This was the video idea that the AI suggested, but which I'd already filmed. I realise that it's also, technically, a cliff that refuses to be a cliff. Oh, and I did talk to one Covehithe resident (from several metres away), and they wanted me to make it clear: Covehithe is not a tourist attraction. There are no amenities, not even public toilets, and the roads in are already blocked by cars in summer to the point where it's a safety hazard. If you do stop by, then stop by on a day like the one I filmed: when it's cold, bleak, and foggy!
I used to live near Covehithe when I was like 8, and I learned how to cycle a bike riding up on the paths to the village and the church. As a kid, it used to be a fair ride from the church to the sea, but now it's maybe two minutes. Every so often they move the roadblock back. Sadly, there used to be a bird watching hut which has now crumbled into the sea that I used to go and visit as a kid. It's quite sad but unfortunately it's not just Covehithe, soon this will happen to most of the Norfolk & Suffolk coast. As Tom said, they put up a lot of defences around the bigger touristy towns, but these small villages like Covehithe (and others like Happisburgh in Norfolk) are just being left to fall into the sea. I get the reasons why, but obviously when you have a personal attachment to these places, it's much harder to let go.
That's so sad. I have fond memories of visiting Happisburgh as a kid and seeing the lighthouse. Being able to run up to a lighthouse and touch it felt almost magical.
Seems worth mentioning that a nearby village has already suffered this fate - Dunwich. A bustling town of 3000 people in the 13th century, a series of strong storms meant it had mostly disappeared below the waves by the end of the 14th. A local legend says that the Dunwich church bells can, on certain low tides, still be heard ringing.
@@hydrosphagus9672 That one's in Massachusetts. There is currently a small village in Suffolk, inland of where the origininal town stood, that's also called Dunwich and It's possible that the one in the states was named after that, it's not an infrequent occurence, but there could also be no connection.
I cycled down to Covehithe with a friend last autumn and really enjoyed the church and the lost isolated feel of the place. It wasn't until we had our lunch on (In hindsight too close to) the cliff edge that we saw that the very spot where we were standing probably would be swept away in a few years. Watching this I realise it probably already belongs to the sea.
Hello, we the people from the Netherlands offer to help. We can defeat the sea as you might know. What we want in return is simple : We want a mountain!
Your sea defences are related to flood prevention rather than erosion...but probably similar techniques. Much of East Anglia was drained and made usable by the Dutch, so thank you!
@@YellowPinkie parts have been deliberately re-flooded both in NL and in the Fens itself however because it turns out draining the land means they get lower wrt sea level, so keeping some parts wet is beneficial
ok the place might not be a tourist attraction, but with the sheep, the fog, the small farms, the impending doom and the church within a crumbled church it sure does have an aesthetic
Covehithe may be being eaten away by the sea, but material washes up somewhere else. Further south are the old Cinque Ports, five ancient major ports for trade and military. Today only two of them are on the coast. The others have had their harbours silted up, New Romney now sits a mile from the coast.
The AI came up with the idea of a video on a city that will crumble into the sea, but that's not specific to Covehithe. There are hundreds of cities in the same situation. There's no way to tell how the AI came up with that suggestion.
Really, truly, thank you for taking the time to show us these amazing places. I live on a tiny island almost as far south as you can get without being in Antarctica, and the likelihood of me being able to see these places myself is very slim. These videos give me a chance to see them.
This is a lot like "Mårup church" in Denmark, except its graveyard already fell into the sea a few years ago. Ironically the graveyard was for sailors that died in the oceans in the past centuries.
But we did stop the erosion at Stevns after it had eaten half the church (and that was after the church had already been moved inland a few centuries back)
Tom! Your description says Covehithe is in Sussex, but as you mention in the video, it's in Suffolk. :) Great video though - there are a few places in west Wales under Managed Retreat policies now too.
The nearby village of Dunwich once had a port that rivaled that of London's in size, many centuries ago. It was also the capital of the Kingdom of East Anglia. It now has a meagre population of less than 200 people. Dunwich's decline is largely due to storm surges that hit the Suffolk coast in the 13th century.
This sounds like it will be “A Cliff That Refuses To Be a Cliff” in 30 years. It’s a cliff one day, next day it’s a graveyard. Another day it’s your neighbor’s backyard and then back to a cliff!
Just a short distance down the coast from Covehithe, there's Dunwich, a village that used to be a town. It had 6 large churches and two monasteries in the middle ages. Now it has 2 small churches and a chippy. It is clear evidence that the erosion along the East Anglian coastline has been going in for a long time. I remember walking the beach a Benacre as a child, and seeing ruins of houses sticking out of the cliff. Crazy to see.
it's similar along the Hornsea coast, between the Humber Estuary and Flamborough Head, just South of Scarborough. There's remnants of tiny villages, with roads that literally can be seen cracked and crumbling over the soft clay cliffs. Bizarrely there's still people living in some of these places, while others, like Bridlington, is a sizeable town with plenty of holiday static caravan sites.
thats actually made me think why they find bodies in the sand on beaches sometimes during digs of sorts etc or even public sometimes do, maybe older graveyards set on land or near beaches many centuries back before that have been lost to the same process.
Oh, Cliff! Sometimes it must be difficult not to feel as if. You really are a cliff! When fascists keep trying to push you over it! Are they the lemmings, or are you Cliff? Or ARE you, Cliff?
In XIV century in Trzęsacz (northwestern Poland) a Gothic style church was constructed about 2 km from the coastline. Due the abrasive processes, there is only one wall still standing. It's a popular local tourist attraction.
It's Tom compensating for being overly cheerful while blowing things up last week. Brits are only allowed a certain amount of good humour before we self combust.
You know, sometimes I think I must have been an archeologist in a past life or at the very least missed my calling in life. Because when it comes to old ruins like that church, I cant help but to always be in awe over them, to wonder who built them, how they were built and to also feel a bit sad when I hear they've been neglected or will soon no longer exist.
It's good to care about old ruins. I hope someone has recorded the history of the church, even if the church itself cannot be saved. It struck me as surprising that a ruined church like that wasn't a tourist attraction. I thought that sort of thing was quite popular with tourists.
Well, Covehithe is close to Southwold, and Southwold is in Suffolk, so quite a long way from.the most South Easterly point. Indeed, not in South East England at all. It's East Anglia.
Mildly interesting fact: The street overlay on Google Maps extends over the coastline as on the satellite image, so does the coastline of the map only mode.
The same is happening four places in Northern Jutland, Denmark: Nørlev. Nr. Lyngby. Løkken and Lønstrup. And in the worst of these houses are already collapsing into the sea. There is hefty debate about what if anything should be done, and who has the responsibility; i.e. the homeowners, the municipalities, or the state. There is even a grave yard that is eroding and dogs occasionally run around with human femurs and German tourists take home human skulls as souvenirs. This has been happening for over twenty years, and there are no plans to move or excavate the graves. I honestly don’t know why. There is also a very famous site from the late Mesolithic that is eroding away. You can go by the beach and pick up buckets of 7000 year flint if you wanted to. At least some archaeological attention has been given, but far from enough. So you aren’t alone, Brits. The North Sea makes fools of us all. But on a lighter note some fairly modern lighthouse was moved instead of demolished. Made loads of headlines, so at least some journalists were happy.
As a Dutch person, it is almost incomprehensible that someone would willingly surrender this much land, including an entire village, to the sea. You guys should spend more on coastal defences. You'd expect that to be top priority for an island nation.
The land is not lost; the sand that is eroded from the cliffs is moved down the coast and protects other towns. It's a natural coastal defense that's also keeping up with rising sea levels. In contrast to the Netherlands, which receive sediments from the Rhine, British rivers are too small to bring enough sediments to the coast.
In northern Jutland, we had an old church in the same situation and they did not do enough to save it. They talked about moving it and ended up polling it down. There was no funding for setting it up again and it ended up as road filling! It’s a real shame. They have however saved a light tower, so it is still a tourists attraction. For those interested, the church was called “Mårup Kirke” and the light tower “Rubjerg Knude Fyr”, both danish names.
@@qwertzy121212 That's a trifle harsh. It's only like that 350 days of the year - there's also two weeks of frost to complement the day of Summer (I think that was scheduled for 23 June this year).
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People of Covehithe: We just want to be left alone. Really, sacrifice our land, destroy our buildings, just leave us alone. Nothing to see here anyway. Tom Scott: Hey, fellas! This village will not exist in a hundred years! Come see it!
I grew up about 10 miles from Covehithe and remember visiting the beach several times as a kid, when I went back there with friends as a teenager I was blown away by how far the cliffs had moved; literally about 20 metres in less than 10 years. Every time I've gone back since it's dramatically changed. Those fields are still farmed by the way; if you go at the right time you can see a narrow strip of wheat right against the edge of the cliffs that was too sketchy to harvest.
partly untrue, there is some moving away from only building protections against the sea, and other management methods, like potpolders or even (re)creating saltmarshes, e.g in the Hedwigepolder.
they did that with my town. there was a hydroelectric scheme and they needed the valley for a dam so they moved the whole town. there is footage of houses on trucks moving up the road to the new site.
I've lived in Suffolk my whole life and Covehithe is one of my favourite places to walking, even visiting just a few weeks apart you can see the cliffs shift and the trees at the top of the cliffs even occasionally fall down onto the beach... It's such a hidden little place it's really lovely to see it talked about outside of Suffolk, great video! :)
I live a little further up the coast in Lowestoft and despite having a ton of money spent on sea defences, we have lost a large section of the beach to the sea. It seems to have been particularly bad this winter with a probably 5 or 6 feet of beach lost on the North Denes, which has exposed loads of oil that was buried I think in the 70s or something after a tanker spilled.
love these types of videos, where you cover small towns, telling stories that surely everyone in town knows, stories that are actively effecting their entire lives, entire future, and yet are virtually unheard of for anybody else. good stuff as always!
Gave Covehithe a visit today and the fence at 0:58 isn’t there anymore, it’s been pushed back to where that fence on the right ends. Fascinating stuff.
Came here since seeing the news about Hemsby falling into the sea. For Covehithe this isn't taking thirty years. I imagine it could easily be less than half that before people are wondering where it has most of it has gone. The power of the sea.
The Dutch, literally the lowlands manage it by flooding. The situation on a cliff, the literal opposite of the lowlands is entirely different and much more difficult, if not impossible to manage sustainably.
This is just north of Dunwich (most of the old town is 500 metres out to sea), which is the destination from London, of the annual summer 200km overnight bike ride 'The Dunwich Dynamo'. It boasts that because of coastal erosion, it gets shorter every year!
My parents live a stone's throw from Covehithe, but thankfully a stone's throw inland (they're in Wrentham). When I'm back home visiting I always take the dog for a good run down the beach. It's a fantastic part of the world and great to see Tom visiting our neck of the woods... even if the video was a bit of a tearjerker!
The cool thing about old buildings like that church is that you can take them apart, piece by piece and rebuild the structure somewhere else. This has been done successfully and semi-successfully many times with the biggest example being in Egypt where they moved Abu Simbel and dozens of other ancient buildings because of the Aswan Dam. Other examples are the Egyptian temple in the Met in NYC and a Medieval Spanish monastery that now resides in Los Angeles California.
A few years ago, online I bought this quaint little house at a place called Doggerland. I have no idea why it was so cheap, I'm going to visit it this summer. I'll send pictures!!!
Very good explaination of the problem. As someone who has relatives, my ancestors, buried in the graveyard of the church I sure hope that someone will in fact move the graveyard. I think you said "needs of the many" but if it is your great grandparents in that churchyard well, it doesn't matter how many does it.
From what I recall under the English channel they found full settlements from thousands of years ago when the water levels were lower. Same as the Mediterranean before it became a sea
@@davidz2808 They are sinking because the groundwater is depleted. The sinking of the land in combination with rising sea levels is change the flooding levels at a extremely rapid pace. The government has decided to abandon the city instead of trying to figure out how to stop the ground water depletion which would be the significant thing to do to save the city.
actually jakarta in indonesia are doomed because of their gov. policies, and corruption, and many more if you come and visit and see with your own eyes and hear with your own ear. people in west said the water level rises because of the north and south pole everyday deposit their discarge on the ocean but there in jakarta, it is not even sinking because of the natural occurrence but it is because of their own hand that did not care about absolute anything but money which lead to this. Well if you somehow denied this, then probably ehh, maybe you are one of the guy that pumping water from underground somewhere on jakarta.
They need to update Google maps, that road you filmed from above extends into the sea. Wouldn't want to be following a sat nav down that road on a dark night.
@@Twannnng generally people look in front of their car when driving so as not to hit solid objects in front of them. GPS also doesn’t tell you the location of every car on a road. It’s up to you not to hit them
Nothing is meant to last, even Earth will be gone in around 4 billion years. Next after that the Universe itself will expand into nothing in around ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years (or one Googol)
That's because what we consider space'the universe ' is actually some aliens advanced computer case. Beyond 'the universe' is the actual world we just cant see it being dumb simple sims.
History is but a moment in time. We sometimes think that our moment is more or less important than others. The most important part of history is recording it and for that I say, “Thank you Tom”.
Buy a nice house in the inland now and in just 100 years you will have a nice house on the coast. That´s a great increase in value. Good thing to invest in
I once heard of an experiment that was tried in the State of Florida to reduce beach erosion due to winter storms that involved plastic garbage bags that were weighted with rocks. Three were a single over-hand knot in the bags and scissors to cut wide flaps in the upper portion of these bags. About 12 or so were laid out over about a 1/4 mile 150 yards from the low water mark. The experiment was left to run for about a year and there was less beach erosion. I had only heard of this trial once, I can't state to its integrity or not, alas. With the concern of plastic in the seas, I would guess there might be concern because of that. The proposed mechanism was that there was a reduction in water flow because of those 'flaps.' Hence less sand might be swept away because of the action of the sea waters. Might be something to think about.
As a dutch person, where we have litterely taken over 1/12th of our landmass from the sea, I can't immagine just saying: "We'll just let this village be washed away"
Over the 10 years I lived in San Francisco, an old WWII fort went from near a cliff, to the edge of a cliff, to teetering off a cliff, to sideways on the beach, to partially submerged in the sand, to completely disappeared. I'm glad they didn't get rid of it.
IDEA for @Tom Scott: I think you would be fascinated about Kiruna and Gälivare/Malmberget. They have huge mining projects there that are slowly moving towards Kiruna and Malmberget. However, the Swedish law forbids living straight above mining tunnels. They are now moving a large part of Kiruna and moved most of Malmberget to Gälivare so that the mining can go on while still respecting this law. We walked through some ghost town parts of Malmberget which have not been moved but cannot longer be lived in, and it was incredibly interesting to see that the mining industry there can afford to move whole towns and still make a fortune. (I am not halfway as good at describing the situation as you would be, but I thought I'd give it a shot for your future inspiration)
Reminds me of old villages in Germany being torn down for coal mining. They don't dig tunnels, the coal is close to the surface so they dig giant pits. But not only villages, old forrest too...
This happens everywhere all the time. It's a conceit of humanity that the way it is today is the way it has always been and how it will always be. NOTHING is the same as it was 100 years ago. And most places will be unrecognizable in 100 or a thousand more. The world as it is now or even as it has been for 2000 years is just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a blink of the eye to the universe.
I feel like growing up in Suffolk the threat of coastal erosion was always in the back of my mind. When I was in primary school I remember going to Dunwich Heath just down the coast from there and having the teachers strike fear into us that all we knew would crumble into the sea. The threat followed me further afield too as we used to visit relatives on the Isle of Wight, and would stop at a theme park called Blackgang Chine which too is slowly eroding into the sea. Most places and many objects can surpass a human lifespan and i think we take their permanence for granted, so when regions where I grew up are at risk of being lost before I die, I find it quite unsettling.
This is really sad, and I was angry until I realized why they weren't saving it. You can't preserve everything in physicality. I hope they are preserving it in pictures, at least.
Damn the 'government bad' people are out in force in these comments. Are you aware of how powerful the ocean is? Tom said it in the video, you'd have to protect more than just the tiny village, you'd have to bolster the defences up and down the coast and keep it up for eternity in order to save stuff.
There is this town in northern denmark where i the same stuff has happened. There is more of an effort to defend the coastline, though some of the defences have been critiziced with enviromental/zoological concerns. There is also a large area of summer homes/cottages that are abandoned or demilished. There is also a church that i visited once, that is now long lost and a lighthouse that was moved innland about 100-200 meters some years ago. I wanted to reccomend this topic to you, but didn't due to the whole only UK thing, but seems you kinda did anyways. The name of the town is Lønstrup. Its one of my favourite towns overall as well.
I live in Cambridgeshire In Oliver Cromwell's day the work had begun of reclaiming the land The Isle of Ely is one of the most famous Today stands High and Dry from the surrounding fields Thanks to the Dutch Drainage Experts Who if Britain doesn't wake up soon won't save us this time The call has already gone out A Sea Barrier around the outside of The channel approaches the north end or the Irish sea and between the East coast of Scotland to Norway Otherwise their will be no United Kingdom but a northern Greek Isles
England is so weird to someone like me living in Canada. A 600 year old church and a 400 year old church but the place isn't a tourist attraction. I'd love to live somewhere where it's normal to live near things like that.
It’s extremely common in English villages and towns to have at least one medieval church (generally built somewhere between the 11th-15th centuries), so yes it’s definitely seen as normal. However, whilst the ruined church at 0:25 may not be a “tourist attraction”, there are certain medieval churches that are (for those of us who appreciate historic architecture that is); for example if the building has retained a large concentration of medieval glass/ wooden decoration, an important ceiling, very fine Romanesque/ Anglo-Saxon carvings etc or is overall very large/ fine/ architecturally unique. As someone who loves to explore historic villages and market towns in England (I’ve visited well over 300 at this point), I always make sure to take a look at the church, regardless of how important it is, because the style of architecture is always different and will change a great deal depending on the region (for example at 1:30 you can see the church has chequered ‘flushwork’ which indicates that it’s located in Eastern England - where the technique was extremely popular). Of course there’s also the grand cathedrals of Europe (some of the finest in England would be the cathedrals of: Lincoln, Durham, York, Ely, Canterbury, Salisbury, Wells, Winchester, Gloucester, Norwich etc), which certainly are tourist attractions (thanks to the incredible architecture) - even if they too are common sites to see within cities.
@@tamaracarter1836 - why do a lot of old churches sit atop huge mounds? - because of probably 1000 years of burials. Some remote churches in Norfolk have been calculated to be sitting on possibly three quarters of a million bodies, at the start of the 20th century. That's still mind blowing to me.
@@brianartillery That’s fascinating, thanks for sharing. Norfolk has such an amazing wealth of medieval religious architecture; you literally cannot move in the county without seeing countless examples - even in the cities (for example Norwich contains 36 medieval churches and 2 cathedrals in its centre alone)! Plus thanks to the wool trade that flourished in the region, they tend to be very grand indeed.
What a heartbreaker. To have nothing to leave to your children is bad enough, but to know your home is virtually worthless.....ohhhh.....😞 I live in Norfolk, and almost considered retiring to the coast, where the same thing is happening. Dodged a bullet there, then!
This reminds me of a coastal town here, in California, U.S.A., called Pacifica. The coastline has been eroding for years. Parts of the area I grew up in is slowly disappearing.
Put that triangular shaped concrete blocks "tetrapods" in the beach in the water . It will not stop tides or waves but made them loose energy before they hit cliffs. Thus slow erosion
So if I am understanding correctly, if we build coastal defense for Covehithe, then the Ocean will likely stop "attacking" them, and instead will start eroding Southwold? Interesting, didn't know it worked that way.
The energy from the tides and currents is lessened by eroding cliff faces and beaches in Covehithe so if they are defended the energy will increase at Southwold
I live not too far from Covehithe and have been there many times. Lovely place as is all the Suffolk coastline. Well worth a visit especially outside of summer when it’s quieter.
On the opposite side of the country in Harlech, the sea used to come right up to the castle but now it is a long way inland. The same applies to Rye in Sussex.
This was the video idea that the AI suggested, but which I'd already filmed. I realise that it's also, technically, a cliff that refuses to be a cliff. Oh, and I did talk to one Covehithe resident (from several metres away), and they wanted me to make it clear: Covehithe is not a tourist attraction. There are no amenities, not even public toilets, and the roads in are already blocked by cars in summer to the point where it's a safety hazard. If you do stop by, then stop by on a day like the one I filmed: when it's cold, bleak, and foggy!
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I used to live near Covehithe when I was like 8, and I learned how to cycle a bike riding up on the paths to the village and the church. As a kid, it used to be a fair ride from the church to the sea, but now it's maybe two minutes. Every so often they move the roadblock back. Sadly, there used to be a bird watching hut which has now crumbled into the sea that I used to go and visit as a kid. It's quite sad but unfortunately it's not just Covehithe, soon this will happen to most of the Norfolk & Suffolk coast. As Tom said, they put up a lot of defences around the bigger touristy towns, but these small villages like Covehithe (and others like Happisburgh in Norfolk) are just being left to fall into the sea. I get the reasons why, but obviously when you have a personal attachment to these places, it's much harder to let go.
Dang, dude...
Pronounced "Hays-bruh" for you non-local folk :) Yea, I don't know why either.
Thank you for this perspective.
This hurts the feels
That's so sad. I have fond memories of visiting Happisburgh as a kid and seeing the lighthouse. Being able to run up to a lighthouse and touch it felt almost magical.
"This is miles of coastline, and they need to defend all of it constantly."
The Dutch: "Is that a challenge?"
The Dutch: "Hold my beer..."
No.
Is not a challenge.
/stomps out cannabis cig, rolls up sleeves.
Johan, start the scheve scuit!
@@JoshSweetvale thats step one. Then drain the land to get more land.
@@williamhuynh869 Uh, getting on the barge across the channel is step zero.
I've not mentioned a sea wall in my post, which would be the real step 1.
That's probably their exam just to pass kindergarten.
"Why no-one will save covehithe, the village that will soon crumble into the sea"
*Tom takes a step to the right, revealing his wacky doomsday device*
It uses time energy, or "whenergy".
_"Let me show you... my Erosinator!"_
Ah yes, Supervillain Tom Scott strikes again
@@charleslambert3368 - Absolutely using that for whenever I need to refer to esoteric temporal energy in any stupid idea I have.
@@magetsalive5162 like a time machine?
Seems worth mentioning that a nearby village has already suffered this fate - Dunwich. A bustling town of 3000 people in the 13th century, a series of strong storms meant it had mostly disappeared below the waves by the end of the 14th. A local legend says that the Dunwich church bells can, on certain low tides, still be heard ringing.
They joined their Deep One brethren in the sea
You mean Dunwich of The Dunwich Horror??
@@hydrosphagus9672 That one's in Massachusetts. There is currently a small village in Suffolk, inland of where the origininal town stood, that's also called Dunwich and It's possible that the one in the states was named after that, it's not an infrequent occurence, but there could also be no connection.
@@hydrosphagus9672 different dunwhich but the sunken dunwhich is used in a BBC podcast adaption of lovecraft.
Theres also the german Village of Rungholt which was lost to the sea in the 14th century.
I cycled down to Covehithe with a friend last autumn and really enjoyed the church and the lost isolated feel of the place. It wasn't until we had our lunch on (In hindsight too close to) the cliff edge that we saw that the very spot where we were standing probably would be swept away in a few years. Watching this I realise it probably already belongs to the sea.
Probably not.
@@HOTD108_probably now.
Definitely now.
@@unclesquidy285now
You should check it out on google satellite view. Zoom in to see if it's still there.
Hello, we the people from the Netherlands offer to help. We can defeat the sea as you might know. What we want in return is simple : We want a mountain!
If you're asking for a mountain from the east of England, good luck with that 😆
Given that the only mountain range within England itself is slumping away in places, I think you wouldn't be very satisfied.
Your sea defences are related to flood prevention rather than erosion...but probably similar techniques. Much of East Anglia was drained and made usable by the Dutch, so thank you!
@@YellowPinkie parts have been deliberately re-flooded both in NL and in the Fens itself however because it turns out draining the land means they get lower wrt sea level, so keeping some parts wet is beneficial
Here in Austria we got plenty of mountains, we might even get you one. But then again, why would we need defense against the sea?
ok the place might not be a tourist attraction, but with the sheep, the fog, the small farms, the impending doom and the church within a crumbled church it sure does have an aesthetic
Its almost Dark Souls tbh
right? It's kind of perfect.
Unfortunately for hopes of tourism, it's not unique. Wales alone has that aesthetic mastered.
Try Whitby.
I vibe with this village.
Covehithe may be being eaten away by the sea, but material washes up somewhere else. Further south are the old Cinque Ports, five ancient major ports for trade and military. Today only two of them are on the coast. The others have had their harbours silted up, New Romney now sits a mile from the coast.
"it is a cold and bleak day here" ...what, in the uk, in spring? the mind boggles
technically speaking it's not spring yet, although it is close
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
Isn't it always cold and bleak, not to mention rainy, in the UK?
Sounds like a perfect day to this Californian.
@@safe-keeper1042always has been.
The fact that tom and an ai both came up with this idea is crazy
this correlation instills my suspicions that the real tom died years ago and this is an AI interpretation of what tom would be like in modern day
Tf
@@SA-bp5kw zq
The AI came up with the idea of a video on a city that will crumble into the sea, but that's not specific to Covehithe. There are hundreds of cities in the same situation. There's no way to tell how the AI came up with that suggestion.
@@EebstertheGreat It's a bit of a stretch to call it a "city". My village is bigger than that!
Really, truly, thank you for taking the time to show us these amazing places. I live on a tiny island almost as far south as you can get without being in Antarctica, and the likelihood of me being able to see these places myself is very slim. These videos give me a chance to see them.
South like Tierra del Fuego, or not THAT south?
You say that as if you were stranded on this island. At least there seems to be high speed internet access.
where is that?
New Zealand ?
@@HunterShows Fun Fact: Most people are "stranded" where they live because travel is expensive.
This is a lot like "Mårup church" in Denmark, except its graveyard already fell into the sea a few years ago. Ironically the graveyard was for sailors that died in the oceans in the past centuries.
That's actually really sad.. ;-;
But we did stop the erosion at Stevns after it had eaten half the church (and that was after the church had already been moved inland a few centuries back)
That's a bit of bitter irony for those ghosts.
oof the ocean is yandere apparently
So there were no actiual corpses in the ground to worry about?
Tom! Your description says Covehithe is in Sussex, but as you mention in the video, it's in Suffolk. :) Great video though - there are a few places in west Wales under Managed Retreat policies now too.
I noticed that being one of those tourists that visit Southwold regularly.
What a noob
I must admit, I was wondering they had renamed Birling Gap - a small village is Sussex that is going to vanish due to coastal erosion.
Tom fixed it
You've caught the AI's mishap!
Tom using Uno reverse card on the residents about making this village a tourist attraction. 😎😂
The nearby village of Dunwich once had a port that rivaled that of London's in size, many centuries ago. It was also the capital of the Kingdom of East Anglia. It now has a meagre population of less than 200 people. Dunwich's decline is largely due to storm surges that hit the Suffolk coast in the 13th century.
And up until emancipation reforms in the 18/19th century was a rotten borough and had sitting MPs despite this!
This place reminds me of Dunwich. Blytheborough up the way has had the opposite problem and silted up.
Isn't that the town from Lovecraft's horror? Sounds fitting.
@@sharpfang Same name, different country.
@@thursoberwick1948 - Indeed, and due to shingle and detritus washed down the coast from Dunwich.
Plot Twist: the town’s citizens are moving the town closer to the cliffs each year
WHY DON'T WE TAKE BIKINI BOTTOM, AND PUSH IT SOMEWHERE ELSE??
@@abbreviatedalex2418 That idea... may just be crazy enough... TO GET US ALL KILLED
🤣
it was a joke
@somedeveloperblokey This is not even worthy of a whooosh
@@thiccdicctony4790 weak bait, do better
This sounds like it will be “A Cliff That Refuses To Be a Cliff” in 30 years.
It’s a cliff one day, next day it’s a graveyard. Another day it’s your neighbor’s backyard and then back to a cliff!
Get the Obamas to buy a cliff-top property and the erosion will stop almost overnight.
@@terencejay8845 i dont get the joke?
@@generalgrievous2202 ahh you don't?? its so obvious though
heres it for you interior smooth brains
simply put obama is god duh
@@generalgrievous2202 one year later did you get the joke yet I need to know too
@@arandomcommenter412 i still dont
Just a short distance down the coast from Covehithe, there's Dunwich, a village that used to be a town. It had 6 large churches and two monasteries in the middle ages. Now it has 2 small churches and a chippy. It is clear evidence that the erosion along the East Anglian coastline has been going in for a long time. I remember walking the beach a Benacre as a child, and seeing ruins of houses sticking out of the cliff. Crazy to see.
it's similar along the Hornsea coast, between the Humber Estuary and Flamborough Head, just South of Scarborough. There's remnants of tiny villages, with roads that literally can be seen cracked and crumbling over the soft clay cliffs. Bizarrely there's still people living in some of these places, while others, like Bridlington, is a sizeable town with plenty of holiday static caravan sites.
The beach cafe in Dunwich was one of the best chippies I'd been to.
@@adm_ezri Ever seen the lost forest at low tide near Hornsea? I saw it as a child, in the 70s.
@@rog2224 I haven't, sadly. Sounds like an interesting place, however.
I now have an emotional attachment to a small village that I’ve only just been introduced to for two minutes. I don’t want to see it go :(
sea it go
@Euro The Dutch would argue for other options.
dont look up doggerland
@Euro we could try our best to save the places instead of letting them die even if we fail at least we could say we tried
Well good news, you probably won't see it unless you're visiting at the time. I don't imagine it will be considered news worthy when it happens
when my dad moved here in the 80s everyone said the church would be in the sea within 20 years but she’s still standing!
“Covehithe is gone in 100 years” Such a simple yet a significant statement!!
"Someone will have to move the graveyard" hit me
@@Kapin05 Meh, fairly certain that a few bodies in the sea aren't a massive change.
@@DrZaius3141 wont be pleasant to look at though
thats actually made me think why they find bodies in the sand on beaches sometimes during digs of sorts etc or even public sometimes do, maybe older graveyards set on land or near beaches many centuries back before that have been lost to the same process.
H
Well, there we have it: The cliff that refuses to be a cliff.
Dude I watched this video before the AI one and had to come back for this joke. Well played.
Oh, Cliff! Sometimes it must be difficult not to feel as if. You really are a cliff! When fascists keep trying to push you over it! Are they the lemmings, or are you Cliff? Or ARE you, Cliff?
This ai thing is getting scary
@@riders-pov-rs well
In XIV century in Trzęsacz (northwestern Poland) a Gothic style church was constructed about 2 km from the coastline. Due the abrasive processes, there is only one wall still standing. It's a popular local tourist attraction.
There's a touch of irony in saying in the same video "They don't want to be a tourist attraction" and "You'd better stop by while you can"
@I WANT ŞĘX !!! SEE MY VÌDEÓ !!! Go to horny jail
@@mcandelaria8769 But putting every horny person into horny jail together wouldn't make them even more horny?
Yes, there might be some purpose on this video :)
@@enricoleite9556 indeed an oversight.
@@enricoleite9556 you'll need a hose to cool them down
"why no-one will save covehithe, the village that will soon crumble into the sea" what a cheerful note to start the week!
“It is a cold and bleak day here”
It's chilling too!
It's Tom compensating for being overly cheerful while blowing things up last week. Brits are only allowed a certain amount of good humour before we self combust.
@@lucie4185 Oooo even more explo- *boom*
@@lucie4185 true, true
You know, sometimes I think I must have been an archeologist in a past life or at the very least missed my calling in life. Because when it comes to old ruins like that church, I cant help but to always be in awe over them, to wonder who built them, how they were built and to also feel a bit sad when I hear they've been neglected or will soon no longer exist.
It's good to care about old ruins. I hope someone has recorded the history of the church, even if the church itself cannot be saved. It struck me as surprising that a ruined church like that wasn't a tourist attraction. I thought that sort of thing was quite popular with tourists.
there's still time!
Tom Scott's grandchildren: Is the Most Southeastern Part of Britain Still There?
As long as Britain exists, it will have a "Most Southeastern Part"... might not be the _same_ most southeastern part.
@@maighstir3003 The sun never sets on the Most Southeastern Part of Britain!
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 😬
Well, Covehithe is close to Southwold, and Southwold is in Suffolk, so quite a long way from.the most South Easterly point. Indeed, not in South East England at all. It's East Anglia.
Mildly interesting fact: The street overlay on Google Maps extends over the coastline as on the satellite image, so does the coastline of the map only mode.
good catch
Me: _rushes off to look_
I miss tom's little stories about interesting and unique places.😢
0:40 I love the map maker's differentiation between St. Andrews Church and 𝔖𝔱. 𝔄𝔫𝔡𝔯𝔢𝔴𝔰 ℭ𝔥𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔥
I am so glad you pointed this out lmao
There's a ghost of some cartographer watching over us with pride that the bit they snuck into a map centuries ago is still here.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 possibly
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 I am satisfied knowing that we potentially made a ghost of a cartographer giddy
1600s church vs 1400s ruins
The same is happening four places in Northern Jutland, Denmark: Nørlev. Nr. Lyngby. Løkken and Lønstrup. And in the worst of these houses are already collapsing into the sea. There is hefty debate about what if anything should be done, and who has the responsibility; i.e. the homeowners, the municipalities, or the state.
There is even a grave yard that is eroding and dogs occasionally run around with human femurs and German tourists take home human skulls as souvenirs. This has been happening for over twenty years, and there are no plans to move or excavate the graves. I honestly don’t know why.
There is also a very famous site from the late Mesolithic that is eroding away. You can go by the beach and pick up buckets of 7000 year flint if you wanted to. At least some archaeological attention has been given, but far from enough.
So you aren’t alone, Brits. The North Sea makes fools of us all.
But on a lighter note some fairly modern lighthouse was moved instead of demolished. Made loads of headlines, so at least some journalists were happy.
Germans removing skulls?!!? eeeeeuuuuw
I didn't know Denmark was a post apocalyptic wasteland
Hmmm, maybe it's my chance to go skull hunting......
@@neues3691 It's just for you tourists.
Someone has got to film a horror movie there while there still exists.
As a Dutch person, it is almost incomprehensible that someone would willingly surrender this much land, including an entire village, to the sea. You guys should spend more on coastal defences. You'd expect that to be top priority for an island nation.
The land is not lost; the sand that is eroded from the cliffs is moved down the coast and protects other towns. It's a natural coastal defense that's also keeping up with rising sea levels. In contrast to the Netherlands, which receive sediments from the Rhine, British rivers are too small to bring enough sediments to the coast.
Land is being built up on the west coast at about the same rate as is being lost on the east
@@tallthinkev Are you suggesting Great Britain is migrating?
@@Poldovico Yep, only real way we can get farther away from France
@@synura8086So Great Britain is not going to disappear from the map if we just wait long enough?
I'd really like to see it before it's gone forever in 100 years.
- Me (who will be gone forever in 50-60 years)
damn
😭💀
Good point. Maybe Covehithe will stop by to visit me someday, too.
Every people need to visit each other
@@samapakisan3392 r/ihadastroke
We literally studied this at Geography A-Level
dang, wish they told us about it
is there a way to make it so i just can’t see your comments
@@bigkippa why
I did it for Geography GCSE. I live near there.
e
In northern Jutland, we had an old church in the same situation and they did not do enough to save it. They talked about moving it and ended up polling it down. There was no funding for setting it up again and it ended up as road filling! It’s a real shame. They have however saved a light tower, so it is still a tourists attraction. For those interested, the church was called “Mårup Kirke” and the light tower “Rubjerg Knude Fyr”, both danish names.
Place: we are not a tourist attraction
Tom Scott: hey 3.4m people, this place is going to vanish soon^tm, see it while you can
Try this: alt-0153™
Stampede Ho!! But only on cold, miserable, drizzly days, when no one else is about...
@@donaldstanfield8862 my understanding of english weather implies this is about 364 days of the year
@@qwertzy121212
BAHAHAHAAH!!
I've visited w incredibly good weather, I was lucky!!
@@qwertzy121212 That's a trifle harsh. It's only like that 350 days of the year - there's also two weeks of frost to complement the day of Summer (I think that was scheduled for 23 June this year).
People of Covehithe: We just want to be left alone. Really, sacrifice our land, destroy our buildings, just leave us alone. Nothing to see here anyway.
Tom Scott: Hey, fellas! This village will not exist in a hundred years! Come see it!
I love how short and to the point these videos are.
I grew up about 10 miles from Covehithe and remember visiting the beach several times as a kid, when I went back there with friends as a teenager I was blown away by how far the cliffs had moved; literally about 20 metres in less than 10 years. Every time I've gone back since it's dramatically changed.
Those fields are still farmed by the way; if you go at the right time you can see a narrow strip of wheat right against the edge of the cliffs that was too sketchy to harvest.
Seems silly to farm that close. Seems it would help erosion.
Reminds me of that BBC documentary they made on a town called Hemsby, where they filmed someone's house going into the sea on a stormy night
Yes I live in the village next to Hemsby and I thought the two sounded very similar.
they are very similar, no rich people have holiday homes there.. like Southwold. So the sea can take them..
Only about 20 miles up the coast
Damm i just watch that yesterday
0:41 Its amazing how in the 1905 map it says "St. Andrew's Church" in Roman font and then "St. Andrew's Church (in ruins)" in Gothic font next to it
As a Dutchman I'm tempted to offer to protect that piece of land. We dont like giving to the sea.
We've got a lot of land just north of there thanks to your ancestors! Still have the windmills to prove it 😉
A comment! 😉
partly untrue, there is some moving away from only building protections against the sea, and other management methods, like potpolders or even (re)creating saltmarshes, e.g in the Hedwigepolder.
OK Deal. Give us Covehithe, and take Westminster.
Based Dutchman 😌👌
"Why don't we pick up the town, and put it somewhere else?"
~Patrick Star
You jest, but I do wonder if that is what will happen with the church.
@@Croz89 I sure hope they save the church. It'd be a shame to ruin some good ruins.
some buildings can be moved. that church might just be to heavy
they did that with my town. there was a hydroelectric scheme and they needed the valley for a dam so they moved the whole town. there is footage of houses on trucks moving up the road to the new site.
Just glad that Suffolk is getting the recognition on the Tom Scott channel it deserves o7
THE CLIFF THAT REFUSES TO BE A CLIFF
Hahaha thats an instant classic
Suicidal cliff. Suicidally cliffy.
I've lived in Suffolk my whole life and Covehithe is one of my favourite places to walking, even visiting just a few weeks apart you can see the cliffs shift and the trees at the top of the cliffs even occasionally fall down onto the beach... It's such a hidden little place it's really lovely to see it talked about outside of Suffolk, great video! :)
I live a little further up the coast in Lowestoft and despite having a ton of money spent on sea defences, we have lost a large section of the beach to the sea. It seems to have been particularly bad this winter with a probably 5 or 6 feet of beach lost on the North Denes, which has exposed loads of oil that was buried I think in the 70s or something after a tanker spilled.
love these types of videos, where you cover small towns, telling stories that surely everyone in town knows, stories that are actively effecting their entire lives, entire future, and yet are virtually unheard of for anybody else. good stuff as always!
"Tea shop on the beach" is the most British thing I've ever heard on so many levels
And surprisingly common in that kind of town
Soon it will be tea shop in the sea
Usually just called "Tea shop on the beach".
@@Chicklo11 Low tide tea shop.
@@Chicklo11 Littoral tea shop
Gave Covehithe a visit today and the fence at 0:58 isn’t there anymore, it’s been pushed back to where that fence on the right ends. Fascinating stuff.
Came here since seeing the news about Hemsby falling into the sea. For Covehithe this isn't taking thirty years. I imagine it could easily be less than half that before people are wondering where it has most of it has gone. The power of the sea.
@@philh1462 We like to think we're masters of our world but we really aren't, we're still subject to the whims of nature in many ways.
If I know anything about the ocean, it's that when it's giving you trouble you just call the Dutch. They laugh in the face of Poseidon.
Anything water, call the Dutch!
"God may have made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands"
The Dutch, literally the lowlands manage it by flooding. The situation on a cliff, the literal opposite of the lowlands is entirely different and much more difficult, if not impossible to manage sustainably.
@@ranro7371 Then what if we just take an excavator and make it low!
A church inside a church sounds cool.
Yo, we heard you like Christ so we put a church inside your church so you can serve Christ while you serve Christ.
We have to go deeper.
It's like quantum christianity, it's church all the way down
Even churches have their version of "The Onion".
I wonder if there's an even smaller church inside that one again.
This is just north of Dunwich (most of the old town is 500 metres out to sea), which is the destination from London, of the annual summer 200km overnight bike ride 'The Dunwich Dynamo'. It boasts that because of coastal erosion, it gets shorter every year!
My parents live a stone's throw from Covehithe, but thankfully a stone's throw inland (they're in Wrentham). When I'm back home visiting I always take the dog for a good run down the beach. It's a fantastic part of the world and great to see Tom visiting our neck of the woods... even if the video was a bit of a tearjerker!
They will have beachfront property one day. Good investment.
"This town isn't a tourist attraction, and the residents don't want it to be"
But I'm gonna make it one anyway.-Tom
The cool thing about old buildings like that church is that you can take them apart, piece by piece and rebuild the structure somewhere else. This has been done successfully and semi-successfully many times with the biggest example being in Egypt where they moved Abu Simbel and dozens of other ancient buildings because of the Aswan Dam. Other examples are the Egyptian temple in the Met in NYC and a Medieval Spanish monastery that now resides in Los Angeles California.
A few years ago, online I bought this quaint little house at a place called Doggerland. I have no idea why it was so cheap, I'm going to visit it this summer.
I'll send pictures!!!
Remember to bring your scuba gear... you'll need it if you mean to pop to the shops or the pub ... or anything for that matter.
huh... i guess what ben sharpiro said about selling your house if it floods DOES work... 😛
Watch out for all the Mammoths!
@@olipolygon I guess we found aquaman
Fun fact: Dogging was invented in Doggerland.
That cliff refuses to be a cliff.
Ok I DID NOT EXPECT TO SEE THIS
Underrated comment
@@JKTCGMV13 it was!
@@JKTCGMV13 Yes, yes it was.
DUDE
It wants to be a beach.
Very good explaination of the problem. As someone who has relatives, my ancestors, buried in the graveyard of the church I sure hope that someone will in fact move the graveyard. I think you said "needs of the many" but if it is your great grandparents in that churchyard well, it doesn't matter how many does it.
"Filmed safely, following all Covehithe law"
Covehithe-19
Which means that probably in 100 years, or, owrst case scenario, in only 30, this video will belong to the sea
At least Covehithe should last longer than the pandemic.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 dont bank on it
@@andyharpist2938 well...
Tom somehow each video ceases to amaze me with completely random facts that I’m probably never ever gonna use
Makes me wonder how many villages and towns over the millennia that we've never heard of have met a similar fate.
A haunting thought
From what I recall under the English channel they found full settlements from thousands of years ago when the water levels were lower. Same as the Mediterranean before it became a sea
And then there is the aral lake, where the land shows ship wrecks.
Atlantis
I mean, people won't save Jakarta sinking into the sea, and that's a capital city of 10 million people.
It doesn't have flood defences?!
@@davidz2808 It did, but those sank too.
Most of the damage due to rising sea levels will be done, ironically, to third world countries in the south east and the Indian subcontinent
@@davidz2808 They are sinking because the groundwater is depleted. The sinking of the land in combination with rising sea levels is change the flooding levels at a extremely rapid pace. The government has decided to abandon the city instead of trying to figure out how to stop the ground water depletion which would be the significant thing to do to save the city.
actually jakarta in indonesia are doomed because of their gov. policies, and corruption, and many more if you come and visit and see with your own eyes and hear with your own ear. people in west said the water level rises because of the north and south pole everyday deposit their discarge on the ocean but there in jakarta, it is not even sinking because of the natural occurrence but it is because of their own hand that did not care about absolute anything but money which lead to this. Well if you somehow denied this, then probably ehh, maybe you are one of the guy that pumping water from underground somewhere on jakarta.
They need to update Google maps, that road you filmed from above extends into the sea. Wouldn't want to be following a sat nav down that road on a dark night.
Reminds me of the office clip where Michael drives into a lake because a GPS told him to
Tom said that they install roadblocks so it probably won't be a problem
So you'll just drive into a concrete block instead of the sea. That's... better, I suppose.
@@Twannnng generally people look in front of their car when driving so as not to hit solid objects in front of them. GPS also doesn’t tell you the location of every car on a road. It’s up to you not to hit them
Might be a new Broomway.
This feels like a great case study for my Coastal Engineering course - been covering erosion and sediment transport, it's actually very interesting!
The Dutch: "I volunteer!"
I mean do we really need zeeland?
I do feel like the dutch could figure something else
@@Jesse-de7dw Do we really need America
I feel like Patrick would handle the solution better.
Not Volunteer, but "We'll do it, if you pay!" :D Just seems more likely
And this is only 1000 years. Imagine the towns, villages, and maybe even cities that simply just vanished with time.
everything that is was and will be will simply vanish with time
Don’t you mean 100?
Nothing is meant to last, even Earth will be gone in around 4 billion years. Next after that the Universe itself will expand into nothing in around ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years (or one Googol)
@@4TheRecord In 4.5 billion years our galaxy will collide with Andromeda. In 200 billion years the universe will die by vacuum decay.
That's because what we consider space'the universe ' is actually some aliens advanced computer case.
Beyond 'the universe' is the actual world we just cant see it being dumb simple sims.
Amazing places: Kiruna in Sweden, a town that is now being moved because it sits on top of a huge mine. Could be an Idéa for a future video.
As someone who has lived in Kiruna, I can confirm this. It is an amazing story.
Ja! Super intressant.
6-1
Dang, a Tom Scott video on the same day as a Jay Forman video. It’s like Christmas but better.
Tom: It is a cold and bleak day.
Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
History is but a moment in time. We sometimes think that our moment is more or less important than others. The most important part of history is recording it and for that I say, “Thank you Tom”.
I actually live kinda close to Covehithe. Just a point - the description refers to it as a ‘Sussex Village’ when it’s actually in Suffolk.
Dang Suf- prefix.
Buy a nice house in the inland now and in just 100 years you will have a nice house on the coast. That´s a great increase in value. Good thing to invest in
Until your house also ends up in the sea haha
@@networksims4357 Make your house a ship?
Of course you have to correctly time it with your live expectancy.
Provided you either put it on stilts, buy a houseboat, or have a lot of sandbags.
Good luck explaining that to the bank and insurance company
I once heard of an experiment that was tried in the State of Florida to reduce beach erosion due to winter storms that involved plastic garbage bags that were weighted with rocks. Three were a single over-hand knot in the bags and scissors to cut wide flaps in the upper portion of these bags. About 12 or so were laid out over about a 1/4 mile 150 yards from the low water mark. The experiment was left to run for about a year and there was less beach erosion. I had only heard of this trial once, I can't state to its integrity or not, alas. With the concern of plastic in the seas, I would guess there might be concern because of that. The proposed mechanism was that there was a reduction in water flow because of those 'flaps.' Hence less sand might be swept away because of the action of the sea waters. Might be something to think about.
As a dutch person, where we have litterely taken over 1/12th of our landmass from the sea, I can't immagine just saying: "We'll just let this village be washed away"
National animal of the Netherlands: A beaver 🦫 😉
I live in the most easterly point in the UK and the majority of the coastline here is eroding at a significant rate.
Britain would rather spend it's money on pointless white elephant projects like a £3,000,000,000 aircraft carrier.
Britain has coast on the other side too, so it's not like they're going to run out of land.
@@anononomous Hardly the point when you've worked all your life to buy a house that's now worthless. Heartbreaking.
Over the 10 years I lived in San Francisco, an old WWII fort went from near a cliff, to the edge of a cliff, to teetering off a cliff, to sideways on the beach, to partially submerged in the sand, to completely disappeared. I'm glad they didn't get rid of it.
IDEA for @Tom Scott: I think you would be fascinated about Kiruna and Gälivare/Malmberget. They have huge mining projects there that are slowly moving towards Kiruna and Malmberget. However, the Swedish law forbids living straight above mining tunnels. They are now moving a large part of Kiruna and moved most of Malmberget to Gälivare so that the mining can go on while still respecting this law. We walked through some ghost town parts of Malmberget which have not been moved but cannot longer be lived in, and it was incredibly interesting to see that the mining industry there can afford to move whole towns and still make a fortune. (I am not halfway as good at describing the situation as you would be, but I thought I'd give it a shot for your future inspiration)
Reminds me of old villages in Germany being torn down for coal mining. They don't dig tunnels, the coal is close to the surface so they dig giant pits. But not only villages, old forrest too...
This happens everywhere all the time. It's a conceit of humanity that the way it is today is the way it has always been and how it will always be. NOTHING is the same as it was 100 years ago. And most places will be unrecognizable in 100 or a thousand more. The world as it is now or even as it has been for 2000 years is just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a blink of the eye to the universe.
Exactly. We read in history how things were different but then we're surprise when things change!
I feel like growing up in Suffolk the threat of coastal erosion was always in the back of my mind. When I was in primary school I remember going to Dunwich Heath just down the coast from there and having the teachers strike fear into us that all we knew would crumble into the sea. The threat followed me further afield too as we used to visit relatives on the Isle of Wight, and would stop at a theme park called Blackgang Chine which too is slowly eroding into the sea. Most places and many objects can surpass a human lifespan and i think we take their permanence for granted, so when regions where I grew up are at risk of being lost before I die, I find it quite unsettling.
This is really sad, and I was angry until I realized why they weren't saving it. You can't preserve everything in physicality. I hope they are preserving it in pictures, at least.
@@a.wadderphiltyr1559 it's not "Mommy government" it's the representatives of the people from Covehive
Translation: nobody on the town council has a house or property that is at risk of eroding away any time soon.
If they did, you know damn well they would be granting themselves huge compensation,
Damn the 'government bad' people are out in force in these comments. Are you aware of how powerful the ocean is? Tom said it in the video, you'd have to protect more than just the tiny village, you'd have to bolster the defences up and down the coast and keep it up for eternity in order to save stuff.
@@scladoffle2472 Have you never heard of the Dutch?
they all live in southwold
Nailed it!
There is this town in northern denmark where i the same stuff has happened. There is more of an effort to defend the coastline, though some of the defences have been critiziced with enviromental/zoological concerns. There is also a large area of summer homes/cottages that are abandoned or demilished. There is also a church that i visited once, that is now long lost and a lighthouse that was moved innland about 100-200 meters some years ago. I wanted to reccomend this topic to you, but didn't due to the whole only UK thing, but seems you kinda did anyways.
The name of the town is Lønstrup. Its one of my favourite towns overall as well.
Hire some Dutch, England
They'd just steal the ground and make a mountain out of it anyways
underrated
We have before. They drained the fens for us a few hundred years or so back!
I live in Cambridgeshire In Oliver Cromwell's day the work had begun of reclaiming the land The Isle of Ely is one of the most famous Today stands High and Dry from the surrounding fields Thanks to the Dutch Drainage Experts Who if Britain doesn't wake up soon won't save us this time The call has already gone out A Sea Barrier around the outside of The channel approaches the north end or the Irish sea and between the East coast of Scotland to Norway Otherwise their will be no United Kingdom but a northern Greek Isles
This sounds suspiciously like a video script that an AI would randomly generate for Tom Scott. I don’t know what is real anymore.
The AI is a prophet. This is the cliff that doesn't want to be a cliff, fulfilling the prophecy.
Which are meant to sound like the ones Tom already had. So it just sounds suspiciously like a video script made by Tom.
I would love to see you do a video about a food forest. I know there are a few good permaculture ones in mainland uk.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Words more people should live by.
England is so weird to someone like me living in Canada. A 600 year old church and a 400 year old church but the place isn't a tourist attraction. I'd love to live somewhere where it's normal to live near things like that.
It’s extremely common in English villages and towns to have at least one medieval church (generally built somewhere between the 11th-15th centuries), so yes it’s definitely seen as normal. However, whilst the ruined church at 0:25 may not be a “tourist attraction”, there are certain medieval churches that are (for those of us who appreciate historic architecture that is); for example if the building has retained a large concentration of medieval glass/ wooden decoration, an important ceiling, very fine Romanesque/ Anglo-Saxon carvings etc or is overall very large/ fine/ architecturally unique. As someone who loves to explore historic villages and market towns in England (I’ve visited well over 300 at this point), I always make sure to take a look at the church, regardless of how important it is, because the style of architecture is always different and will change a great deal depending on the region (for example at 1:30 you can see the church has chequered ‘flushwork’ which indicates that it’s located in Eastern England - where the technique was extremely popular). Of course there’s also the grand cathedrals of Europe (some of the finest in England would be the cathedrals of: Lincoln, Durham, York, Ely, Canterbury, Salisbury, Wells, Winchester, Gloucester, Norwich etc), which certainly are tourist attractions (thanks to the incredible architecture) - even if they too are common sites to see within cities.
@@tamaracarter1836 - why do a lot of old churches sit atop huge mounds? - because of probably 1000 years of burials. Some remote churches in Norfolk have been calculated to be sitting on possibly three quarters of a million bodies, at the start of the 20th century. That's still mind blowing to me.
@@brianartillery That’s fascinating, thanks for sharing. Norfolk has such an amazing wealth of medieval religious architecture; you literally cannot move in the county without seeing countless examples - even in the cities (for example Norwich contains 36 medieval churches and 2 cathedrals in its centre alone)! Plus thanks to the wool trade that flourished in the region, they tend to be very grand indeed.
In Egypt you got 5000 year old things down the block, not to mention what's under your feet and buried
@@ranro7371 I could go for a quick walk and probably pass a tree that is older than my country
What a heartbreaker. To have nothing to leave to your children is bad enough, but to know your home is virtually worthless.....ohhhh.....😞 I live in Norfolk, and almost considered retiring to the coast, where the same thing is happening. Dodged a bullet there, then!
All homes will eventually be destroyed. Everything is temporary, even your children.
@@pluto8404 what a cheerful way of putting it!
@@pluto8404 was that really necessary
Tom, i think it's my turn to say that i enjoy your videos for the past years. I think i watched every single one of them.
Dutch and Flemish public TV did a 'around the North Sea' series and did talk to the locals. They're.. Quite cross.
This reminds me of a coastal town here, in California, U.S.A., called Pacifica. The coastline has been eroding for years. Parts of the area I grew up in is slowly disappearing.
Maybe the fog is just covering it?
Put that triangular shaped concrete blocks "tetrapods" in the beach in the water . It will not stop tides or waves but made them loose energy before they hit cliffs. Thus slow erosion
So if I am understanding correctly, if we build coastal defense for Covehithe, then the Ocean will likely stop "attacking" them, and instead will start eroding Southwold? Interesting, didn't know it worked that way.
Yes
The energy from the tides and currents is lessened by eroding cliff faces and beaches in Covehithe so if they are defended the energy will increase at Southwold
This problem has been solved already but the English seem to be too arrogant to learn.
On Google Maps, there is a shadow of the road that used to be there extending into the sea...
I live not too far from Covehithe and have been there many times. Lovely place as is all the Suffolk coastline. Well worth a visit especially outside of summer when it’s quieter.
To imagine that 30 years down the line, this video will be one of the few records of a village known as Covehithe is a weird feeling.
he said 100
@@yourmum69_420 Tom did mention 30 years being the worst case.
Only real OGs remember living in Doggerland.
Nobody lives in Doggerland, you just visit with a few friendly strangers and leave.
@@NorthernSeaWitch i lived there once
On the opposite side of the country in Harlech, the sea used to come right up to the castle but now it is a long way inland. The same applies to Rye in Sussex.
I always look forward for Monday’s because of this channel!