The Norfolk village sacrificed to the waves
on. Next in line is the village static caravan site, which has already been forced to move back several rows as the cliff-face is gnawed away. Its owners have secured planning permission to relocate altogether to the other side of Happisburgh. When they do, the Hill House Inn, the village pub, will find itself exposed to the elements.
Landlord Clive Stockton gives it another 30 years before the pub is gone. He and his wife, Sue, who are both approaching their 70s, bought the business for £250,000 a quarter of a century ago. “At that time the government policy was that this is a defended coastline,” he says. “The erosion was a non-issue. The lifespan for this building was 300 years.”
Stockton and his wife fell in love with the pub when they first spotted it. Original Tudor stonework remains in the fireplace and there’s Norfolk pamment tiling on the floor. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a regular guest and it is where he wrote his famous story,
A few years ago Stockton, a retired councillor who was deputy leader of North Norfolk district council, had the property revalued. “It is a seven-bed grade-listed building with an acre of land and an incredible history and we were told it is worth next to nothing. Under £100,000,” he says.
“We turn over around £400,000 a year, so it’s still viable as a business. It’s our home as well. To not be able to pass it on is bloody frustrating. There is no compensation.”
Happisburgh once had an entire parish separating it from the coast. Between 1600 and 1850, 250m of land was lost. Following the great floods of 1953, which decimated the east coast, timber revetments and groynes were constructed along the shore. By the late Nineties, however, these defences had reached the end of their useful life and no other schemes have emerged.
The situation in Happisburgh is emblematic of our piecemeal defence of the coast. Unlike some countries, such as Holland, which has a national policy of “holding the line”, England is broken down into 18 Shoreline Management Plans overseen by the Environment Agency, with no statutory duty to protect against the ravages of the sea. Instead, local authorities and landowners are responsible for managing erosion, under four approaches outlined by the Government: defending the coast, advancing the coastline, managed realignment and no intervention.
Increasingly, the latter appears to be the fashionable approach in an era of advanced climate change where sea levels are predicted to increase by one metre at the end of this century. Last November, the National Trust, which owns 775 miles of coastline across Britain, announced it would be abandoning engineering solutions in favour of simply moving buildings and roads further inland. In its report,
the Trust recommends other councils follow suit and sacrifice thousands of properties to the sea.
The Environment Agency insists it will pursue other possibilities and says it is committing £1 billion “to manage coastal flooding and erosion” over the next six years. Campaigners in Happisburgh remain unimpressed.
“Now there is no support,” says resident Malcolm Kerby, who in 1999 established the Happisburgh Coastal Concern Action Group. “In the last 18 months I’ve given up because quite frankly, they don’t want to know. Since 2010 there has been no central Government investment.”
Kerby was instrumental in setting up a North Norfolk council policy of what he calls “rollback”, which led to the local authority purchasing nine at-risk properties and relaxing planning guidelines to enable them to rebuild the homes in a safer part of the village.
“You can’t maintain the built heritage but you can maintain the community heritage,” he says. “It may mean in 2150 Happisburgh will still be here, but a mile away instead.” Kerby cites the example of Dunwich, 50 miles down the coast in Suffolk, of how quickly even sizeable communities can disappear. Known as “England’s Atlantis”, during the 11th century it was one of the country’s greatest ports, so wealthy it even boasted its own mint. Today, it is a little more than a shingle beach.
Not all in Happisburgh are content with the concept of simply rolling back, however, and implore the Government not to abandon its historic buildings (18 of which are listed). Peter Martin is a volunteer at Happisburgh Lighthouse, which rises up like a helter skelter from the fields surrounding the village. Built in 1790, it is the only independently operated lighthouse in Britain, and draws in thousands of visitors a year. While it still has a projected lifespan of a century or so, the cottage Martin, 72, and his wife live in on Beach Road has rather less time – about 25 years.
They bought it in 2006 for £87,000, after moving down from Lincolnshire. Martin says they were aware of the threat posed to the house but fell in love with it none the less.
“The loss is devastating, but something you don’t like to contemplate,” he says. “It isn’t just Happisburgh. They are predicting that not so long after our lifetime the sea will be lapping at Norwich, which is really scary. Erosion will always be there, but you can put a brake on it.”
From where we are standing at the top of the lighthouse, we watch the waves roll in across the hazy shoreline and crash down upon the beach. The slow death knell of a shrinking isle.