4mm Wolsey's Creek

[simond]

it becomes clear that it was some kind of retaining wall.

Maybe so, but whether it’s retaining the land from becoming mud, or the mud from becoming land is clear as, well…

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Looking at the position and design of the retaining wall it was probably there to mitigate erosion of the narrow spit by the fast moving water around the bend in the narrow Walberswick Cut. Otherwise it would have cut through and isolated the footbridge at the end of the spit.

The tidal range here is 2.5m and being very close to the coast there will be quite a volume of water flowing with the rising and falling tides.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

When you look at the NLS OS 1892-1914 25 inch series and change the overlay transaparency in respect of the underlying satellite imagery you can see how 100 years+ coastal erosion and intervention has changed the area. I've annotated two NLS extracts to show this.



And a zoomed out version of the coastline. Red being 1892-1914 and yellow from today's satellite imagery.

 

[AJC]

A very mobile coast (hence Dunwich, of course), but that creek has an almost medieval aspect to it - though the medieval harbour at Walberswick is long lost (physically, at any rate, the documentary record is very good.

Adam