Beach Road running parallel to the sea.
Photographer: Nick Ballon for Bloomberg GreenA Medieval English Village Is Being Swallowed by the Sea
In Happisburgh, 250 meters of land was lost to erosion between 1600 and 1850. Now climate change might be accelerating the destruction.
When Nicola Bayless’s parents bought a house in Happisburgh, an idyllic coastal village in Norfolk, England, they were told it would be 150 years before erosion of the nearby cliff might threaten it. “They said, ‘We’ll be long dead and so will you,’” Bayless says. “But here we are.”
That was 23 years ago. Today Bayless’s house is on the second-to-last plot on the road; its front windows look out on an empty lot that used to be a neighbor’s home until it was demolished in October. Just beyond that is the cliff, which Bayless says has retreated by eight meters in the past 18 months. The erosion has happened so quickly that Google’s Street View of the road, last taken in 2009, still shows it disappearing into the distance beyond Bayless’s home. In 2023, though, there’s nothing but a “Road Closed” barrier followed by a sheer drop.