The Reasons for Aldeburgh Being Protected Differently than Dunwich

In this question, I will be looking at how Aldeburgh is protected more
than Dunwich, and the reasons why. I will concentrate more on the
reasons, and to answer this, I will look at the location, long shore
drift, and nearby places.

Types of Coastal Protection

Dunwich is only 9 miles north of Aldeburgh, but the methods of coastal
protection in these two places are very different. In Dunwich there is
a small amount of 'soft' protection. This means that natural methods
are used. We saw that there was vegetation, which had been planted on
the sand dunes near Dunwich Heath. There is also fencing around the
dunes to stop them being eroded through people walking on them.

Coastal Protection At Aldeburgh

Text Box: Fig 4.1Text Box: In Aldeburgh however, the types of
protection involve 'hard' protection. These are man-made objects. At
Aldeburgh, three hard protection methods have been employed, and one
soft method. There is: a curved sea wall groynes, rip-rap, and, beach
replenishment (fig 4.1).

Reasons For Different Protection.

Dunwich is a small coastal village on the Suffolk coast. There are
only 120 people living in Dunwich, consisting mainly of retired people
but with a few fishermen and forestry workers. With this in mind,
there is no real need to protect it from the sea. Although Dunwich was
once a major port, almost all of the historic remains have already
fallen into the sea.

Another reason for not protecting Dunwich is because the material that
is eroded from those cliffs is carried south by long shore drift and
helps to prevent erosion further down the coast. This is particularly
important with the presence of the Sizewell nuclear power plants 5
miles south of Dunwich. If hard protection were used at Dunwich, then
this would cause the cliffs at Sizewell to erode much quicker and
possibly cause a risk to the nuclear power plants and the town.

Text Box: Fig 4.2Text Box: Map of Orford SpitText Box: Further South
than Sizewell, there is Aldeburgh. Aldeburgh is a small town with a
population of around two and a half thousand. Again, this town has
been largely affected by erosion, with the town hall, which was once
in the middle of the town and is now on the sea front. Just south of
Aldeburgh at Slaughden, a spit starts. This spit is called the Orford
Spit and it runs down the coast, for over 10 miles, with the river
Alde behind it. At the start of the spit, at Slaughden, the spit is at
its narrowest point, and with the spit being on the outside of a bend
in the river, it is being constantly subjected to erosion. This part
of the spit was eroded through in 1981, cutting off the rest of the
spit from the mainland. In order to fill the gap, 250,000 m3 of
shingle was transported to the site from Orford Ness, 4 miles south of
Slaughden.

In order to keep the spit from being cut off, every year more shingle
is taken from Orford Ness and deposited at Slaughden.

Text Box: It is important to keep the spit, because it is one of only
four major shingle landforms in Britain. (The others are: Dungeness
Kent, a cuspate foreland; Chesil Beach, Dorset a bar; and Culbin
Shingle, Highland/Grampian Regions, an offshore barrier island). The
spit also has historical importance, with a large proportion of it
being acquired by the military in 1913. The site was then drained and
levelled so that airfields could be built. From the 1950s, the area
was used for experimentation with nuclear power. The 'pagodas' used
for these experimentations are still in place today (fig 4.3).

Text Box: Fig 4.3The area was also used for top-secret Anglo-American
testing of a backscatter radar system called 'cobra-mist'.
(Backscatter radar is used to find military targets that are beyond
the horizon by bouncing radar waves off the ionosphere). The
cobra-mist site is now being used by BBC world service.

The majority of Orford Spit is now owned by the national trust, and a
new type shingle-restoration is being tried to attempt to restore the
shingle that has been damaged all the activity that has taken place.

Because of the geological, environmental, scientific, and historical
importance of Orford Spit, it is very important that it is kept in its
current form so that it can be preserved for the future. If it were to
be cut off, it would change the flow of the river Alde, and change the
shape of the whole coastline.

As Dunwich has long lost most of its historical sites, it has no
reason to be protected as much as, or more than Aldeburgh. The
material eroded from Dunwich is naturally used to protect areas
further down the coast such as Sizewell with its nuclear power plants.
This is why Slaughden and Aldeburgh are being protected much more than
Dunwich.