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Clovelly Problem

28.2.1958 Clovelly pebbles

Recent gales have built up a high, wide, bank of pebbles at Clovelly which has now crept around the end of the pier and is extending in the direction of Bucks Mills.
Anxious watch is being kept on this new ridge of pebbles because further movement in the direction of Bucks Mills will make it extremely difficult to launch Clovelly lifeboat especially at low water.
Coxswain William Braund said on Wednesday that the gales had built up a heap of small pebbles and shingle seven or eight feet high and extending in width from the end of the pier right out to low water mark. ‘It could make it awkward if we have to launch the lifeboat and we may have to get to work to shift some of it when the weather fines away, although the top of the ridge is flattening out a little now’ he said.
Mr J C Hilton, secretary of the Clovelly branch RNLI , said he did not think the present position of the new bank of pebbles would interfere unduly with the launching of the lifeboat but if the bank followed the course of nature and moved in the direction of Bucks Mills across the harbour and so onto the pebbleridge that lies at the foot of the cliffs, it might make launching difficult at low water.
‘It is not a new problem’ said Mr Hilton. ‘We are watching the position and if the bank moves right into the harbour entrance and lies across the end of the lifeboat slip we shall have to do what we have done before and cut a gut through the bank’.
Gazette article is dated 28 February 1958

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