72 DARTMOUTH’S CHANGING SHORELINE
One of many documents referenced in the recent draft Dartmouth Neighbourhood Plan is an Environment Agency report about Dartmouth’s predicted flood risk.* With the impact of climate change and rising sea levels increasingly to the fore, this makes thought-provoking reading.
F
rom a historical perspective, the report’s depiction of areas of the town at risk of flooding
in various scenarios shows just how much land has been reclaimed from the river over the centuries. Dartmouth’s water frontage has seen a great deal of change. The place name “Dartmouth”
is first recorded in 1049. At that time, high tides must have lapped the Dart’s western shoreline along what became Bayards Cove, Lower Street and Fairfax Place, curled around the promontory of land on which St Saviours was later built, and filled the long narrow Ford creek, into which flowed a small stream. The northern shore of Ford creek extended below the cliff above which Clarence Street now runs, round a second promontory known as Hardness, into a second tidal creek at Coombe. The town developed along this shore and along the steep hillsides above. Dartmouth’s medieval records
provide many clues about reclamation. An early change to the waterfront was the tidal mill built in Ford creek. A dam built across the creek contained the water flowing into it on the flood tide, and the head of water thereby created drove the mill on the ebb. When the mill was built is not recorded, but the technology existed well before the first reference to Dartmouth - the earliest tidal mill so far found in England dates to around 690. The first documentary reference to the dam is around 1243, and to the mill, around 1250. Today’s Foss Street marks the dam’s position. Due to siltation, the mill pool
slowly and gradually shrank. Land was reclaimed along the north and south sides for gardens and houses, and on either side of the dam. On
BY GAIL HAM FROM THE
HISTORY RESEARCH GROUP
DARTMOUTH
the seaward side, for example, John Hawley senior and his wife Elizabeth acquired a “place of land” in 1344, next door to their quay, 20 feet wide and in length, “as much as they can protect against the sea on the east side”. Shipyards developed along the
northern shore in Hardness. In the medieval period, ships were probably built on the beach, but the foreshore was progressively reclaimed as ships grew larger and longer. Archaeological excavation in 1995 on the site where Marks & Spencer stands showed that by
1600, docks and raised slipways were being extended into the river; reclamation continued in the 1700s and 1800s. To the south, the town
developed in three parallel streets, one at the waterline and two above, following the contours of the hillside. The earliest surviving records, from about 1210, refer to houses “below the bank”, interpreted as along the waterline. Reclamation soon began here too. In 1293, for example, Gilbert de Fawy was granted a tenement between two others to the north
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109
