Unfortunately no information came with this film as to who made it, although it is likely that the local council themselves had it made. It is not unusual for opening ceremonies to be filmed, especially if featuring a particularly important or famous person. In this case the opening is by a well known figure of the time, the Hon Francis Stanley Jackson. At the time he was MP for Howdenshire, a constituency that was abolished by the boundary changes of 1950. His father was William Jackson,...

Unfortunately no information came with this film as to who made it, although it is likely that the local council themselves had it made. It is not unusual for opening ceremonies to be filmed, especially if featuring a particularly important or famous person. In this case the opening is by a well known figure of the time, the Hon Francis Stanley Jackson. At the time he was MP for Howdenshire, a constituency that was abolished by the boundary changes of 1950. His father was William Jackson, also a Conservative MP, for Leeds North, and Chairman of the Great Northern Railway, who was made a Baron in 1902. Apparently Winston Churchill was Stanley Jackson’s fag at Harrow. 


In 1927 he was knighted and appointed Governor of Bengal.  A young woman fighter for Indian independence, Bina Das, a member of Chatri Sangha, made a failed attempt on his life at Calcutta University in 1932 – being seen as a symbol of British rule in India. He was saved by Hassan Suhrawardy (the first Muslim Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta), who was rewarded with a knighthood.

 

But Sir Stanley Jackson is perhaps better known for his cricketing career, with Yorkshire and Captain of England. He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1894 before becoming, in 1905, one of three Yorkshire players to captain England to victory in the Ashes – the other two being Len Hutton and Michael Vaughan (Ray Illingworth was with Leicestershire when he achieved this feat).   He not only won all five tosses but also topped the batting and bowling averages for both sides.  Strangely enough he never captained Yorkshire, whose captain at the time was Lord Hawke, who had himself previously also captained England. Jackson later became President of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club and President of the MCC in 1921.

 

As a small coastal town located between Bridlington and Withernsea along the Holderness Coast, Hornsea is a very vulnerable to sea erosion. The average annual rate of erosion is around 2 metres per year – equivalent to around 2 million tonnes of material – which makes this stretch of coast one of Europe's fastest eroding coastlines. The reason for this fast erosion is that the coast is made of low sedimentary cliffs with thin narrow beaches. Although the underlying bedrock is Cretaceous Chalk, in most places this is covered by soft boulder clay, a glacial till deposited over 18,000 years ago.  The concrete wall that is seen being opened, and which still stands, testifies to how long the danger of erosion to Hornsea has been. In fact some 30 villages have been lost to erosion along this stretch of coast since 1800. The geography department at the University of Hull have developed a website whereby colour aerial photographs showing 60 km of the Holderness coast have been overlaid with first edition 1852 Ordnance Survey maps.

 

Since then the danger has increased, especially with rising sea levels due to global warming (and not just this, in 2007 15 metres of land were swept away following heavy rainfall).   In order to protect the coastline several kinds of construction have been put in place. Besides sea walls, there are also groynes, which are wooden barriers constructed at right angles to the beach to retain material; recently a stone gabion has been put in place, where rocks and boulders are encased in wired mesh; and a steel reventment has been erected to the south of Hornsea, helping to protect the caravan park (there is a concrete reventment further along the coast at Ulroam). There are also off-shore breakwaters, which are large concrete blocks and boulders located off shore to change the direction of waves and reduce longshore drift.  In 1992, just a couple of miles south of Hornsea at Mappleton, large blocks of granite were imported from Norway for the sea defences – two rock groynes and a rock revetment – to protect the B1242 coastal road, at a cost of £2 million.

 

The dangers of further erosion are well understood, and Hornsea does now have a Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) for coastal defence. However, these are non-statutory documents, and have come under some criticism; for example from Friends of the Earth, for, among other things, not going far enough and failing to integrate sufficiently with other environmental concerns. The film shows that there was a political will to combat the erosion of the sea two generations ago, let us hope today’s politicians show the same will for the sake of future generations.

 

References

 

Internetgeography: Holderness Coast

Development of the East Riding Coastline

Holderness Coastline Powerpoint

Erosion and Flooding in the Parish of Hornsea

Environment Agency, Shoreline Management Plans

FOE, Lost At Sea? - Shoreline Management Plans And Coastal Defences