One coastal village was destroyed overnight.
The Devon village that was destroyed in just one night(Image: Getty)
A Devon fishing community was obliterated by a ferocious storm, back in 1917. By daybreak, only a single dwelling remained intact, forcing the town’s inhabitants to seek refuge in nearby settlements.
Hallsands, situated between Beesands to the north and Start Point to the south, boasts a heritage dating back to the 1600s. By 1891, the settlement had fostered a close-knit community of just 159 people.
Yet merely 26 years later, these residents would face catastrophe when all but one would see their homes claimed by the sea.
Luckily, nobody was injured, and while the inhabitants lost their dwellings, they all made it through the night. But their ordeal didn’t end there — it would take another seven years before they secured compensation for what they’d lost.
While it was a deadly combination of howling gales and surging tides that razed the village in a single night, this wasn’t the full picture — Hallsands had fallen prey to Government blunder.
During the 1890s, the UK Government determined that the naval dockyard at Keyham, near Plymouth, required expansion. To source the concrete needed for this project, the stretch between Hallsands and Beesands was dredged.
Despite fierce objections from Hallsands locals that this would endanger their community, the dredging pressed on until 1902. By 1900, the beach had begun to drop noticeably, and that autumn a storm swept away part of the sea wall.
This sparked fresh outcry from local residents — and this time, the Government started to take notice.
In September 1901, roughly a year after the town’s sea wall was lost, a Board of Trade inspector determined that future severe storms posed a real threat of significant damage and advised that dredging should cease.
Once dredging was halted, beach levels managed to recover to some extent, though storms kept battering the village and surrounding area.
Catastrophe then hit in 1917, when a storm caused the village to tumble into the sea, leaving just one house standing intact.
That house belonged to Elizabeth Prettyjohn, who steadfastly refused to abandon the village and lived there with her chickens until her death in 1964. The property remains to this day.