Effects of Floods in East Norfolk

Abstract

A RECENT visit to the part of East Norfolk flooded by the sea in February and April of this year was made memorable by a succession of south-westerly gales towards the end of June. The best point from which to see the flood damage was found to be at Horsey Staithe. Looking north-eastwards an astonishing spectacle met the eye. To the left there was a summer scene of woods and cottages clustered round Horsey Hall and Horsey Church, where a slight elevation of the ground had left an island during the advance of the sea. In front, the sea's retreat had left a red desert towards which the gale raced during the forenoon and early afternoon when the local land breeze reinforced it, a region later to be haunted by the melancholy piping of redshanks and the anxious cries of a cloud of lesser terns and ringed plover, when there came the calm of the evening before the setting in of the prevailing south-east breeze. This red desert, so recently part of the North Sea, ended in an imposing greyish-yellow barrier where the sand dunes were being rebuilt with the aid of a crane fed by a hastily constructed light railway.