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Coastal Heritage - East Coast of England - Essex
Vanishing Point!
"Northeast Corner" - The Walton Backwaters Experience
40 - Year Comparison:
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~ 1946 ~
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Stone Point
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~ 1985 ~
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Aerial View of Stone Point
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The Future Mapped Out:
The two maps represent the same low-lying area of coastal land - a 'four by three' grid of twelve square kilometres - surveyed approximately forty years apart. The location is the northern part of the Naze Peninsula, ending at Stone Point and often referred to as the "Northeast Corner" - with the town of Walton to the south and the Harwich Estuary to the north.
Comparing these maps graphically illustrates the rate of erosion of the coastline over the forty year period. Both show the low water line and the amount of beach that faces the North Sea. (The beach is important to this area because it helps to take the erosive energy out of the waves as they drive against the northeast-facing land from the often stormy sea conditions.) You can see that the more recent map shows a greatly reduced beach width and therefore an increased vulnerability to sea erosion. If you look at the land itself towards the tip of the peninsula - Stone Point - the more recent maps shows a thinner strip of land as it tapers to this point.
Experts believe that this diminishing strip of land is all that protects the Walton Backwaters from becoming a sea and parts of the town of Walton from becoming flooded should a storm surge happen like the one that occurred in 1953. It is therefore vitally important that this land is protected at all costs. The price of negligence would be catastrophic - both ecolgically and economically.
One of the principal reasons why the Naze beach is disappearing so fast is the failure to maintain man-made sea defences that were introduced by the Victorian engineers who helped to create 'Seaside Britain' nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. They did this by building a series of beach groynes and sea walls all around the country. The Naze has lost between thirty and forty of these structures since the Second World War due to a series of land ownership changes and govermental bureaucratic indecision at both local and national level.
Near the bottom of the maps are the outlines of what is left of one of the most important of these structures - the Tamarisk Sea Wall. This used to help stop the northerly movement of sand and shingle that now ends up in the Harwich Channel via the shallow bay - Pennyhole Bay - between this deep ship channel and Stone Point. On the more recent map the wall is now marked with a dotted line, since the structure has now all but been allowed to disappear.
You can see from this later map that a parallel embankment has been built further inland - but this has far less protective capability. However, on the older map the outline of the Tamarisk Wall is still clear and distinct. In 1946 it still offered effective protection against the loss of beach material that is now taking place at an increasingly alarming rate. Stone Point is - in effect - vanishing.
Almost half the saltmarsh habitat has since been lost - and the rate of erosion is more than twice that of the Naze cliffs to the south.
It seems pretty clear that unless something is done very soon about rebuilding - or redesigning - the sea defences along this part of the Naze coastline, then the future of both the rural habitat and the urban infrastructure in this part of Essex is threatened with destruction.
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The soft sand headland is being put increasingly at the mercy of the erosive tidal currents that flow around the entrance to the Walton Backwaters. Soon a catastrophic breach could occur that would put the Backwater's Horsey Island (left of picture) at grave risk...
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Saving Horsey Island
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In the 17th. century, Horsey Island was enlarged by reclaiming the surrounding salt marshes. As Stone Point weakened, the island's north-eastern flank was breached. In 1988 a protective line of disused barges [see below] was sunk to prevent further damage. Between 1991 and 1998 defences were reinforced when a third of a million cubic metres of dredged sand and gravel (from Harwich Harbour) were deposited between the barge hulks and at Stone Point. From 1998 to 2005 a further 75,000 cubic metres of silt and gravel discharge has stabilised the Horsey Island salt marshes into flood defences - while Stone Point continues to weaken as all the deposited material is washed away by the North Sea.
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Naze
Links:
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For all the latest stories of what's been happening... click ^
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Horsey Island - Line of Barges (left centre)
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Naze Notes BLOGS
Saving the Naze Heritage at Walton
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reset: June 2005
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