‘Do not put faith in amateur opinion when expert knowledge is required’
WHILE rummaging through the voluminous records kept on our coastal defences, I came across a note from 1947, it was a draft letter to a parishioner from the then Board of Administration. The draft had been tellingly corrected, just one word, the word ‘Atlantic’ was changed to read, ‘sea’. In an effort to achieve a sense of normality the ‘Atlantic’ defence had become a ‘sea’ defence. A wall built to impede the progress of men and machines had become, at the stroke of pen, redefined as a defence from the elements that actually gave rise to the dunes and bay. These days, for children raised in the shadow of the wall, it’s as much part of their history as the Martello (Loophole) towers. However, regardless of origin or perceived function, a once unblemished stretch of the coast is now starkly defined by a bleak, unforgiving brutal piece of German infrastructure.
The island is littered with German defences, generally they have aged well, the tank-wall less so.
Clearly, reinforced bunkers built to protect the personnel within and to keep the enemy out, have to be constructed in a fundamentally different manner to a wall that was envisaged would run over a much greater distance. And the wall was, after all, just a crude mechanism to slow down advancing troops to entrap them, leaving men and boys at the mercy of machine guns.
The 23-panel, 200-metre stretch to the East of L’Ancresse, despite assertions to the contrary, has not stood the test of time. As early as the 1960s the wall footing has required significant repairs, or more accurately, the apron tied into the base of the wall has required more mass in an effort to prevent the wall from failing.
The wall should be viewed as two structures, the wall itself, and the apron below that has been put in place to prevent the wall from rotating. It’s hardly surprising some believe the apron is original (German) as it has been in place for such a long time.
The anti-tank wall apron at the Western end of the bay was extensively repaired in the early 70s, it was underpinned with sheet metal piling. The question arises then, why has a section of the wall that is under much less pressure from tidal conditions taken priority over the Eastern end? One view is, the cash-strapped States of the 1970s who built La Mare High on a budget (and don’t we know it) and went on to build the island’s first leisure centre, did not have deep enough pockets to remove a wall, which we all know is an expensive exercise. So pragmatism, financial constraints and requests from the Tourist Committee of the day to make the beach safe and less unsightly for visitors were, perhaps, the determining factors.
The Eastern end of L’Ancresse was viewed somewhat differently to the West as evidenced by a letter of comment in the context of the 1955 Policy Letter proposing a kiosk, which notes, ‘The Eastern side of the bay is unlikely to become popular, however many amenities are provided, because it is exposed to the prevailing wind, and not served by buses as the Western end is’.
The construction of the wall did make the Eastern end less attractive for a number of reasons including shadowing and loss of sand for example, we can only imagine how the bay would have looked in the 1950s without the wall, but with a kiosk, an intriguing thought.
It’s crucial to consider coastal erosion, not just before the Occupation and immediately afterwards, but in the context of the demand for materials long before the Occupation. For the removal of aggregate from the shoreline was common place long before the occupying forces arrived. Sand, shingle and gravel were taken off the beaches and headland in some volume between the wars too.
That was then compounded by the demand through the Occupation then exacerbated further by the demand from the local population post-war, who needed a ready source of building materials. Damage to our soft sea defences and shoreline has occurred consistently over a longer period of time than we might have imagined.
In March 1949 the States engineer, Mr G Heggs, wrote to the then Board of Administration referring them to a 1909 report from Sir Whately Eliot, an authority on coastal erosion. He, Eliot, was urging the Coast Defence Committee to ‘stop the removal of sand and shingle from any part of the shore on the island’. So, 30 years before the Occupation, concerns were expressed by the professionals of the day that plundering the natural shoreline would lead to worrying levels of coastal erosion.
Heggs goes on to say (1949) ‘Some of the most serious coastal erosion occurs in two localities in the North of the island where it is permitted to remove sand, gravel and shingle from the beaches. Namely, Bordeaux Harbour, to the Nid L’Herbe Battery, L’Ancresse and from Fort Pembroke to the South end of La Bai de Greves. The extent of the damage constitutes a threat to the coast defences in these areas if erosion is not checked, the result may be serious’.
Such information from the early and mid-20th century should fundamentally change the manner in which we view our existing natural sea defences. For the walls constructed by the occupying forces were seen by some as welcome protection to an eroding coastline, however, a significant element of that erosion was man-made. In some areas material was removed by the lorry-load, such quantities could not readily be renewed by the sea.
There is no doubt the anti-tank wall, as unnecessary as it is, does give peace of mind to today’s golfers, but what of yesterday’s golfers, the class of 1950? Well, they too feared their course was under threat of imminent inundation from the sea, but on this occasion the flood risk was at Amarreurs Bay. On 30 September 1950 the President of the Board of Administration wrote a letter of reassurance to the chairman of the Golf Course sub-committee. He writes: ‘The Board of Administration after its meeting on the 26th instant, after giving careful consideration to this matter arrived at the conclusion that it could not justify the costs of providing a sea defence along this part of the coast, particularly in view of the fact that levels taken on the golf course in that vicinity show that the land is above the high water mark at spring tides’. Sixty seven years later E&I are struggling to convey the enviably simple sentiment in the last sentence of that letter to today’s golfing community.
History tells us the island becomes more vulnerable when our natural shoreline and soft sea defences are damaged, that was understood in 1909. The fear of flooding is as real today as it was in 1950, despite the evidence. And the pressures to do something, as opposed to the right thing are as real today as they were in 1973. But I will leave the last word to a former Bailiff, H W De Sausmarez. In his letter to the Coast Defence Committee on 23 August 1927 he writes: ‘My difficulty with all these engineering matters is that I do not put my faith in amateur opinion where the expert knowledge of a civil engineer is required’.
NB. The States passed the Ordonnance Relative Aux Cotes de I’lle legislation to prevent the removal of beach material in 1903, it was revised in 1938 and again in 1949. There were some exemptions to allow sand to be taken for the production of concrete tomato pots.
