Hallsands, the beach went to Devonport
Thirty-seven houses, some hundred and sixty people, in a cleft of the cliff at Start Point, Devon, right on the shingle. Crab and pilchards off the Skerries Bank.
After 1897 the shingle offshore was dredged, up to 1,600 tons a day, for the dockyard at Keyham. The villagers said the beach was sinking under their feet. Their boats went, the shore wall cracked. They protested until a Board of Trade inquiry in 1902, and that January the licence was revoked. A sea wall went up in 1906. Too late; the bank was gone.
On 26 January 1917 a north-easterly gale came in. The sea came down the chimney, they said. By midnight four houses were gone and none were whole. The next high tide, the 28th, broke the walls and took the village. One house stood, the highest on the cliff.
The inquiry found the dredging at fault, then refused to release the report. Compensation took seven years, £6,000, and a refusal to rebuild.
A Kingsbridge paper said it in one line: the beach went to Devonport, and the cottages went to the sea.
I looked from the cliff above, where the surviving house stands among holiday lets, and could not see down into the old street. That part stays open.
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