of men assigned to defend each location. Fortunately the expected attack never materialised and as far as is known the Bulwark of Blackpool never saw active duty. It is believed that the fortification was situated right on the line of the old beach on land that has since been covered by the encroachment of the sea. Three hundred and fifty years passed before Blackpool was
once again the site of feverish military operations. In 1940 a German invasion of England was imminent. All along the south coast defences were constructed and Blackpool was no exception. The beach was mined and festooned with barbed wire. Tank traps and trenches were dug in the land behind. But the defences were of course never tested, and within four years Blackpool was to play a very different role in the war effort. In early 1944 the Allies’ plans for the invasion of France were well advanced. The American forces, as yet inexperienced in battle, needed somewhere to practise beach assaults and Start Bay, including Blackpool, was the chosen location. The effect of this decision on the local people was dramatic. A huge area of the South Hams, including eight villages, was to be completely evacuated. Everybody had to move away, along with their farm, animals and pets. Although some war time maps show Blackpool to be outside this exclusion zone, it is certain that the residents of Blackpool had to leave their homes as well. Within weeks the area had become a war training ground – and to make the exercises more realistic, live ammunition was fired rather than blanks. The nearby beach of Slapton Sands was used as the main practice area, but Blackpool itself was designated Green or Quartermaster’s beach and war time pictures show the area’s natural tranquillity shattered by a flurry of military activity. Access to anybody other than authorised army personnel was firmly denied by a roadblock on the hill leading down from Stoke Fleming. But all the activity ceased even more suddenly than it had started. On 6th
June 1944 Blackpool and the rest of Start Bay suddenly
fell silent. The army that had temporarily occupied it had crossed the Channel to do the real thing on the beaches of Normandy.
It took time for the normal way of life to be restored in the area of the evacuation. Damaged buildings needed to be repaired and neglected farm land which nature had converted into a wilderness had to be re-cultivated. But eventually the evidence of Blackpool’s role in winning World War II gradually disappeared. Today the only remaining visible vestige of this era is the surface of the beach car park – constructed in part from concrete “paviours” which were made by the American forces, and were purchased after the war by Sir Ralph Newman from surplus stock in Dartmouth.
Although Blackpool has from time to time taken steps to defend itself against military attack, the threat of nature is more fundamental and more irresistible. The coastline of Start Bay is far from static. The tides that
Literally thousands of tons of beach can be shifted several miles by a single tide. It is not uncommon
for the level of a Start Bay beach to rise or fall by fifteen feet in the space of a couple of weeks.
sweep the beaches, combined with winter storms that send breakers crashing on to the sand and shingle, can sometimes dramatically change the layout of the shore within a few hours. Literally thousands of tons of beach can be shifted several miles by a single tide. It is not uncommon for the level of a Start Bay beach to rise or fall by fifteen feet in the space of a couple of weeks. In the last years of the nineteenth century man accidentally caused this natural ebb and flow to become even more dramatic. Plymouth dockyard was then under construction, and thousands of tons of single were dredged from the sea bed at the southern end of Start Bay to make concrete. It did not occur to the Victorian engineers who conceived this scheme, until it was too late, that the beaches which protected the Bay’s fishing villages would gradually slip into the huge hole they had excavated. The most direct and calamitous result of this disastrous error was the complete loss of the village of Hallsands in 1917. The beach was no longer high enough to hold back the raging sea in a winter storm and Hallsands’ cottages were battered into oblivion. Beesands and Torcross would also have been lost in the same way had not extensive sea walls been built to protect them in the last few decades.
The damaging effect the sea has had on Blackpool is not
so obvious today, but in the past the little cove has suffered as much as the rest of Start Bay. It is not uncommon for the tide to come roaring right up to the top of the beach, scouring and undermining the base of the cliffs, and flooding the low lying land. Even before the dredging of Start Bay made matters worse, the Newman family took steps to counter the damaging effects of winter storms. In 1860 Thomas Newman decided to build a sea wall to protect the beach. His plans were ambitious. The intention was to construct a barrier that would run from the cliffs backing Matt’s Point at the western end of the bay all the way across to the cliffs on the eastern side. The building firm of Wills in Strete was contracted to carry out the work. The stone used to construct the wall was quarried from the hillside above Blackpool valley, and a special overhead rail truck system was set up to carry the blocks from the quarry down to the beach. The building of the wall was a considerable feat
of engineering. It took thirteen years to complete the construction, and its final length was some six hundred yards. It was sixteen and a half feet tall, and six foot wide at its base. Enough, one would think, to defend Blackpool from the
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