Farmhouse left teetering over cliff edge FLATTENED after owner forced to flee just five years after buying £132k home
A THREE-bedroom property hanging perilously over a cliff edge has been demolished – just five years after the owner bought it.
Excavators organised by North Norfolk District Council started at daybreak this morning and took three hours to tear down Cliff Farm in Trimingham.
It has been a race against time to demolish the property before it slipped 150ft on to the beach below, with a new crack appearing in the cliff just last week following heavy rain.
Drone pictures taken this morning show the excavator demolishing the walls and filling skips with debris from the house.
The homeowner, who bought the 18th century property just five years ago at auction for £132,000, was forced to evacuate his home earlier this year.
Recent heavy rainfall has increased erosion in the soft cliffs at Trimingham and there have been frequent landslides over the last few months.
Four years ago, in January 2020, a large part of the cliff eroded near Trimingham House Caravan Park, with tonnes of sand and silt falling onto the beach.
Trimingham Parish Council plans to use drones to plant seeds along the cliffs in a bid to naturally bind them together and slow down the rate of erosion threatening the village.
They have also been trying to use pipes to drain water out of the cliffs.
Contractors used a wrecking machine to level Cliff Farm in Trimingham, after coastal erosion made it unsafe to live in.
The machine’s metal jaws tore into the building methodically, starting with the side of the building nearest the sea.
It lifted away sections of roof, with some tiles dropping over the cliff edge, and knocked down the walls.
The driver lifted the chimney pot safely to the ground with his grab, as the owner had reportedly asked for it as a keepsake if it could be saved.
The home had been teetering on the edge of the cliff – with part of the structure hanging over the drop – for more than a month.
Harry Blathwayt, North Norfolk District Council’s portfolio holder for coast, said: “The owner of the property is obviously very upset to be losing his house.
“It’s a difficult time for him.
“He had hopes to see out a happy retirement in a beautiful position and that’s been taken away from him.”
Mr Blathwayt said it was a “dynamic coastline” in north Norfolk and there are a “number of challenges”.
“There’s the fall of rain, we’ve had masses of rain,” he said.
“We’ve had storms this winter almost all through the winter and it’s led to the cliffs being even more fragile than they normally are.
“We’ve had land slip through groundwater here and that’s how we’ve got to this position today.”
Mr Blathwayt said there were “very few” other properties at risk but they were “very important to the people actually on them”.
“As things develop there will be more,” he said.
“We’re doing a big project at Mundesley and at Cromer to protect houses so hopefully there will be less in the future.”
He said it was not possible to protect every home that is at risk, adding: “We can protect where there is good covering of houses so there’s many people, but for single houses it’s very difficult to make the economics stack up.”
Rob Goodliffe, the council’s coastal transition manager leading the Coastwise project, said that materials from the demolished building will be sorted in the coming days and recycled where possible.
The Coastwise project aims to prepare communities where the coast is eroding.
“Across many parts of England coastal change is happening and has happened for a long time,” Rob said.
“In north Norfolk our coast has been eroding for thousands of years so it’s not a surprise.
“We can’t protect all of our coastline so yes there are other locations in north Norfolk where erosion is having impacts.
Where erosion is threatening British homes
Trimingham is not the only part of Britain where homes are facing the slow and steady threat of erosion.
Pictures published in October 2023 revealed a house teetering on the edge of a cliff in Hemsby, Norfolk.
Homeowners in the village were left in perpetual fear that their properties would be next-in-line for a watery end.
Local authorities warned that home collapses were inevitable.
In January this year a woman who tore down three of her cliffside homes to stop them falling into the sea was revealed to be building four more – in the same place.
Anne Jones, 54, had to demolish three terraced homes in the Suffolk village of Easton Bavents in 2020 after a storm left them teetering on the cliff’s edge.
She wanted to build four more in their place – even though the cliff is eroding at a rate of 15 feet a year.
And in December last year, a heartbroken mother revealed her fears that her family home would fall into the sea as she compared the coastline to “cream cheese”.
Nicola Bayless’s three-bed semi in Happisburgh was less than 50ft from the cliff after storms Babet and Ciaran ravaged the Norfolk coast in the autumn.
Nicola, 48, said: “We haven’t even got into winter, but as we’ve lost that much, we could be forced to leave in springtime or even before Christmas. It’s frightening.”
“We’re already working with some people, property owners in north Norfolk to try to find options and solutions for them in short-term similar need to this property here.
“We’ve also got to look to the medium and longer term and prepare and plan in advance because if we can plan in advance hopefully we can avoid the situations and give people options so we don’t end up with properties getting on cliff edges like this.”
He continued: “Climate change is and will play a role.
“The sea levels here are rising.
“This side of the country is also sinking slightly – we don’t know exactly how much but it could be anywhere between 30cm to a metre or so over this next century.
“That will have a big impact on our coast.
“There’s also potential for increased storminess.
“Storminess can have a big impact as that can affect our beaches, it can lower our beach levels which is our natural form of defence.
“Any changes in weather patterns like prevailing winds – there’s no evidence I’m aware of that this is happening at the moment – but if that did happen that can have a big impact on our coastal processes as well.
“So climate change is a factor, we need to be aware of it, this is the frontline of climate change in the UK.”
Mr Goodliffe said he wanted to thank the homeowner for working with the council and being “very pragmatic”.
“It’s a really difficult situation but where you can have sensible conversations we can work together, we can find a way through,” he said.
“I hope that through the work we’re going to be doing with him in the coming weeks hopefully he’ll be able to walk away with options so that he can make choices and be able to safely get on with his life.”
North Norfolk District Council paid for the demolition through a fund it set up for such instances a number of years ago.
Trimingham residents last month told of how their properties were facing a bitter end following a huge landslip.
They had to move their homes away from the cliff edge twice before – but then decided to leave the buildings to their fate.
A large slip earlier this year left two homes hanging perilously over the cliff edge.
Photos showed the home at Cliff Farm with one corner dangling over the 80ft drop to the beach below.
Debris, including tyres, were tumbling below and littering the beach.
Erosion has become a common sight on the Norfolk coast with several homes also being lost in Hemsby in recent years.
Ex-soldier Lance Martin had to drag his Hemsby home away from a cliff edge twice to stop it falling into the sea before admitting defeat last November.
Speaking last year, Martin said: “The overwhelming feeling amongst the neighbours is one of despair.”