which divides the counties of Cardigan and Merioneth, a considerable number of oak-trees were found under the bed of the sea, together with the Pinus Sylvestris or Scotch fir, a phenomenon, however, by no means confined to Cardigan Bay. At Newgale, a little south of St. David’s Head, trunks of trees have frequently been seen when the sand has been blown away by certain winds, and so notorious was the fact, that even old Giraldus Cambrensis, the historian of Wales in the time of Henry II., remarked upon it. “Also,” he writes, the trunks of trees standing in the midst of the sea; so that it did not appear like the seashore, but rather resembled a grove.” Similar examples may be quoted at Tenby and in Swansea Bay, where not only a whole forest, of which mention is made in ancient records, as being called Crow’s Wood, but also a castle, have disappeared beneath the waves.
Now, as to the probable cause of these phenomena. Geologists are well aware of the fact, that there is a certain relation between the land and the sea; or, in other words, that the relative position of the land towards the sea sometimes changes. There are and have frequently been, in geological eras, extraordinary oscillations of coast lines, some of them indeed going on now, though so gradually, that they are invisible, but not the less capable of being noted; and as an instance we may point to the coast of Sweden, which by actual measurement has been discovered to be rising at an appreciable amount for every century. Au contraire, if elevations of land may happen, so may depressions, and these may be of every variety of direction, from the gradual and gentle sinking to the sudden and violent catastrophe. If the buried country, as for instance, the Lowland Hundred, was so little raised above the level of the sea as to demand embankments, according to the legend, it would not, in that case, require such a very great amount of depression to produce an inundation of the sea; indeed, even at the present day, were it not for the extreme care and jealousy with which the Hollanders maintain their dykes, we might at any time expect to hear the same story realised. To a certain extent this has partly happened, for it is on record that the Zuyder Zee was in the Roman era nothing but a marsh, drained by a river, but that the sea broke through the isthmus which joined Friesland to North Holland, and rushed in, permanently submerging the country. England’s lost ground, however, is by no means confined to the shores of Wales, but is even to a still greater extent on the south coast. It is, I think, a reasonable speculation, that the Scilly Islands formed a part and parcel of Cornish ground, and many are the legends of the fair land of Lyonnesse, which we are told contained one hundred and forty churches, and was celebrated for the gallant deeds performed there by the knights of King Arthur’s round table. The catastrophe which swallowed up this district, was in all probability caused by an earthquake, as even an unusually severe storm has frequently inflicted on our coast a loss scarcely credible; and the portion of that county between St. Ives and Mount Bay, has been more than once threatened to be made an island under the attacks of the fierce elements.
Some of my readers might be inclined to say, that all these examples of buried land, if ever they did happen, took place in times of such antiquity, that they are little better than fables, and that such things do not occur now-a-days. I will, therefore, passing by Old Brighton on the south coast, which in the reign of Elizabeth stood where the chain pier now stands, glance at the cliffs of Norfolk and Yorkshire, where the most unbelieving of mortals can actually see for themselves the precarious tenure of the land. Speaking on this point, Professor Phillips observes:—“Even the hardest rocks that begird the ocean are more or less wasted away by its never ceasing attacks; and cliffs composed alternately of softer and harder strata, are quickly eaten away, and still more rapid destruction falls annually on the crumbling diluvial clays and loose gravelly cliffs which margin so great an extent of the coast of England.”
The pleasant little watering-place of Cromer and the adjacent coast, particularly in the neighbourhood of Mundesley and Happisburgh, furnish abundant confirmation. The sailors at the former place will tell you that old Cromer church is three miles out at sea, and not only the church but that a whole town, formerly known as Shipden, which stood near it, has undergone the same fate. It is very certain, that were it not for the enormous sea wall and breakwater erected by the inhabitants, Cromer would soon be numbered among the things that have been. In Yorkshire the devastation has been even more rapid and more recent. Church after church, village after village, acre after acre of broadland has disappeared, and are daily disappearing. Owthorne church, near Withernsea, was carried off within the last forty years, and a melancholy sight was it to see the skeletons and coffins protruding from the cliff, as the sea gradually washed away the churchyard. Kilnsea church has shared the same doom; but held up as long as 1831, when the cliffs sank down, carrying the church and a part of the village with it.
It has been calculated, that the annual loss of land along the shores of Holdernesse is not less than two and a half yards in breadth each year; on the Norfolk coast, about one yard; and on Thanet Island, three feet. In districts where soil is bad and land of no value, it does not so very much matter; but when house and church property, besides acres of good land, are annually swept away, it becomes a serious question, not only to the owners of property, but to the nation at large, how to guard against the incursions of the sea, and thus prevent old England losing any more ground.
TAP-DRESSING.
A singular custom prevails in the old-fashioned town of Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, which is called tap-dressing, or sometimes well-dressing. It would appear that, in former times, the inhabitants of this town and its neighbourhood suffered much from the insufficiency of their supply of water. When a constant supply was at last insured by laying down iron pipes, the ceremony of tap-dressing was instituted to commemorate the improvement. This Whitsuntide of the
