{"id":801,"date":"2014-02-27T21:28:01","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T21:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/?p=801"},"modified":"2014-02-27T21:28:01","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T21:28:01","slug":"lowering-skies-and-wandering-shingle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/?p=801","title":{"rendered":"Lowering skies and wandering shingle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Storm
Storm clouds over Ramsgate<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Winter of the Coast of Ramsgate<\/h2>\n

On a rainy day in the winter you might not think that there was much of archaeological significance to see on Thanet’s coast. However, the wind and high seas of January and February are causing one of the most important phenomena of the coast of the Isle of Thanet. the raging seas are driving thousands of flints up the beach, battering at the feet of the chalk cliffs.<\/p>\n

\"Waves
Waves driving shingle up the beach at Ramsgate<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you’ve ever wondered why cliff falls\u00a0 happen so often along Thanet’s coast in stormy weather,\u00a0 you don’t need to look any further than the relentless pounding these little grey hammers\u00a0 give to the chalk with each wave that rushes to the shore. Eventually the lower reaches of the cliff face are hollowed out by the rolling cobbles, the chalk above isn’t supported at the base any more and\u00a0 something has to give and down comes another stretch of the coast in a spectacular fall.<\/p>\n

The process has a proper name – ‘Corrasion<\/a>‘ and has\u00a0 been going on for a many centuries. John Lewis, the great 18th century historian of Thanet, wrote of ‘the rage of the sea and the falling of the land’ and recounts that in his time a Roman wall had fallen into the sea near the cliffs at Dumpton. Even now pits, ditches and graves of our ancient past are occasionally exposed at the cliff faces around the coastline, soon falling to the beach below.<\/p>\n

\"Inage
Shingle at the foot of the cliff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Shingle
Shingle bank with wave cut steps east of Ramsgate harbour<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The waves and tides have another effect, collecting great banks and drifts of flint shingle in the shallows where the chalk has been cut to form a flat platform. One bank lies\u00a0 off the coast at Ramsgate, to the east of the harbour, growing and shrinking over time and occasionally, when the tide is unusually low, it is possible to walk far out along its length.<\/p>\n

Some of the flints bound up in the depths of\u00a0 bank are\u00a0 irregular nodules of huge dimensions, pitted with undulating depressions and pierced with holes. Before the stone harbour was built Ramsgate’s haven was shielded by a similar deep bank of shingle braced with timber breakwaters. Some timber piles that were destroyed when the slipway in Ramsgate Harbour was built were thought by one observer, a former Harbour Master at Ramsgate, to have have dated to the Roman period. Perhaps the great Stonar Bank, which once stretched across Pegwell Bay and was once firm enough to support a medieval village, looked something like this .<\/p>\n

\"Shingle
Shingle bank east of Ramsgate harbour<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Thanet the record of the power of the sea to shape our landscape is all around us and has been present since the earliest times in our history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter of the Coast of Ramsgate On a rainy day in the winter you might not think that there was much of archaeological significance to see on Thanet’s coast. However, the wind and high seas of January and February are causing one of the most important phenomena of the coast of the Isle of Thanet. … Continue reading Lowering skies and wandering shingle<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,33,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landscape","category-thanet_archaeology","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}