Northam Burrows

Christmas Eve at the Front

An interesting letter has just been received by Mrs Packer, of Broadclyst, from her husband, Corpl Packer of A Company, 1st Battalion Devonshire Regiment, who is serving with the Expeditionary Force in Northern France. In the course of a letter he describes a remarkable incident which occurred on Christmas Eve between the British and German trenches.

Such was the force of the waves

pounding in from the Atlantic in the recent gales that hundreds of sizeable pebbles were thrown high over Westward Ho! sea wall to carpet the promenade.

The slipway, too, has been damaged. A hold made part way down to the beach led to its temporary closure.

Meanwhile there is concern again about the Pebble Ridge, particularly the stretch from Sandymere to the coastguard hut. Burrows warden Mr Alisdair Barclay told the Gazette that measures taken there so far did not appear to have overcome the weakness and they had welcomed an opportunity to borrow a bulldozer to push the ridge into better shape at Sandymere. Farther round into the estuary, he reported, the coast near the RNDGC’s eighth green between the coastguard hut and Greysands had been scoured very badly and first aid repairs that had been carried out using wooden baulks were being undermined.

Gazette article dated 18 March 1977

‘Sea Over Pebble Ridge’ Warning To Potwallopers

Grave warning about the condition of the Pebble Ridge

was given by Mr W Badcock at the annual meeting of the potwallopers of the Manor of Northam on Friday.

Closing the meeting, he told those present that they had paid a great deal of attention to the Burrows, but none to what preserved them.

Mr Badcock, a local trawler owner, said that the ridge appeared to be getting ‘thinner and thinner’. Even at the end of the war, Mr Badcock contended, it would have almost been possible to drive three double-deck buses across the top of the ridge. The matter was now serious.

Sunbathers blamed

A major cause of the trouble, said Mr D Hocking, was that people dug pits in the ridge and during winter tides, the holes had to be filled. “If you walk from Bucks Mills to Clovelly you walk over stones all the way” he added. There were thousands of tons fewer, retorted the Chairman. At Abbotsham the sea was now washing against the cliffs - from Peppercombe all the way up there were few pebbles. "In a year or two you will find the sea over the ridge” he added.

Mr Horace Ford contended that the continued extraction of gravel was responsible.

The full Gazette article is dated 19 June 1964

Burrows Flooded As Seas Flatten Ridge

The Pebble Ridge at Westward Ho! – the defence Northam Burrows has against the sea – was badly damaged by yesterday morning’s high tide.

The ridge, on which a £60,000 strengthening scheme is in progress, was flattened for much of its length and the Burrows extensively flooded.
The Burrows presented a desolate picture: the first and eighteenth fairways of the Royal North Devon Golf Club course were completely under water and there was extensive flooding on other parts of the Burrows where the sea had swept in over the flattened Ridge. The course was closed. ‘We can claim to be the only genuine sea-washed links in the country’ commented the RNDGC secretary, Mr John Linaker.
Under the scheme now in hand 40 additional groynes were being installed and this part of the work has now completed. ‘Unfortunately the damage occurred where the re-charging work had not been completed’ said Mr Barber.
Earlier in the week the emergency pumps installed on Bideford river bank were in action and successfully dispelled a possible build-up of flood water in the Kenwith valley.
The full Gazette article is dated 31 January 1975.