The theory of evolution, as espoused by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species in 1859, was difficult to accept for religious believers whose assumptions about the world were shattered by it, but Darwin’s The Descent of Man, published 12 years later, posed even greater challenges to people who did accept it, and those challenges continue today. It has often been noted that a disorienting consequence of the Enlightenment was to force people to recognize that humans were not created at the center of the universe in the image of God, but instead on a remote dust-speck of a planet, in the image of mold, rats, dogs, and chimps. For the entirety of recorded history, moral beliefs about humans had been based on the idea that people were in some fundamental sense apart from the rest of nature. Darwin disabused us of that notion once and for all. The scientific and social upheaval that has occurred since Darwin has been an extended process of coming to terms with a unification of humans and the rest of the natural world.

This volume presents a collection of documents concerning the 1953 east coast sea floods, prepared by P.J.O. (John) Trist, who was employed by the National Agricultural Advisory Service (NAAS) of the Ministry of Agriculture (MAF) as county advisory officer (CAO) for East Suffolk from 1946 until his retirement in 1971. Following the 1953 sea floods, Trist planned and organised the recovery of agricultural land in East Suffolk. In June of that year, he was awarded officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition of his ‘services during the recent floods in the Eastern Counties’.

In 1962 the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) compiled an internal report on the effects of the 1953 sea floods on agriculture, prepared by a working party set up by the main advisory committee on sea flooded land. Written in two parts, the report first discusses the disaster: the impact on agricultural land, emergency measures, and government assistance for farming. The second part records the work undertaken to measure, monitor, and mitigate the effects of sea flooding and to restore land to productivity. The report (which was not in public circulation) is the only record for agriculture that covers all six counties that were significantly affected by the 1953 floods.

Trist was a prominent member of the working party responsible for that report. He wrote the first part and he collated national statistics for livestock and farm stock losses, and for acreages of flooded agricultural land. By way of introduction, he described the storm that disturbed the state of the sea and caused the unprecedented surge tide in 1953. He wrote that:

On the evening of Friday 30 January 1953 a fresh strong wind was blowing in the North but somewhat to the North East & rivermen saw to their moorings in the Deben. By 8 a.m. Saturday 31st the wind had swung to North West and was strong. It blew all day and afternoon, intensity increased in strong spasms, by dark there was a roaring gale which kept up its intensity. I went to a hide for pigeons – it had blown down I put it up & it blew on top of me! Gale persisted in increasing force all night with terrific gusts reaching a crescendo like a jet fighter hurtling to earth in a dive. Walls shuddered and window frame shook. High tide in the Deben between 12 – 1 a.m. – I slept. On morning of March 1st, I looked out of bedroom window & the river had approached over Novacastria to within 200 yards of our house. I could see the flood in the Pettistree Hall marsh. The roads were littered with branches. I went down to the river by the sandy lane to the side of the old harbour – debris was 6’ above normal high tide mark. At 11.30 a.m., with still 2 hours before the p.m. high tide about 1.40 p.m., the water was only 2’ below top of Wallers marsh wall with 6’ in the marsh (the tide eventually stayed in the river all day). Flood on marsh & on fields of Cross Farm & Parkers – this was the small local picture – on the beach, houses flooded & timber & boats of Nunn's yard all in a muddle.

Later the paperman arrived with news from Martlesham – it struck there at the bridge in the darkness of early morning. Flood over the road between the Lion & the cottages beyond the P.O. One began to imagine what might have happened up the coast – but I did not guess the magnitude of the disaster until more news came to me over the phone!

[new page]

(See new record on back of this page)

February 1st/2nd – The gale – see notes in green book.

Monday 2 February

Staff on survey & assessed 20,000 acres.

At Beccles NFU dinner at Lowestoft in the evening – the previous year whilst attending this dinner at this time I was called away to the fire at Fern Hill.

“The great sea floods of 1953”

The story of the great sea flood as it affected the Suffolk Coast is long: although comparatively short in duration, it left tragedy, destruction and damage in its wake, which will leave its mark for several years to come. In writing a full account, I find myself a little handicapped, for my concern and responsibility at the time was directed towards the land and I had little first hand knowledge of what went on in the flooded coastal towns.

This record will therefore be largely concerned with the countryside events of which I had immediate experience; but first let me pay tribute to the heroism of many greatly fatigued men and women in all walks of life who tirelessly assisted in the rescue of those who were trapped and marooned. The deeds of some have been recorded; the deeds of many will be remembered, and of others will never be told.

During the evening of Friday, January 30th, a fresh strong wind was blowing in the north with a tendency to north east and it was strong enough to make the rivermen see to their moorings on the Deben. By the morning of the 31st, the wind had swung round to north west and was strong. At noon, I took myself to the Bull on Market Hill, Woodbridge and the wind was blowing hard straight through the front door. Over big and small pots, everyone was discussing the gale and the foreboding of its quarter. Those who lived near the coast or rivers were guessing the possibilities if the wind should continue, for it was a period of peak spring tides at the full moon.

After lunch I had planned to carry a gun over Cross farm for a wild [Page 70] high wind appealed to me as an afternoon for shooting over some turnips, in which the pigeons were particularly interested. I found my hide flat! In the teeth of a roaring gale, I tried to rebuild it but it was impossible to make a job of cover for as fast as a layer of bracken was woven into the network of large branches, it was blown away.

The coastal floods that occurred on the weekend of 31 January and 1 February 1953 represent the worst natural disaster that Britain experienced in the twentieth century. A combination of wind, high tide, and low air pressure caused North Sea levels to rise and surge through sea defences, ravaging over 900 miles (1450 kilometres) of coastline between Yorkshire and Kent. Over 300 people died as a direct result of the flooding, which also damaged homes, industrial facilities, and infrastructure. Several comprehensive and authoritative accounts of sundry aspects of the disaster were published at the time. Yet the story of the 1953 floods did not receive a great deal of attention from writers for several decades thereafter. Perhaps it was felt that there was little more to be said.

Over time, however, a growing popular interest in social history and wider anxieties stemming from an increased risk of flooding due to climate change has stimulated a renewed interest in the events of 1953. Ongoing debates about how, and to what extent, low-lying areas of England can be defended from the sea have drawn on aspects of the human tragedy in 1953 to highlight current and emerging threats to populations in areas since developed on land vulnerable to flooding from tidal surges. Writers concerned with the politics of social responsibility have also questioned whether accounts of the bravery and resilience shown by survivors of the 1953 floods mask the fact that the British people were at the time inadequately protected from the risk of flooding due to a lack of foresight, expertise, and action on the part of central government. As a consequence, changing perceptions of risk and responsibility have affected how the 1953 disaster has been presented at different times.

In places where significant numbers of people perished, the social cost of the disaster has often been commemorated since with public memorials, and the experiences of survivors have been recorded in local histories. The anniversary of the great flood is periodically marked in televisual and print media, with the reproduction of black and white images of the event acting to highlight paradoxically both its separation from our own times and its relative closeness.

“Records in the history of the coastline”

In this chapter, it is only intended to give the reader a brief history of the problem of the defences of the Suffolk Coast line. A comprehensive record would entail a vast amount of research among old books and documents for which I could find insufficient time: and I fear that having gone to such length, the detailed result might only be of interest to a limited few. Therefore my attempt will comprise a few snatches from records, sufficient to be of interest to the general reader; more especially to those who know the Suffolk coast.

With little imagination, it is obvious that the present coastline is ‘comparatively’ new. An ordnance survey map of the coast, if taken every ten years would continue to show that the sea is a master in its own domain and bent on further conquests. For hundreds of years the sea has been gnawing at the coast in some places, whilst in others such as Minsmere and Easton Bavants, the river mouths have silted up. A Minsmere man has taken up this advantage and enclosed the land from the sea – but its enclosure is for such periods as the sea decides in its periodic combined revolution with the north west wind.

The low lying marshlands are comparatively new additions to our land mass and have generally been enclosed from the rivers and the sea during the past four hundred years. In the 16th century, the Dutch were already busy on sea defences and many of their early engineers came over to this country to advise and assist with the work of building sea walls – and still do.

All the river walls which enclose the marshes of the Stour, Orwell, Deben, Ore, Alde, Blyth and the Breydon Water are therefore protecting land which has been won from tidal waters. Throughout the centuries, these marshes [Page 121] have been won and lost and then regained. Some of them to-day are temporarily lost to the tide, and in spite of the urgent need for all the acres of food producing land, the problem of financing these works must loom its critical head and wag words of economic wisdom.

Agricultural lands within all the counties flooded by the sea surge on 31 January–1 February 1953 suffered losses and damages to varying degrees. In order to give context to the figures Trist recorded for East Suffolk, the official statistics for East Riding of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Essex and Kent are summarised below.