You must know, gentle reader, that at Eccles, a village of about a
score inhabitants, on the Norfolk coast, midway between Yarmouth and
Cromer, stands an old church tower. It is quite upon the beach, so that
at spring tides the “send” of the waves comes round the base of the old
flint tower, which must at some day, not far distant,[D] fall with a
mighty crash, a prey to the undermining and gnawing of the hungry sea,
which in its insatiable encroachment annually devours hundreds of tons
of the soft clay cliff, which at no point reaches a very formidable
height.
[D] Eccles Steeple fell during a tremendous gale on January 23rd,
1895, and but little remains of the huge pile except portions of the
larger fragments which are still unburied by the sand.
North and south of Eccles the cliffs give place to sand dunes, or, as
they are locally called, “Marram banks,” which are kept in repair by a
tax levied on all the villages between Norwich and the sea, a distance
of nearly twenty miles. Norwich itself also contributes its quota, as
if the sea once broke through the banks it would, by ditch, marsh, and
river, run quite up to the ancient city, and submerge the portion which
is contiguous to the river Wensum.
The steeple at Eccles (or as it is called locally, and by the thousands
of mariners who know it as a landmark, Eccles Old Tower) stands just
above high-water mark, on the beautiful firm sands, for which the
Norfolk coast is unsurpassed. It is of flintwork, the lower part being
“knapped,” or dressed, and the upper part of the natural flint. It is
a circular tower with an octagonal upper chamber, but it is roofless,
doorless, and windowless, excepting that the apertures, greatly
decayed, still remain. The walls of the tower are unusually massive,
and the whole structure rises to an altitude of nearly seventy feet.
The body of the church was pulled down about 1603, being then in such a
bad state of repair that it was dangerous to passers-by; in fact, one
wall was actually blown down in a gale, and the other razed to prevent
an accident.
The foundations of the church still exist, but buried in the sand.
It was a small church (the nave being only some sixty feet long),
and as its remains are occasionally laid bare, the writer has had
opportunities of measuring the various dimensions. Although these
dimensions might be interesting to an ecclesiologist or archæologist,
they would be wearisome to our readers, as they have nothing whatever
to do with the story.
Round the huge fragments of the recumbent walls may be seen, after a
visit from a heavy north-west gale, the foundations of the cottages
which once formed the village. Cottage walls, out-houses, filled-up
wells, fruit-tree roots, etc., are to be seen in all directions, and
now and then, at rare intervals, a few coins and curiosities are
picked up. When the ruins _are_ laid bare, the place forms what might
aptly be termed the Norfolk Pompeii.
It was while I was sketching the old tower, one autumn day, that I
came upon a fisherman employed in breaking up some wreckage which had
been washed ashore. The timber being full of old bolts, and consisting
mainly of twisted, gnarled oak knees, was of no value save for
firewood, otherwise it would have been in the hands of the coastguard.
He was a very civil but reticent fellow, and I could not get a yarn out
of him by any means without exerting my hypnotic power, which I did,
obtaining, as a result, the following wild story.