK’s carbon emissions and secure our energy supplies.”.

Source: BBC News

The RSPB is to take radical action to save one of it’s most popular reserves from the sea.

Titchwell Marsh on the north Norfolk coast faces inundation by the North Sea and so to protect the future of the reserve the decision has been taken to allow the sea to reclaim part of the reserve in order to save the remainder. The current 30-year-old sea walls are being slowly eroded. If the waters were to break through the current defenses then the entire reserve, which is a mix of brackish and fresh water marshes and reedbed, will be lost along with the habitat for rare breeding birds like the bittern and marsh harrier.

Under the proposed scheme, the sea wall will be moved back behind the present brackish marsh, which will be allowed to return to tidal saltmarsh.

This will allow new and improved sea defences to protect the fresh water marsh and the reedbeds with their  breeding birds from the rising tides. At the same time visitor facilities will be enhanced and it is hoped the newly created saltmarsh will become a visitor attraction in its own right.

Rob Coleman, the reserve’s manager, is quoted on the news section of the RSPB website: “I know this is a huge change for Titchwell and for the very many people who share our deep love for the reserve, but the need to go ahead with this scheme was clear.

“We faced a stark choice between sacrificing the brackish marsh or losing the whole site to the sea.

“In drawing up these changes we have listened hard to local people and to visitors. As a result, the new-look site will keep and improve on all the things that make Titchwell special for them.”

Sources:
RSPB website (news)

The Independent website has published an interesting list of little known coasts, woodlands and gardens in their This Britain section. Of particular interest to English Coast of course is the coastal list:

1. Rathlin Island (Northern Ireland)
2. Isle of Eigg (Scotland)
3. Silecroft, Cumbria
4. Arnside, Cumbria
5. Llandudno Pier (Wales)
6. Skomer Island (Wales)
8. Clevedon Pier, Somerset
9. Watchet, Somerset
10. Wembury, Devon
11. Pednevounder Beach, Cornwall
12. Brownsea Island, Dorset
13. St Nectan’s Glen, Cornwall
14. Pagham Harbour, West Sussex
15. Minnis Bay, Kent
16. Horsey Beach, Norfolk
17. Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire
18. Spurn Head, Yorkshire
19. Low Newton-by-the-Sea, Northumberland
20. Isle of May (Scotland)

We recomend visiting the Secret Britain page for full details of each location, although some of the above are already included on the main English Coast site so we will link in to those pages soon.

A forty ton boat beacon which has been stranded on Formby beach since January 2007, has finally been dismantled and removed.

The boat beacon was built in 1929 at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and was stranded during a winter storm in 2007. It was washed too far ashore for it to be refloated and taken back out to sea.

The removal operation was undertaken by Peel Ports, assisted by two boilermakers from North West Ship Repairs who were able to cut the enormous structure into sub-sections.

The Peel Ports harbour master Captain Gallimore is quoted by the Formby Times: “This kind of beacon, which is a floating navigational aid, is now arcane. You do not see them anymore.”

As part of Liverpool’s Capital of Culture Celebrations for 2008, the Tall Ships Parade of Sail event takes place over the weekend of 19th July to 20th July, culminating on Monday 21st July with the “parade of sail” when the spectacular sailing ships will sail out of the Liverpool docks and out of the River Mersey at New Brighton heading for Norway.

The sailing ships will be berthed in the majority of docks located on the East/Liverpool Side of the river including Albert, Wellington and Sandon docks and will be open to the public on both days.

The best places to watch the parade from the Wirral side will be along the promenade at Woodside, Birkenhead, Seacombe Ferry, Egremont, Wallasey and New Brighton.

Sailing vessels scheduled take part include Statsraad Lehmkuhl (Norway) a three-masted steel barque, Shabab Oman (Oman) now a barquentine but previously a topsail schooner named Captain Scott, and Royalist (UK) built in 1971 by Groves and Gutteridge in Cowes, Isle of Wight, owned and operated by the Sea Cadet Association. There are nearly 70 other ships expected to take part. See the Tall Ships’ Races Liverpool 2008 website for further details.

Charity group members have rowed a restored 99-year-old lifeboat 60 miles along the North East coast to raise funds for the RNLI. The Ales Angles charity group are all regulars at the Blue Bell pub in York and have been fundraising for charity since 1999.

The group completed the four-day challenge to row The William Riley from South Shields to Whitby on Sunday afternoon. They were joined by RNLI crew members from Tynemouth, Sunderland, Hartlepool and Staithes and Runswick.

The William Riley served in Whitby until 1931 and played a major role in the SS Rohilla rescue in 1914, when she had to be hauled overland and lowered 200ft down a cliff to be launched. Of the 229 people on board the stricken hospital ship, 145 were saved. The boat was restored by the Whitby Historic Trust.

The Round Britain Offshore Power Boat Race has been completed, which saw the crews travelling 1,244 nautical miles around the UK after starting in Portsmouth Harbour on June 21st.

75 year old navigator Dag Pike and his Greek team-mates, Vassilis Pateras, Panos Tsikopoulos and Lefteris Vasilou were the overall winners in the boat Blue FPT on their return to Portsmouth with a combined race time of just over 20 hours. Despite not winning any of the legs their consistent performances gave them the overall race win.

Portsmouth Today quote Panos Tsikopoulos, a member of the crew from Blue FPT: ‘We feel very happy. We started feeling happy yesterday because we were ahead. But it’s not finished until you cross the line.’

‘It was a hard and tough race. Sometimes the weather and the sea conditions were not convenient.’

‘It was a first experience in British waters. We were looking for challenges like this one.’.

Construction has begun on the 26 turbine wind farm at Walland Marsh on the Kent/East Sussex coastal borders. The wind farm is being built by Npower Renewables.

Permission for the £60m wind farm was given by the government in 2005 following a public inquiry. The proposal had met widespread opposition from residents and councils in Kent and East Sussex, and will create a very imposing presence on the flat marshland of the area.

After an initial holdup, the first turbine was complete and a second one underway as at 21st June. UPDATE: 6th July - 5 turbines now complete (see image).

The BBC News website quotes spokesman Simon Holt as saying:
“We should expect to see two turbines go up every week and we should be finished by the end of September. When the turbine components arrive on site it is a relatively straightforward operation to put them all together.”

UPDATE: 23th August - 12 turbines in place.

UPDATE: 21st September - 24 turbines in place, see new image below.

UPDATE: 29th September - All 26 turbines in place.

An underwater survey of the lost port of Dunwich off the Suffolk coast has revealed the remains of a medieval church. Marine archaeologist Stuart Bacon, director of the Suffolk Underwater Studies believes that it is the remains of St John’s Church, which was the main church in the town during the Middle Ages and it contained a chapel dedicated to St Nicholas.

Mr. Bacon is quoted by Norfolk Eastern Daily Press as saying: “We have found a new church. I knew there were three here but now we have another one. It is one I have been trying to find for years. This is new information and it means that the results of the survey are going to be quite spectacular”.

“At the moment we are deploying to try and find evidence of Roman occupation off the entrance to the river Blyth and from where I am sitting you can not image the coastline how it was 2,000 years ago. This is a very exciting time”.

Dunwich was once a thriving port, rivalling London in the 12th and 13th century, but the city was eventually swallowed by the waves, the port silting up after a great storm in 1328 and by the 16th century half of the city had been claimed by the sea.

The results of the marine survey will be put on display at Dunwich Museum (St. James’s Street, Dunwich, Saxmundham, Suffolk).