A village in slow peril on the sea

Hallsands, South Devon New grass on old roofs, confusing ruined masonry with cliffs - this is what natural reclamation looks like

The sound is gulls, silence, the thin chatter of house martin chicks in lintel-nests. And the sea below, though at all tides it is a breathing, rather than a pervasive growl. By day you see Start Bay arcing many miles beneath the cliff. By night the lighthouse softly lights every sou'western-facing wall with a slow, silent rhythm.
Benign. But then, not. This coastline restlessly resists permanence, even on human clocks, and the sea that will be the end of this place. Again.
On a single night a century ago, Hallsands fell into the sea. The natural defences protecting the coast from winter storms had been pillaged and dredged for decades by industrialists: the shingle beach, the Skerries Bank. Pleadings from subsisting villagers were ignored or shushed. Then, on 26 January 1917, the waves clawed the village from the cliffs.