Fairlight Fairlight Cove

1987

MAURICE WEAVER on the hidden snags of buying a home by the coast

Daily Telegraph 26-08-1987

WHEN expatriate businessman George Morris and his wife decided to come home for good, they found their retirement idyll in a house called Sea View on a sunny south-coast clifftop. On a clear day they can see France. But the Morrises have discovered to their dismay that their corner of a Sussex field will not be forever England after all. In a few years, perhaps by the end of the century, Sea View will be part of the sea bed. Forty yards south of their front door, and a sheer 90 feet below, the English Channel is gnawing ravenously at the soft sandstone of Fairlight headland. Four feet of land is disappearing every year and the rate of erosion is quickening.
Some of their neighbours, whose homes are already on the edge of the precipice, have fled. Others stay on, living a life of perpetual brinksmanship. One bungalow, The Ark, was evacuated in March after owners Denis and Audrey Baxendale awoke to find that their whole back garden had vanished in a stormy night, The house is right on the edge and is unlikely to survive the winter. Another house, Dormers, was abandoned three years ago and attempts to sell it at knockdown prices have failed. It is about eight feet from the brink. Grey Wings, a picturesque wood-built bungalow, is some five feet from the drop and the owners have applied for council permission to move it bodily on rails. Last night the residents of Fairlight village, a polite community of retired businessmen, commuters, weekend cottagers and returned expatriates, took the first steps in a campaign to save their homes from destruction. Eleven houses, all facing on to Sea Road, the winding clifftop service lane, are reckoned to be doomed by the year 2000, and it is feared that 46 could go within a century.
They have formed the Fairlight Coastal Preservation Association, with Morris as their secretary, and lobbied last night's meeting of their local parish council. They urged members to take up the fight against Rother District Council, the authority responsible for local sea defences.
Consultants called in by Rother have concluded that the cost of the civil engineering works neeeded to halt the erosion cannot be justified. The residents fiercely dispute this. Arthur Green, chairman of the protection group, accuses the authority of being too quick to admit defeat. He says: "Surely before you adopt a 'do-nothing' policy you should explore every possible avenue of doing something. We don't believe the council has done that."
The residents - among them an engineer, businessmen, a barrister and a retired company secretary - have drawn up their own low-cost scheme. Many of the residents, including the Morrises, had no difficulty a few years ago in getting a mortgage on their property. Few, if any, have insurance that covers their homes against cliff erosion. Nobody, they say, ever mentioned that the land was receding so rapidly. Barrister Leslie Kosmin, whose house is three rows back from the sea, says: "Some people stand to lose everything they possess and everything they hoped to hand down to their successors." Sir William Halcrow and Partners, consultant engineeers engaged by Rother last year, say in a report published two weeks ago that what is happening at Fairlight is the creation of a new bay between two geological faults. They forecast that at the present erosion rate, the sea will have eaten 65 yards by 2037, 140 yards by 2087 and will eventually form a bay 220 yards inland and 800 yards wide.
Their report outlines three possible schemes to counter the process. The cheapest, a temporary one costing Ł1.8 million, would permit the loss of 11 houses, and the most expensive would involve the construction of extensive sea defences costing up to Ł9 million. Residents were chilled by the report: "There is very little benefit to accrue from implementation of any of the schemes considered since the value of the land comprises mainly residential properties."
Today, land and property values at Fairlight are plummeting. Morris says: "Six months ago my home was probably worth Ł120,000. Now I would be lucky to get half that even if I could find a buyer. It gives us no choice but to stay here and see it through."
The residents lay much of the blame for their plight on Rother Council, claiming that changes to local breakwaters have interrupted the natural movement of protective shingle and left the base of the cliffs exposed. Kosmin says: "The authority have shown themselves too ready to accept a negative report." Residents have now drawn up their own interim low-cost scheme, which they want the council to consider. This involves the building of a temporary sea wall below the cliffs. The estimated cost is Ł25,000, but they concede it would pro. vide only a short-term reprieve.
Rother's chief executive, David Powell, says the council's sea defence responsibilities were discretionary and tied to cost-benefit criteria. Financial assistance from the Government would be unlikely for any Fairlight scheme, and the cost could put it on the rates for everyone in the council's area. He adds: "We do have sympathy for those affected. But erosion has been a fact of life in those parts for hundreds of years and nobody can predict such things accurately. It is surely a classic case of caveat emptor - let the buyer beware. If people build houses near a cliff edge they should be aware that something like this could happen." The residents, meanwhile, are raising funds and considering legal action with all the urgency to be expected of people living on the edge of a precipice.

Map accompanying the above article: Daily Telegraph 26-08-1987

1990

Home and dry

The Times 24 January 1990

Houses on cliffs at Fairlight, East Sussex
The Ministry of Agriculture has approved a Pounds 2.2 million scheme to save 46 houses on crumbling cliffs at Fairlight, East Sussex, from toppling into the sea after an 11-year battle by villagers.

1999

Air photographs of Fairlight village (Fairlight Cove). Both images show approximately the same section. Highlighted in red is the loaction of Sea Road closest to the cliff edge (see map).