"On a recent visit to South Devon I was reminded in a most dramatic way of the need to stop dredging sand off Gower's coast before it's too late.
I visited the 'lost village' of Hallsands on the south coast of Devon, once a small but thriving fishing community with around 40 houses, a pub and a grocer. The Hallsands story bears testimony to the way in which meddling with natural processes can have very severe consequences for man. At the beginning of the last century, the villagers of Hallsands began noticing that the sand and shingle beach below their houses was disappearing. This was very serious - the village stood close to sea level and relied on this protective barrier of sand to shield it from the full force of the sea. It was discovered that, at about the time when their sands had first started to disappear, the Board of Trade had given permission to a dredging company to remove thousands of tons of shingle from sandbars just off the coast.
It seemed like a simple case of cause and effect, but the dredging company and the authorities refuted this and claimed that the dredging was not linked to the coastal sand loss. Sound familiar...?
In January 1917, with the beach level very low and stripped of much of its sand, a storm struck and most of the village was literally washed into the sea overnight. The village was abandoned, the sand never returned and all that is left today is the ruined remains of a handful of houses at the foot of a rocky cliff. You can read more about the Hallsands story on the BBC website: Link click here.
It seems we've learned nothing from mistakes made in the past. Despite clear evidence of extraordinary sand loss around Gower, those with a vested financial interest in continuing to dredge tell us that there's no link between dredging and coastal sand erosion. If this continues, it seems that Gower is doomed to lose beaches, habitats and tourists in the same way that the people of Hallsands lost their village."
Dominic Parkes
