When I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and implicit assent,
accounts in "Baker's Chronicle" of walking hills and travelling
mountains. John Philips, in his "Cyder," alludes to the credit that was
given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein of humour peculiar
to the author of the "Splendid Shilling."
"I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice
Of Marcely Hill; the apple nowhere finds
A kinder mould; yet 'tis unsafe to trust
Deceitful ground; who knows but that once more
This mount may journey, and his present site
Forsaken, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer
Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange
For law debates?"
But, when I came to consider better, I began to suspect that though our
hills may never have journeyed far, yet that the ends of many of them
have slipped and fallen away at distant periods, leaving the cliffs bare
and abrupt. This seems to have been the case with Nore and Whetham
Hills; and especially with the ridge between Harteley Park and Ward-le-
Ham, where the ground has slid into vast swellings and furrows; and lies
still in such romantic confusion as cannot be accounted for from any
other cause. A strange event, that happened not long since, justifies
our suspicions; which, though it befell not within the limits of this
parish, yet as it was within the hundred of Selborne, and as the
circumstances were singular, may fairly claim a place in a work of this
nature.
The months of January and February, in the year 1774, were remarkable for
great melting snows and vast gluts of rain; so that by the end of the
latter month the land-springs, or lavants, began to prevail, and to be
near as high as in the memorable winter of 1764. The beginning of March
also went on in the same tenor; when, in the night between the 8th and
9th of that month, a considerable part of the great woody hanger at
Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a high freestone
cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of a chalk-pit. It
appears that this huge fragment, being perhaps sapped and undermined by
waters, foundered, and was ingulfed, going down in a perpendicular
direction; for a gate which stood in the field, on the top of the hill,
after sinking with its post for thirty or forty feet, remained in so true
and upright a position as to open and shut with great exactness, just as
in its first situation. Several oaks also are still standing, and in a
state of vegetation, after taking the same desperate leap. That great
part of this prodigious mass was absorbed in some gulf below, is plain
also from the inclining ground at the bottom of the hill, which is free
and unincumbered; but would have been buried in heaps of rubbish, had the
fragment parted and fallen forward. About a hundred yards from the foot
of this hanging coppice stood a cottage by the side of a lane; and two
hundred yards lower, on the other side of the lane, was a farm-house, in
which lived a labourer and his family; and, just by, a stout new barn.
The cottage was inhabited by an old woman and her son, and his wife.
These people in the evening, which was very dark and tempestuous,
observed that the brick floors of their kitchens began to heave and part;
and that the walls seemed to open, and the roofs to crack; but they all
agree that no tremor of the ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever
felt; only that the wind continued to make a most tremendous roaring in
the woods and hangers. The miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to
bed, remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every
moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered edifices. When
daylight came they were at leisure to contemplate the devastations of the
night: they then found that a deep rift, or chasm, had opened under their
houses, and torn them, as it were, in two; and that one end of the barn
had suffered in a similar manner: that a pond near the cottage had
undergone a strange reverse, becoming deep at the shallow end, and so
vice versa; that many large oaks were removed out of their perpendicular,
some thrown down, and some fallen into the heads of neighbouring trees;
and that a gate was thrust forward, with its edge, full six feet, so as
to require a new track to be made to it. From the foot of the cliff the
general course of the ground, which is pasture, inclines in a moderate
descent for half a mile, and is interspersed with some hillocks, which
were rifted, in every direction, as well towards the great woody hanger,
as from it. In the first pasture the deep clefts began; and running
across the lane, and under the buildings, made such vast shelves that the
road was impassable for some time: and so over to an arable field on the
other side, which was strangely torn and disordered. The second pasture-
field, being more soft and springy, was protruded forward without many
fissures in the turf, which was raised in long ridges resembling graves,
lying at right angles to the motion. At the bottom of this enclosure the
soil and turf rose many feet against the bodies of some oaks that
obstructed their farther course, and terminated this awful commotion.
The perpendicular height of the precipice in general is twenty-three
yards; the length of the lapse or slip as seen from the fields below, one
hundred and eighty-one; and a partial fall, concealed in the coppice,
extends seventy yards more; so that the total length of this fragment
that fell was two hundred and fifty-one yards. About fifty acres of land
suffered from this violent convulsion; two houses were entirely
destroyed; one end of a new barn was left in ruins, the walls being
cracked through the very stones that composed them; a hanging coppice was
changed to a naked rock; and some grass grounds and an arable field so
broken and rifted by the chasms as to be rendered for a time neither fit
for the plough nor safe for pasturage, till considerable labour and
expense had been bestowed in levelling the surface and filling in the
gaping fissures.