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