Thursday, 10 February 2011

Famous Last Words

‘I imagine it will cost thousands to stabilise the rest of the cliff.’

See also Google Maps.

My latest blogpost: Famous Last WordsTweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 10:31

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10 comments:

Bayard said...

Jesus, it's a long way down!

"The four-bedroom property in Dawlish, Devon, was built in 2005 after a survey showed the cliff was stable enough."

There's a surveyor in Devon somewhere who better have his professional indemnity insurance up to date.

10 February 2011 at 10:42
Span Ows said...

Bloody hell...looks like nothing until you see the aerial view!

10 February 2011 at 15:52
Lola said...

'Thousands'! Hah, millions more like. And it won't work. That piece of cliff was clearly always doomed.

10 February 2011 at 16:13
chefdave said...

I wonder if they still have rights to the seabed where their garden used to be.

It looks like there's concrete barriers either side of their house anyway, so that piece was always goint to be more vulnerable.

10 February 2011 at 16:28
Mark Wadsworth said...

B, he must be bricking it!

SO, that aerial view is probably a couple of years out of date, I'd love to see it now (the photos in the paper are a tad unclear).

L, wouldn't you love to be there when the builder comes round to give a quote..?

CD, I did wonder that, but apparently there are Home-Owner-Ist law that if your house falls into the sea, you get given the same planning permission for a new plot further inland to compensate you for your loss.

10 February 2011 at 16:37
Anonymous said...

V Nice aerial shot your link takes us to, for sure ... But is that not a railway line running precious close - as in sometimes along the top of - to those about to topple into the briny cliffs - and if so do season ticket holders using that line get a hefty discount on their tickets with encouragement to use it to buy accident insurance ?

10 February 2011 at 19:38
Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon, well spotted, if you click 'map' instead of 'satellite' you see that there's a railway line running along the top of the beach, which goes into and out of the cliffs (so it's more or less at sea level and not on top of the cliffs).

Coincidentally (he said, having examined the map more closely), I've travelled along that line many a time it is one of finest bits of railway ever, when there's a bit of a storm, the waves break into the train windows.

10 February 2011 at 20:12
banned said...

An O level geology pupil would have recognised that that cliff was rapidly eroding, a fact well known to locals.
You are quite right that Brunels railway passes underneath that property, here is a side elevation.

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/23/18/231822_0927d0fa.jpg

Running through the tunnel is something of a right of passage, it allows access to the Shell Cove beach whose only other access is a jealously guarded private footpath through....the property that is disappearing.

Dunno about that particular stretch but there are longrunning and unresolved local arguments about who owns, and is therefor responsible for, the cliff face; the council, 'British Rail' or the householder. In emergency the council will undertake remedial action on a 'no liability' basis.

11 February 2011 at 02:17
TheFatBigot said...

Another instance of "well, what did you expect?". Cliffs don't grow, they only erode and crumble. Buy a house within quarter of a mile of a cliff and you take your chances.

As for stabilising the cliff, that's as much pure fantasy as the notion human beings can stabilise the climate.

I wouldn't be too concerned if I were the surveyor's insurers. It is extremely unlikely that the surveyor's report gave unqualified assurances about anything, and any damages payable for him missing a risk he should have spotted would be limited.

11 February 2011 at 02:49
Mark Wadsworth said...

B, that's the one. Beautiful.

TFB, exactly. They crumble at different rates at different places, and in some places, even your quarter of a mile margin of safety is gone in twenty or thirty years or something.

11 February 2011 at 08:01

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