CoastView - Hastings
FALL AT THE EAST CLIFF, HASTINGS
Illustrated London News 18-12-1852
ON Sunday week, at noon, two enormous "falls" of the East Cliff, at Hastings, took place at the easternmost groine, about a quarter of an hour intervening between each fall.
The crash is described as resembling thunder, and the rise of the dust-like a column of smoke. The total fall comprised several hundred tons of rock, sand, and earth, some of the fragments rolling a considerable distance down the beach. A wooden tool-house was knocked to pieces providentially no person was injured. A man and a woman had just passed to the eastward when the first fall took place; and on witnessing the danger they had narrowly escaped, the woman fainted on the beach. The continued rains, and the grubbings of the sand-diggers are supposed to have led to this unusually large fall.
A Daguerreotype of the scene was immediately taken by Messrs. Connop and White whence the accompanying Illustration has been engraved.
Remnants of this cliff-fall can still be seen today.
Move the mouse over the aerial photo of Hastings (21-07-1974) to see changes, especially in beach volume to the situation in 1999 (source: GetMapping). Click on the image to get to a high resolution image of 1999.
Note that the 1974 image was taken during low tide whereas the 1999 image was taken probably during mid tide or during a high neap tide.
Danger home faces the axe
The Argus 14-05-1987
BUNGALOW owner Margaret Baylis has been ordered to repair or pull down her home after a Iandslip tore away its foundations. Hastings magistrates ruled that the 60-year-old converted greenhouse is a danger and set a five-month deadline for finishing the work. Hastings Council took legal action after tons of earth and masonry crashed down a steep hillside. The landslip, two months ago, left the bungalow, named Sol-e-Mar, perched on the brink of a slippery slope in West Hill Road, St Leonards.
After yesterday's ruling, Mrs Baylis, of Hollington Old Lane, St Leonards, said she hoped her home could be saved and that her solicitor was in touch with the insurance company. "The bungalow is beautiful," she said. "I've had a £10,000 improvement grant and spent £10,000 of my own money on it since 1982. "But I can see it's the council's duty to take action as it has to protect the public right of way." Assistant borough secretary John Wheatley told the court the fall had blocked the Sussex Steps footpath. "The council considers action should now be taken to make the property safe."