Broads Under Threat

A great deal of time and money has been allocated to protecting the Broads and Broadland from flooding. One hundred and forty million pounds over twenty years to be precise. This is the Broadland flood Alleviation Project which has just reached its midway point.   Mile after mile of new dykes and banks now follow the course of the waterways - their presence may not please everyone but in the event of excessively heavy rainfall or tidal surges villages and waterside properties now have added protection.

Recently we had the cameras out at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast - we went to see the properties about to be demolished in Beach road.   The erosion of the cliffs along this stretch of the coast has been going on for hundreds of years and the "Powers that be" plan to allow it to continue for at least the next one hundred.

What, you may ask, has this got to do with the Broads?
The flood protection plans currently being carried out in Broadland involve a large number of agencies, but none of them are responsible for Shoreline Management.

Property On The Edge

There is a Shoreline Management Plan and when it is boiled down it amounts to an orderly retreat from the sea.  As far  as the elements are concerned we are not going to fight them on the beaches.    The architects of the plan have forecast  the degree of cliff erosion  up to 2025, 2055, and 2105.  Nobody can be sure if the experts have got their forecasts right, we just have to trust in "The Great God Computer" and hope they have.   The slipway for the Happisburgh lifeboat slipped away sometime ago and the Lifeboat station itself has been demolished.   The lifeboat station was not due to fall into the sea for another twelve years.   Similarly, the catwalk leading to the beach stairway has been removed from the crumbling cliff, seemingly in the nick of time, its demise also appears to have crept well ahead of schedule.

 Old  Slipway

Remains Of The Beach Stairway

Talking to local people only provides anecdotal evidence but it does graphically illustrate what is happening to parts of the Norfolk coastline. Like the fellow who told me he remembered having tea in his friends garden when he was he was a teenager - he is now well into his sixties and the garden now lies more than a  hundred yards out to sea.

Timber Sea Defences

The Road To Nowhere.

The timber sea defences at Happisburgh were constructed in 1959 between Ostend and Cart Gap.  By 1989 the sea had rendered sections of them in-effective and since then the erosion of the cliffs at Happisburgh have accelerated at an alarming rate.    Local government has been fighting a losing battle to maintain the depleted sea defences with limited resources  and without any financial help from Central Government.
Local government agencies simply cannot raise the funds required to finance a civil engineering project of this magnitude, while Central government feel it is economically unsound to spend large sums of tax payers money to protect a few clifftop properties in a remote Norfolk village.   The rate of erosion is being monitored  in case the heart of the village becomes threatened.  When that time comes it may well be too late.

In the 1990's there was a feasibility study carried out to stabilise the cliffs and funds could have been made available for the scheme.  Unfortunately the various agencies procrastinated for such a long time that the window of opportunity to launch the scheme was lost along with more large areas of Happisburgh cliff.  The lack of decisive action for whatever reason means we no longer have a defence against the sea on this vulnerable stretch of coast.

Unstable Cliffs

Now for the scary part.  The moorings at Stalham are only five short miles from those disappearing cliffs at Happisburgh.  The landscape between the cliffs at Happisburgh and Stalham is flat rolling farmland.    Unless something is done, it is not a case of if the sea breaks through, but when.   In this event there will be absolutely nothing to stop the sea reaching the Broads.

It will not be in my lifetime but unless some action is taken it could happen in less than a hundred years.  To someone in their twenties that must seem an inconceivable time scale, although in reality it is barely a lifetime away.   This subject has been aired in many forums over a number of years.  To some enlightened individuals it is dismissed as scare-mongering. To other, equally, well informed people it is just a theory and it may never happen.   The view of this old "Norfolk boy" is somewhere between these two extremes.   Rising sea levels and increased rainfall in the 14th century were responsible for flooding the peat excavations and creating the Broads - what bitter irony it would be if it is the sea that destroys them.  

Bless This House.

 

Author's note.
There is no political agenda attached to the above article.  I only observe what heritage is preserved and that which is at risk.   "There is nothing more powerful than the power of nature".

Check out our new "Big Sky" website    http://bigskyuk.weebly.com/index.html

To see a clip of the demolition at Happisburgh click here

A Film Odyssey.

When I am not lugging camera equipment around the more remote parts of Norfolk and Suffolk I often ask myself why on earth am I spending so much of my time shooting a film which only a handful of people will  see.  Then, in my quieter moments I try to figure out  what drove me to start out on this film odyssey in the first place.

Somewhere in the sunlit uplands of my memory I recall my early years in a little village in west Norfolk.
One night in April 1942 the Luftwaffe destroyed our family home in Norwich just a few weeks before I was born.

                                      courtesy of wikimedia creative commons licence.

We were evacuated to the sanctuary of the rolling farmland of west Norfolk where a kindly old couple took us in.  The old couple became my adopted "Nanny and Grandpa Rawlings"  My newly acquired  grandparents were good old Norfolk stock.  "Grandpa" was a big man and as strong as an ox but had a gentle demeanor .  "Nanny" was a slightly built woman with an air of understated independence.  They did not have very much but were contented and quite happy to share what little they had.

I guess we didn't take up too much room as most of my parents possessions had been destroyed along with the greater part of the house.  This was just as well as the new home we shared with the Rawlings was a tiny terraced cottage with just two small bedrooms.   The front door of the cottage stepped down off the main street onto the stone floor of the parlour.  The parlour was small but uncluttered apart for a modest collection of  Edwardian china ornaments.  An enormous oil lamp occupied pride of place on a plain, unvarnished, wooden table.  Two wooden chairs with crocheted cushions faced an open fireplace.  On one side of the fireplace a huge soot encrusted  kettle was in perpetual steam.
The tiny scullery had stone floors with a coal or wood fired boiler in the corner.  Water was pumped into the cottage by means of a hand operated pump mounted beside a shallow stone sink.  This was quite a convenience compared to many families who had to carry buckets to and from the village pump.

                                           courtesy of wikimedia creative commons licence.

Behind the cottage was a long vegetable garden with row upon row of green produce.  At the end of the garden, surrounded by stinging nettles, was the thunder box  (WC).
Stone floors, Oil lamps, a wall oven and chamber pots were more than enough for all our daily needs.

Eventually Dad was able to rent a small cottage behind the village bakery and for the next few years we were awakened to the smell of fresh bread every morning. 

Some time after the war had ended we moved back to Norwich. The old house had been repaired with different coloured bricks to the originals.  Red rustics at the front and cheap War Damage "Flettons" at the back.  But we did have the luxury of running water at the turn of a tap, electric lights and flush a toilet, even if it was outside.
In our oddly coloured house I spent the remainder of my childhood.   Along with the other urchins from the neighbourhood I proudly shared ownership of the "bombed site" at the bottom of our garden.  The remains of the "bombed out" cottages provided an endless source of material to build dens and light fires.  

The two environments could not have been more different and as the old saying goes - "You can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy." 

In subsequent years we made regular visits to see "Nanny Rawlings" in the little cottage we had once called home.   We did not have a motor car so we travelled by steam train on the old M&GN line.

Passing  horse- drawn sail binders in the harvest fields and row upon row of wheat sheaves lining the golden stubble in perfect symmetry.
Standing guard over freshly sown acres were sad, lonely old scarecrows dressed in farm labourers "cast offs" and condemned to a  life of solitude.
Heavily laden trees lined the orchards while herds of cattle and flocks of sheep grazed contentedly in the meadows.  An endless stream of these rustic images drifted past the carriage window shrouded in wispy steam.   It was like travelling back in time but those images became indelibly etched in my memory.

                                        courtesy of wikipedia creative commons licence.

Sadly progress is a fearsome animal with a voracious appetite, it devours the years without regret or conscience.  Then one day we realise that the people and things we once knew and loved are gone, and sadly, we hardly notice their passing.  I suspect this is the reason  I embarked on this film odyssey.
 


To watch "My Norfolk Year" video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y_Ova5fHNE&feature=plcp