Coastal Erosion...

The East Anglian coastline has long been suffering from the constant battering of the North Sea, constantly shifting and redefining itself. It's saltmarshes and shingle spits the most obvious to us of this relentless change. Towns and villages have disapeared beneath the waves over hundreds of years, most famously at Dunwich and currently Happisburgh which becomes a little smaller every time there is a storm.

It is reported that the lighthouse on the shingle spit at Orford Ness, built in 1792 and the first on mainland Britain to be automated in 1965, may have to be pulled down and a new one erected further inland as the sea eats away at the beach.

A spokeswoman for Trinity House said: ''The lighthouse at Orford Ness was more than 100 metres away from the foreshore for much of the last century. ''However, with coastal erosion accelerating over the past decade, it is now only 45 metres from the shingle shore."

East Anglia is going to look very different over the next fifty years 

as successive governments abandon large scale coastal defences of these shores. Quite what will happen, nobody knows.