receded a hundred and eighty feet between the years 1827 and
1892. Altogether four acres have disappeared. An old Roman building,
locally known as "Gingling Geordie's Hole," and large masses of the
Castle Cliff fell into the sea in the 'eighties. The remains of the
once flourishing town of Seaton, on the Durham coast, can be
discovered amid the sands at low tide. The modern village has sunk
inland, and cannot now boast of an ancient chapel dedicated to St.
Thomas of Canterbury, which has been devoured by the waves.

Skegness, on the Lincolnshire coast, was a large and important town;
it boasted of a castle with strong fortifications and a church with a
lofty spire; it now lies deep beneath the devouring sea, which no
guarding walls could conquer. Far out at sea, beneath the waves, lies
old Cromer Church, and when storms rage its bells are said to chime.
The churchyard wherein was written the pathetic ballad "The Garden of
Sleep" is gradually disappearing, and "the graves of the fair women
that sleep by the cliffs by the sea" have been outraged, and their
bodies scattered and devoured by the pitiless waves.

One of the greatest prizes of the sea is the ancient city of Dunwich,
which dates back to the Roman era. The Domesday Survey shows that it
was then a considerable town having 236 burgesses. It was girt with
strong walls; it possessed an episcopal palace, the seat of the East
Anglian bishopric; it had (so Stow asserts) fifty-two churches, a
monastery, brazen gates, a town hall, hospitals, and the dignity of
possessing a mint. Stow tells of its departed glories, its royal and
episcopal palaces, the sumptuous mansion of the mayor, its numerous
churches and its windmills, its harbour crowded with shipping, which
sent forth forty vessels for the king's service in the thirteenth
century. Though Dunwich was an important place, Stow's description of
it is rather exaggerated. It could never have had more than ten
churches and monasteries. Its "brazen gates" are mythical, though it
had its Lepers' Gate, South Gate, and others. It was once a thriving
city of wealthy merchants and industrious fishermen. King John granted
to it a charter. It suffered from the attacks of armed men as well as
from the ravages of the sea. Earl Bigot and the revolting barons
besieged it in the reign of Edward I. Its decay was gradual. In 1342,
in the parish of St. Nicholas, out of three hundred houses only
eighteen remained. Only seven out of a hun