Transcript Peter Boggis - a.k.a. King Cnut

21 meters of land disappeared in 36 hours. So you see I couldn’t just sit back and see my family’s land disappear at this rate. I made it quite clear to the council what I was going to do, so they can’t complain that I didn’t warn them. We reached a peak of 128 lorries a day, and by the end of October 2005, after the environmental agency had changed the law to try and stop me from going ahead, I was forced to stop taking in waste material. But by then I had got the job 80% complete, and had 250,000 tonnes of material in, to act as a sacrificial soft sea defense. Yes, 250,000 tonnes. The bank was 1033 meters long, 25 meters base width, and varying from 4 to 8 meters above beach height. And… what shall we say… it was a fun summer to put it in.

Transcript Emily Whalley – Artist

Yes I’m a painter, my studio as you know is right on the cliff. I’ve got this wonderful space, but it’s got a limited life […] I kept speculating how long do I have? 10 to 20 years? So that’s… when did I go there?… about ‘95 I think. So I was well aware it might just go in and that’s why it wasn’t used as something more glamorous. That’s why I’m there - because it would fall in. So it would have been gone by now except for what Boggis did. I’m afraid I was clapping my hands because I have gained at least another 10 years…

Transcript Paul England – Architect & Surveyor

My daughter heard of a house for sale at Easton Bavents and I said you can’t buy anything there Molly, you know they’re all going in the sea. […] But Molly had a calling… [laughs] it sounds poetic. She even has a calling to this day. She just absolutely loves being here. The isolation of it, the remoteness of it, the sound of the waves, the sea, the ever-changing landscape. You see what you have to understand is that when you live on the edge… as perhaps we do… when you live on a cliff top position, and you are facing the sea, that every day you have a different landscape to look at. There’s never one landscape that’s the same. There’s always a different colour, a different texture to the sea: big white waves, there’s rumbling waves that come in and thunder against that hard sea and send spray up into the air…

Transcript Mr Westlake the Farmer – on the cliff path

When I first came here, there was a bungalow here, with a double garage, and some buildings here left over from the war. And I used to drive the combine on the other side of the bungalow, which is hard to believe because it’s a big machine – out over there [points out to sea]. So you can imagine how much has gone just from here. And see where that machine is over on the North Warren, that used to be 40 acres, it’s about 18 now… [sound of geese flying over in background]. It’s not so much land as sand… it’s very light. It all blows. It’s all sand - which isn’t good, not for crops. But we manage to grow barley. As agricultural land it’s very poor it’s classed as grade 3 or something… grade 4… but I’ve always scrapped about getting a bit of barley… I call it scratching sand.

Transcript Morgan the Local Historian - Dunwich museum

Well erosion is going on all along the east coast, right from Northumberland down to Kent. Wherever you’ve got sandy cliffs you get erosion. And of course England is not getting smaller, because the sea takes from one place and dumps it somewhere else. For example if you take this coast it’s a north south drift. What’s lost from Northumberland and Yorkshire a lot of that is built up on the Lincolnshire coast, in the wash or on the top of Norfolk if you know that area. Wells-next-the-sea is now Wells-a-helluva-way from the sea, isn’t it? By a couple of miles.

Transcript Jamie the Fisherman - on the Pier

She told me about my grandfather who was a trawler man and a herring catcher as well, and the first trip he ever did, as a cook, aged ten. He had to go to the Shetland isles for the traditional herring fishery in the summer and when he got there, there was another Lowestoft herring ship moored up and their flag was at half-mast and his captain sent him on board to find out what was going on. And when he got there he said “oh we lost a crewman on the last trip, he got washed away”, and my grandfather said “oh what was his name, I’ll go and tell our skipper”. And the skipper said “his name was Jimmy Oakes, do you know of him?”. And he said “yes, that’s my Dad”. And so his first ever voyage, as a little boy aged ten, he found out his dad had drowned that week.

Transcript Phil & Louise – The owners of a seafront B&B

[Phil]: Spring tide, neap tide. The tide that comes in around the end of October which is a very high tide because the moon’s in the right place and all the rest of it. I mean we’ve had it crashing against the sea wall. You can feel the house shaking.

[Louise]: Yes you can feel it vibrate.

[Phil]: And the sea is crashing against it, and running along the sea wall.

[Louise]: Right along the sea wall. It takes out the beach huts…

[Phil]: Extremely violent. At the north of the pier the beach huts have to be taken off.

[Louise]: Because otherwise they get smashed.

[Phil]: I’ve seen them. One year, in the sixteen years I’ve lived here, I saw they didn’t take them off and there was a high tide, I don’t know if it was a freak thing, but it ripped quite a few of them to pieces. It just smashes things to pieces.

Film: King Cnut

My first film about Easton Bavents. It is intended to give an insight into the place itself, and the 80 year old man who is fighting to hold back the sea.

Managed Retreat

If you keep walking past the pier, ignoring the slot machines, past the deserted boating lake and the cheap beach huts that sit not on the sand but in the carpark, you’ll come to a gate with several hand painted signs that read Private Land, and No Trespassing.

The potholed track leads up to a small collection of houses and farm buildings. In February, it is a rough, windswept territory. Clumps of gorse, hardy sheep and hundreds of rabbits are interspersed with broken sheds and pieces of discarded farm machinery, quietly waiting for a Heath Robinson to give them a new lease of life.

This is Easton Bavents. Once the most easterly point of England, it is suffering from one of the fastest rates of coastal erosion in the country (an average of 4 meters of land lost each year).

Since the war, 14 houses out of 28 have been lost to the sea. There are 14 left.

The Environment Agency have declared this land an area of ‘Managed Retreat’, which means that no tax payers money will be spent on building costly sea defenses. Instead, other more densely populated, more valuable land will be protected, and here the sea may take what it likes.

Thursley, a red brick, 1930s summer house, is the next reluctant sacrifice. It is currently 4 meters from the edge of the cliff. The two matching houses built at the same time but with better sea views, have long since gone over. The council have just issued a demolition order. Since up to 10 meters has been known to disappear on a stormy night, the house is now a danger to the public on the beach below. The owners must therefore pay to demolish the house that has been in their family for 3 generations.

Thursley has already had one stay of execution.

In 2005, Peter Boggis (who’s grandfather bought the land rights of Easton Bavents in 1904), decided to take matters into his own hands. He built a giant earthwork sea defense to protect the cliffs and his family’s land. Using contractors to bring in soil, and compact it using bulldozers on the beach, the 78 year old Peter Boggis built a bank of earth 1033 meters long, 25 meters wide, and 4 meters high all along the length of the Easton Bavents cliffs. He laid down 250,000 tonnes of compacted soil, and at its peak had 128 lorries a day arriving to deliver material.

His battle against the sea, has been echoed by a battle with government for the right to protect this piece of land. Locals in the nearby town objected to the traffic and materials he used. The Council required waste exemption licences and EU planning applications. Peter Boggis just kept building. Environmentalists objected to the impact on fossils that the erosion was revealing, and designated the cliff edge a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Peter Boggis was forced to stop the bulldozers and instead began a protracted legal battle for the right to continue to defend his coast.

In the 3 years since he built his sacrificial soft sea defense the sea has almost entirely worn it away. That’s 25 meters of land that’s been saved because of Peter Boggis’ earthwork. Or 25 meters of waste material washed out to sea. Depending on your perspective. Either way, Thursley gained another 4 years of life.

Easton Bavents isn’t a place I have any formal connection to. But from the moment I walked past those ‘No Trespassing’ notices, I felt there was something rich and strange about the place. There is something awkward about somewhere that has been declared simultaneously a territory not valuable enough to save, and yet also of special scientific interest. Peter and I have met a number of times and each time I find myself in awe of his absolute determination to fight, in every way he can, the advancing waves and the obstacles of bureaucracy.

Easton Bavents is not a pretty place, the houses there are battered and patched up. Everywhere there are edges. Fences half over the cliff. Roads that lead to a sheer drop. Fields that crumble onto the beach mid-acre. But it is home to the people who live there.

Is it a futile endeavour, to try to hold back the sea? Perhaps. But in Peter Boggis’ battle I am reminded of the words of Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Peter Boggis’ methods may be controversial, but perhaps we need people in our societies who fight against what we collectively decide is valuable, and what is not. What is worth preserving, and what is not. People who fight the decision to walk away. People who will not go gently into the night.