3-047-104 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Houses destroyed at Dover by the fall of a cliff, 1872. Engraving from a photograph by Mr. Buckman. 'The fall of a mass of chalk from the East Cliff...crushed two houses [in East Cliff-terrace], but fortunately without loss of life...The cliff had been observed some days before to be in a dangerous condition; and the families...removed in time with their furniture. At an early hour of the Tuesday morning, during the furious gale that was blowing, and the violent thunderstorm, the fall of the overhanging mass took place. A rumbling, rattling noise was heard, and the fearful crash of hundreds of tons of falling chalk told the rest of the tale...it was found that the landslip with "one fell swoop" had crushed No. 58 to the ground, cutting the walls away as clean as if done with a knife from No. 57; and all that remained to tell that a house once stood upon the site was a shapeless mass of ruins, with broken slates, tiles, rafters, and splinters thrown over the place, while the skeleton roof extended half across the road...The water from the top of the cliff had run over, and...had embedded itself in the foundation and weakened it, till...it had become loosened, and the chalk fell in huge lumps into the back yards of the premises underneath'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.