Sandie Sheals finds fossils on the sea shore

This appeared in Discover Dunwich, the historical and archaeological journal of Dunwich Museum, Issue 3, Summer/Autumn 2021.

MANY OF the fossils in Dunwich Museum's collection have been kindly donated by Sandie Sheals. She has a good eye for unusual objects among the shingle.

What makes these many finds extraordinary is that Sandie's usually in Dunwich for just one week a year. How does she do it? What's her secret?

Sheals finds in the collection – top left: whale vertebra; top right: fragment of a mammoth or elephant's tooth; bottom left: fragment of a fossil deer antler; bottom right: a piece of prehistoric mammal bone. Photos: Dunwich Museum.

I've always loved finding things. As a child I was one of those kids who walked looking down at the small things rather than the taking in the big views. I'd find lots of things, from a small weed to an interesting stone, a fossil, bit of glass or something that's been lost by someone recently or thousands of years ago.

When I was about eight I found a bit of Fool's Gold (the mineral iron pyrites) in a piece of flint in a pile of builder's rubble, It made me wonder what else I would find.

I lived in Suffolk as a child and often visited the Suffolk coast. I still visit with my family and my own grown-up children. Every year we stay for a week or two and we do the odd day trips as well. We always seem find something interesting.

We love beachcombing, and the great walk between the mysterious Dunwich and Walberswick.This is where I find most of the treasures I take to Dunwich Museum. I think it's because this is where we spend most of our time, relaxing, playing, watching the wildlife and the sea.

Between Dunwich and Walberswick we've found treasures including fossils, worked flint, semi-precious stones, seed pods from thousands of miles away, bits of coral reef, bits of ancient petrified wood, bricks, pottery and glass. Also bits of ancient leather shoes including very small children’s shoes, fragments of human bone, a World War Two mine and much else that would need identifying.

I've also found things nearby at Southwold and Covehithe and Minsmere beaches too.

I have little knowledge of fossils so I gratefully rely on the Dunwich Museum to look and let me know what my finds are.

Visiting local museums like Dunwich helped me imagine what I might find.

I don't go out to look for fossils or anything in particular. I walk along, zigzagging across the beach looking for anything that has an interesting shape or colour or just looks out of place among the shingle. The dark brown colours and shapes of bone fossils stand out against the pebbles.

Advice? Go out to enjoy the walk.You will find something.

Sandie Sheals

"My dad saw Shuck in the Seventies!"

This article first appeared in Fortean Times magazine, issue FT412;58-59, December 2021.

I investigate reports of big cats in Suffolk, I've received over a hundred of these over the past seven years. But while seeking testimony on Suffolk big cat sightings, a surprising number of unsolicited accounts of encounters with the phantom East Anglian hellhound Black Shuck seem to come my way. Shuck can't possibly exist, of course. Nonetheless, I still receive testimony of his antics in the country of Suffolk. An interesting and surprisingly consistent pattern in this handful of Shuck reports is that most of them describe encounters from 40 years ago, usually reported by sons keen to tell me how "my dad saw Shuck in the Seventies."

Detail of the coat of arms of Bungay on the "Welcome to Bungay, a fine old town" sign. Bungay is the epicentre of Black Dog culture in Suffolk.

During Shuck's long history, the two peaks in reported East Anglian Shuck activity occurred in the 1920s and in the groovy, cool, fab era that was the 1970s. The ancient horror that was East Anglia's Black Shuck was at large scaring the residents of Seventies Suffolk as never before.

Ivan A.W. Bunn's excellent contemporary analysis East of England Shuck traditions, "Shuckland: Analyzing the Hell out of the Beast" remains unequalled to this day.

Among the many 1970s Shuck experiences that came to Bunn's attention was one via a letter from 1973, in which Lincolnshire man with no previous knowledge of East Anglian black dog traditions told how he was laying drainage pipes across the marshes behind the massive Holy Trinity Church at Blythburgh (so huge it's known as "the Cathedral of the Marshes"). Suddenly, he heard a dog loudly panting behind him. He turned round and there was... nothing. It was only when he told some locals in the pub that they produced a book of local Shuck stories.

Although Bunn's researches were turning up "hitherto unrecorded characteristics" in Seventies Shuck sightings, he observed at the time that 1970s reports don't mention the more spectacular aspects that Shuck displayed in earlier times. Seventies Shuck tended not to be headless, not to have one eye in the centre of its head, not to have horns, not to wear chains, nor to resemble a calf or grow in size or shape-shift or foretell deaths or explode. He didn't even seem to walk in step with witnesses that much.

Even Shuck's red eyes were seldom mentioned anymore. He was increasingly just a strange, rather big dog that appeared out of nowhere. He still did his vanishing act, although witnesses just reported not being able to work out where he could have gone. Modern Shuck witnesses were left wondering whether they’d in fact seen a huge, black but otherwise ordinary dog.

They came thick and fast, the Seventies Shuck sightings, particularly around Lowestoft, Suffolk's next biggest town after Ipswich, where Shuck chronicler Ivan Bunn is still based. A woman spotted Black Shuck in the bushes at Lowestoft's Belle Vue Park in 1975, although her husband saw nothing. Folklorist Theodora Brown claims to have had an encounter of her own with the Black Dog in the churchyard of St Mary's Bungay in the 1970s. A Mrs Whitehead saw a death-portent Shuck in the streets of Bungay at the moment her mother died, while Police Constable Jenkins had several seventies Shuck experiences around the A12 road at Blythburgh. Peter Jennings's Haunted Suffolk records an early Seventies sighting of a large white dog seen by a woman walking in Beccles cemetery. The dog faded away as she approached. Keith Flory contacted Ivan Bunn's Hidden East Anglia team to tell them about the night in 1973 when, motorbiking home from Woodbridge, he was followed by a Great Dane-sized Black Shuck who bounded after his motorcycle all the way down the town's Old Barrack Road - effortlessly keeping up with him all the way until Flory finally lost his pursuer in Seckford Hall Road.

Old Barrack Rood, Woodbrige, scene of a Seventies motorcycle chase featuring Black Shuck

Some 40 years later, a few of my Suffolk Shuck informants said they'd never before communicated to anybody else what their fathers had related to them in the Shuck department, one informant felt they could only tell me because their father had since passed away. Some informants expressed regret at not having pressed their dear departed dads for more on their Shuck sightings. It's as if there's a complicated Shuck-experience dynamic in father-and-son relationships in the county of Suffolk.

The other pattern emerging in these testimonies of Seventies Suffolk Shuck sightings is more the absence of a pattern - they are all very, very different. While the magical powers of Shuck seem to have been gradually shaved away over time, the sheer variety of shuck encounters has if anything increased.

A man from Rattlesden told me his father, back in the 1970s, was driving on the A140 from Ipswich to Stowmarket one night when he collided with Black Shuck in the dark. He got out of the car to take a look and found... nothing. The next day there was a strange deposit on the bonnet of his car, "like eggshells." Another bizarre encounter narrative came from a man identifying himself as "Major Pickle" on Twit'er. He disclosed how his father (eventually) told him that on 5th August 1973, he (Major Pickle's father) and a friend were driving from the small, mostly agricultural village of Henstead, west of the A12 to the coast at Bawdsey to go canoeing.

Coming round a corner on the road near Henstead, the canoeists saw a huge black dog with something like a mane, standing in the road just looking at them. It "seemed to be there and was just gone" according to Pickle's account. When his dad got out of the car for a look, there was nothing to see except (then) open fields. It was what happened next that made those two 1970s canoe enthusiasts think they'd had a brush with a beast of ill omen. The friend with whom my informant's dad went canoeing always mapped and researched their canoeing routes. They'd regularly been canoeing off the coast at Bawdsey before, but "they never encountered anything like this". Their canoe went into a "freak tidal whirlpool", they capsized and were almost drowned. They were washed up on the Ministry of Defence's Bawdsey Island Radar Station, "an interesting experience during the Cold War". Their inadvertent trespassing in a then restricted Cold War-era defence installation meant they kept quiet about the events of that day.

Major Pickle said of his dad's encounter, "To the day he died he was convinced it was Shuck and the story never changed in any way." Could it have been a big cat? Dad insisted it was a really big dog.

Folklorist Theo Brown claims to have had an encounter with Black Shuck in the churchyard of St. Mary's, Bungay, in the 1970s.

Jim Bradley, a Norfolk birdwatcher, contacted me to tell me how "my friend's father who I would say is now in his 60s" encountered the Black Dog himself "in Orford in the late 70s... He and a friend were out walking and a black dog, calf-sized, wandered onto the track and stared at them. It eventually lumbered off into the scrub. They followed its path but the beast had seemingly disappeared, no trace whatsoever."

This wave of Seventies Suffolk Shuck sightings may have been Shuck's last hurrah, after that reports of Shuck encounters tailed off. The few Shucks that have manifested in Suffolk since then seem to have lost many of their supernatural powers. Christopher Reeve, co-author of Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay, told me that by 2014 he couldn't find any adults who would give him new accounts of Shuck experiences. Small children still seem to see Shuck locally, or at least have no inhibitions about relating other people's sightings.

Bungay's football team is the Bungay Town FC, known as the Black Dogs, although its training ground is just a couple of hundred metres over the Norfolk border in Ditchingham.

While "my dad (or my dad's best mate) saw Shuck in the seventies" accounts emerging over 40 years later are still surprisingly common, accounts of more recent Suffolk shuck experiences are rare. From Rendlesham Forest comes a 1980s story of an encounter by Paul and Jane Jennings “on a cold winter’s afternoon in 1983”, as related by ufologist Nick Redfern in his article "Weirdness in the woods". The Jenningses encountered a big black dog on the forest path. Jane said the beast's head "was clearly canine in appearance… much larger than that of any normal dog. Yet... its body seemed to exhibit characteristics that were distinctly feline". It had an "eerily mournful expression upon its face... Suddenly, the beast began to 'flicker on and off for four or five times', then finally vanished” leaving a strange metallic smell.

A post on the Centre for Fortean Zoology's blog from "Woody" related his how he and his dog Max had a 1994 Shuck encounter on one of their regular runs around "Martlesham Creek... by the river Deben, that runs to nearby Woodbridge." It was there that Woody became "aware of being watched, checking behind me about 50 yards back stood a huge black dog, my own wouldn’t take his eyes off it. It stood stock still, watching us ... (I) put my dog on a lead” and walked out of sight of it." Max turned again and growled. "There stood the big black dog again... I began to worry a bit." There followed three or four more sightings of the same black dog, always the same distance away, always with the same stance, and "with me very nervously looking over my shoulder until we got level with Martlesham Church, when Max turned, growled and practically broke the lead in his eagerness for a fight only... there was nothing there!" Woody and Max then "ran like hell the remaining mile... home and locked the doors." Woody admitted "the dog I saw may just have been someone's... be it a bloody big one."

This dog from the coat of arms of the Gooch family watches over the Benacre Estate on the North Suffolk coast.

One of my unsolicited Shuck informants told me a story of "a guy" out near Coddenham, north of Ipswich, who in the early 2010s took his dog for a walk on a windy, rainy day and they were apparently chased by a big dog, as soon as it got nearer to them it would vanish and the process started again."

Twenty-first century Shuck witnesses often concede it could have been an ordinary dog they saw. When a "shaken driver" reported his encounter with "a white wolf stalking the back roads of Suffolk" in 2009, he believed he’d seen an escaped exotic animal rather than a Suffolk Shuck phantom. Nigel Stebbing, who was able to photograph the "white wolf" from his van at Kersey, near Hadleigh. didn't think he'd seen a phantom hellhound. (There's a tradition of a White Shuck around Woodbridge and a ghostly "White Dawg" in Lowestoft, though.) By 1998, a couple from Bungay visiting Suffolk's Dunwich Forest who heard panting or growling no longer assumed - as did our pipe-laying Lincolnshire man back in the 1970s - that it was Black Shuck. They were instead convinced they'd heard an Alien Big Cat.

© Matt Salusbury 2021

A talbot, a white dog, on the coat of arms of the South Suffolk town of Sudbury. There are white Shucks as well as Black Shuck in Suffolk too. Woodbridge has a White Shuck and Lowestoft has a ghostly "White Dawg."

Wreck’s identity remains an enigma

Some think that this ship's chest on display in Dunwich Museum, believed to be 15th- or 16th-century from Belgium or the Netherlands, could have been recovered from the Dunwich Bank Wreck. The elaborate locking mechanism certainly resembles Spanish Armada ship's chests recovered from Armada wrecks off the coast of Northern Ireland and now in the Castle Museum, Derry.

Graham Scott gives an update on the mysterious Dunwich Bank Wreck

This article first appeared in Discover Dunwich, issue 3, summer/autumn 2021

THE DUNWICH Bank Wreck is 700 metres out to sea off Dunwich Heath, roughly level with the Coastguard Cottages there. It was discovered by Stuart Bacon in the 1990s, Stuart hauled up the magnificent bronze cannon that greets you as you come in through the front door of Dunwich Museum. (See here for more on the Dunwich Dives and the Dunwich Bank Wreck cannon.)

Following in the footsteps of Stuart is Graham Scott, Senior Marine Archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology, who has been on several dives on the Dunwich Bank Wreck. He gave an update on the most recent (2020) dive on the Wreck to volunteers of Dunwich Museum at a talk via Zoom in March.

The Wreck is one of the most challenging marine archaeology environments in UK waters, "extremely difficult to investigate," says Graham. His team found the wreck wrapped in recently abandoned fishing nets, which they had to cut free before they could proceed. Visibility is poor to non-existent, with peat and sediment emptying into the sea from nearby rivers, constantly swirling around in a strong current. It seems the Wreck is gradually being buried by silt. Sometimes the divers could only work for an hour a day on the wreck, so gruelling were conditions there.

Little remains of the actual ship. What Stuart Bacon's team - working in poor visibility – took to be ship's timbers now appear to be natural wood that's been washed out to sea.

The Wreck may be scattered over a larger area than first thought. It’s difficult to date the wreck with certainty. Some ships from both the Dutch and English fleets were lost at the inconclusive Battle of Sole Bay (1672), several miles out to sea from Southwold, there are contemporary accounts of the masts of sunken fire ships visible above the waves south east of Aldeburgh soon after the battle. It's more likely the Wreck was a Spanish Armada ship, or possibly even a cargo ship transporting artillery for the army or navy of England's King Henry VIII (1509-1547) - he ordered many bronze cannons from Belgium and Germany.

Stuart Bacon's Dunwich Dives recovered these cannon balls, which were probably stacked in the hold at one point. These ones - on display at our special exhibition on the Dunwich Dives, are too small for the Dunwich Bank Wreck Cannon. There are smaller some iron swivels cannons for use in close-quarter combat still in the Wreck, these cannonballs could have been for them.

Dunwich Museum's magnificent bronze Dunwich Bank Wreck Cannon. Strong, swirling currents bringing with it silt and sand than empty into the sea from nearby rivers has sandblasted away most of the detail and decoration after 400 years on the seabed.

At least two bronze cannons rest on the seabed around the Wreck. On a rare day with some visibility in the Dunwich Dives the word "Remigy" could be read, engraved on one of these. ("Gun 3" - which was subsequently stolen from the seabed sometime around 2012.) This led to the identification of Dunwich Museum's cannon as one made by Belgium-based German gunfounder Remigy de Halut.

However, gun experts Ruth Brown and Kay Smith note that the squared-off ring on the breach of the Dunwich Museum cannon, its "breach dolphin" (a dolphin shaped handle or knob on the end of the breach) and the "bearded man's head" decoration round its muzzle are signatures of Gregor Löffler, another Hapsburg Empire gunfounder based in Augsburg in Germany.

Then there's a 1684 Royal Ordnance Office report of a Mr Lincoln being dispatched to Knodishall (not far from Dunwich) to buy a "brass" (bronze) cannon. Had it been recovered from the Dunwich Bank Wreck?

The "bearded man" decoration on the Dunwich Bank Wreck cannon's muzzle is now only just visible.

The word "Remigy" visible on the muzzle of another cannon, this one cast by him is outside the Town Hall in Enkhuizen, Netherlands. The cannon on which the name "Remigy" was briefly seen amid the Dunwich Bank Wreck was later stolen.

While a pair of dolphin handles on bronze cannons was almost standard throughout Europe at the time, a "breach dolphin" like this one on the Dunwich Bank Wreck cannon in Dunwich Museum is thought to be a signature of gunfounder Gregor Gregor Löffler. The dolphin comes out of a circular ring which is slightly squared off (not very visible anymore in the worn-away features of this cannon), also a feature of cannons cast by Löffler.

Another Gregor Löffler cannon, this one's a smaller piece from when he still worked in Innsbruck, Austria. It shows the characteristic Gregor Löffler "beared head ornament" more clearly. By kind permission of Peter Finer antique arms and armour dealers.

Words and photos © Matt Salusbury

The Light Ages (book review)

This review first appeared in Fortean Times magazine.

The Light Ages - a Medieval journey of discovery

Seb Falk, Penguin/Allen Lane, 2020

£10.99 paperback, 416 pages, bibliography, index

Front cover image for the purposes of criticism or review, fair dealing under the Copyright Act 1988

The myth of the "darkness of the Middle Ages" descending after the fall of Rome is dispelled in The Light Ages. Here historian, science historian and broadcaster Seb Falk demonstrates that "medieval science" is no contradiction in terms, while religion and science weren't antagonists in the medieval world. Falk illustrates this through a fascinating biography of John Westwyk, a thirteenth-century Benedictine monk based at St Albans abbey who wrote important treatises on astronomy, accidentally rediscovered in the 1950s.

The astrolabe was a flattened, portable model of the solar system made from brass discs slotted on top of each other, through which you could measure the "ascensions" of moving celestial bodies.

Functioning regardless of whether the universe was geocentric or heliocentric, astrolabes calculated how many daylight hours in each day, reckoned the dates of Easter, predicted when the heavens were moving into zodiacal "houses" whose influence may affect us, forewarned of planting seasons heralded by the appearance of certain stars visible just before dawn. Such calculations may have been a form of meditation for monks. Physicians' astrolabes chose auspicious times to administer bleedings. Previous inmates at St Albans had produced new discs to add to the astrolabe "for all altitudes.: Westwyk added a guide to these, demystifying earlier manuals and correcting their errors.

A copper-alloy astrolabe from the British Museum's collection. Dating from 1326, this example is believed to be the earliest surviving one made in England. It was on show at the BM's recent Thomas Beckett exhibition. Photo: Matt Salusbury

Astrolabes dominate The Light Age, and while the astrolabe was a "simplified" instrument compared to its predecessors, after a 39-page digression on astrolabes I was struggling with the azimuth and the obliquity of the elliptic. Aaargh!

This was an exciting time for astronomy. A standardised 24-hour day with 60-minute hours was proliferating, along with clocks. The long transition to Arabic numerals was apace. There was a flood of philosophical works emerging in Arabic, Greek and Hebrew - pagan sciences could now become "the handmaiden of religion".

My favourite section of The Light Age describes the rise of the universities. In 1336 the Pope called on monastic orders to send one in 20 monks to university. Today's Worcester College, Oxford began life as a Benedictine institution. As a graduate returning to the monastery, Westwyks' privileges included being excused midday Mass. The new universities were particularly awestruck by the recent rediscovery of Aristotle, his works quickly dominated the curriculum. Periodic ecclesiastical bans on the study of Aristotle were largely ignored.

Around 1370 Westwyk left for the bleak cliff-top subsidiary monastery at Tynemouth, taking with him some astronomy works to copy. Tynemouth was three degrees further north than Classical philosophers had ever been, so Westwyk wrote a treatise with instructions on engraving an astrolabe dial for "ascensions" at a new latitude, 55 degrees North.

Like many clerics, Westwyk joined the debacle that was the 1382 Bishop's Crusade (better known as Despenser's Crusade after Henry de Despenser, Bishop of Norwich). This Crusade fought not in the Holy Land, but in Belgium. Led by an incompetent warrior Bishop of Norwich, the crusaders -n outnumbered by Franco-Flemish forces loyal to anti-pope Clement - fought with extraordinary courage, the clerics in particular. They withdrew to England in disgrace within six months. Westwyk kept his head down for the next decade.

Westwyk next pops up at London's Benedictine inn, where he wrote a manual - in English, daring and innovative at the time - with instructions for building an enormous astrolabe six feet in diameter. This manual, Equatorie, is a computer and equation solver. Its 140 pages of tables allow the user to calculate the motion of the planets back to the birth of Christ and to any point in the future, adjusting for leap years, aided by charts for roots and "sexagesimal ninths". Nothing equalled the Equatorie until the first printed astronomy textbooks appeared nearly a century later.

An astrolabe of 1221 vintage, inscribed with Arabic letters, in London's Science Museum.

VERDICT: Joyous celebration of Medieval science - although a bit astrolabe-heavy! **** (four stars)

© Matt Salusbury 2021

Vote for Matt Salusbury for a London seat on the NUJ’s National Executive Council (NEC)

Photo: © Hazel Dunlop

As Chair of NUJ London Freelance Branch (LFB), the Union's biggest and most active Branch, I have been providing leadership and pastoral care to members throughout the pandemic, chairing lively online Branch meetings where there are often over 70 members present.

I have been deputy editor of the Freelance, the online and print newsletter and resource for the NUJ's freelances, since 2006, re-elected annually. For the Freelance, I have covered developments in the Union and throughout our industry in detail for many years. This has given me a unique insight into the workings of the NUJ and the issues that affect and engage our members. The role has involved working together with members, officials and staff across the Union.

I also worked part-time as a staff journalist for many years, as a commissioning editor for a business-to-business magazine, so I understand issues that affect staffers as well as freelances - I have in the past called on the services of one of our excellent NUJ Organisers when I was myself facing redundancy.

I am also a former NUJ representative on the Writers' Organisations Advisory Group and a former Freelance Industrial Council representative on the Newspapers and Agencies Industrial Council. I currently sit on the Journalist Editorial Advisory Board.

I have served on the Freelance Industrial Council representing our London members in the sector since the late noughties. COVID and changes in the industry are now leading to increasing numbers of London's staff journalists being made redundant and many are moving to the freelance sector. This will mean the sector will need more representation within the Union.

However, I feel that with my background, experience and insights I can conscientiously represent all of London's NUJ members on the National Executive Council, whether staff or freelance, whatever their employment status.

Please give me your first vote and also give your second vote to London Freelance Branch's Deborah Hobson.

"I can't think of a better candidate for the NEC than Matt Salusbury.

I've known Matt for a great many years – having sat with him on London Freelance Branch Committee and seen him chair meetings over the last year in very difficult circumstances. In the past, I have sat with him on the Freelance Industrial Council, and know well the depth and breadth of his experience across the media – both nationally and internationally – and his commitment to the NUJ and trade unionism.

I've seen first-hand how his work on the Freelance has given him a detailed insight into and understanding of issues that affect freelances, and his experience as a staff member broadens that understanding. As co-editor of the Freelance he has become an invaluable source of information for members about our industry and extremely knowledgeable about the Union in general.

He is never afraid to question and challenge the status quo, while always grasping the complexities of issues as they arise. He is an excellent communicator, always ready to take the time to explain the mysteries of the NUJ to lay members and to give support to colleagues.

The freelance sector is growing throughout the union. Matt's understanding of the sector and how this fits in with and impinges on other sectors will be an invaluable contribution to the executive, while his firm grip on the basics of trade unionism and understanding of how the union as a whole works will mean he can be relied upon to work hard for all sectors and regions."

Jenny Vaughan – Treasurer, NUJ London Freelance Branch, NUJ Gold Badge owner

"For years Matt has been working hard and unshowily for LFB, FIC and the NUJ generally. Lately he's chaired the Branch with great care for firm-fairness in all ways, while sustaining an affable, relaxed atmosphere. Co-editing with Mike Holderness, he's ensured that the Freelance newssheet is always cogent - and there on time. He's a wholly decent, good man."

Phil Sutcliffe, NUJ Member of Honour, LFB membership secretary, ex-NEC/FIC, etc.

See also: http://www.londonfreelance.org/fl/2109elec.html

Dunwich and climate change

David Sear, Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Southampton and a Trustee of Dunwich Museum, talked to Discover Dunwich editor Matt Salusbury about the impact of climate change on Dunwich throughout its history.

A much shorter version of this article (450 words) appears on issue 3 of Discover Dunwich, Dunwich Museum's newsletter for visitors, volunteers and supporters.

All Saint's Church, Dunwich, not long before it went over the cliff in 1919. From Dunwich Museum's Nicholson Collection of postcards, out of copyright

MS: I always believed that the erosion and storms that gradually destroyed Dunwich was just weather – that the events like the big storms weren't anything to do with climate change. Or were they? Were the big storms like the 1286 one and the two that followed later anything to do with climate change? Or are there other factors involved?

DS: This reminds me of the old adage "Weather is what you get, climate is what you expect" - Climate is the average state of the weather over time – so climate change is an alteration in that mean state.

So for example, right now we are in a world where the mean global temperatures are rising rapidly – so it's referred to as climate change. Back in the 13th century the northern hemisphere was in a period sometimes called the "medieval warm period", when average northern hemisphere temperatures were warmer. Later in the 16th through to the mid half of the 19th century average northern hemisphere temperatures were cooler – this period is the one referred to as the "Little Ice Age".

When the mean state of the climate changes, this results in changes in the larger scale climate systems such as the pattern, strength and extent of high or low pressure systems, the extent of sea ice, and temperature of the North Atlantic. Together these alter the path and strength of storms tracking across the UK.

We have seen this recently with the increased frequency of flooding in Cumbria, for example in 2009 and 2015. Individually these were storms (weather), but collectively we see the last two decades as a storm rich period for the UK and Northwest England in particular.

To go back to Dunwich, the storms of 1250, 1286/7 (beginning on New Year's Eve 1286 and lasting for several days) come during a period of increased storminess in the North sea, when Atlantic pressure systems favoured intense North sea storms with larger waves from the north east. Sediment transport (the movement of sediment caused by the action of the waves) would there have been south along the coastline at Dunwich, and based on what we now know about the conditions that lead to rapid cliff erosion at Dunwich, we can conclude that there was probably no protecting beach for the cliffed sections and that the land on which the town was built towards the northern areas, was probably lower, leading to inundation of the town in those areas.

Was this climate change? Well, by the definition of "change in mean state" of the climate, yes it was. But the difference to today is that 800 years ago, this was the result of natural variability – possibly driven by increased volcanic eruption activity (1258 was the largest eruption in the last 8000 years) and increasing solar activity. Similarly, the Little Ice Age period of increased storminess particularly around the late 17th into early 18th century was a period of natural climatic variability in which storm frequency at Dunwich increased, and cliff erosion rates accelerated resulting in the loss of St Peter's churchand the town goal and market place.

Current climate change is different, and is driven by increased warming resulting from the cumulative build up of carbon emissions in our atmosphere. The difference now is that the rate of change and the magnitude of change are now far faster and larger than those that drive the storminess of the 13th and 17th century - we are if you like in uncharted skies.

What we do know is that such change must alter the strength, path and frequency of storms tracking across the UK, and we must therefore expect changes in wave climate and shingle transport along the coast. What we cannot do with certainty is predict how all these processes will interact at Dunwich on a specific day or year. What past tells us though is that the current period of cliff stability will change at some point, and we do know the signs to look for. This means that there is a really important role for statutory bodies like the Environment Agency, East Suffolk Council and local residents to work together, to identify signs of change in the beaches and cliffs in Sole Bay, and to see things a bit more widely than just the beach and cliffs at Dunwich, because in the end Dunwich is one part of a vast connected system where climate, winds, waves and shingle movement interact with humans to change our exposure to risk. After all, if there was no Dunwich, would we be talking about cliff and beach erosion at all?

MS: I recall there there was a Little Ice Age in Britain’s history, when the port of Aberdeen was iced in and there were regular Frost Fairs on the Thames. Do we know what effect this Little Ice Age had on Dunwich, did it have any effect on the coastline at Dunwich?

During the Little Ice Age (c. 1450-1850) - a period of cooler average northern hemisphere temperatures, there were indeed frost fairs on the Thames. During this period intense storm activity resulted in major cliff erosion at Dunwich – with the loss of St John's church 1540s, St Peter's in 1695-1702, Cock and Hen Hills (the great storm of 1740). Within this period there were also quieter phases when cliff erosion rates were lower, and Dunwich still sent ships to fish the waters of Iceland. There would almost certainly have been impacts on fishing and other parts of the economy due to cooler winters and stormier conditions – in fact a project might be for historians to look through the records for the area during these times to see how the regional and local economy responded.

MS: I frequently show visitors to the Museum the series of photos of All Saints going over the cliff in the space of about 20 years, ending with just that last buttress left in 1919. And the extract from the Domesday Book in the Museum tells how some landowners has lost half their land in the time since "Kind Edward" (the Confessor) so in the space of less than 20 years between the end of Edward's reign and the Domesday survey. This compares to today, when there is much less erosion of the beach and cliffs at Dunwich. Do we know what factors have slowed down erosion in recent times?

Bits of stonework from Dunwich churches hauled up during the Dunwich Dives. These are thought be be fragments of St Peter's Church, All Saints and the Templar Church. Photo: Matt Salusbury

The slow down in erosion has been marked in the last 20 years but is part of a pattern of slowing down that started around the 1920s, and may be related to the growth of the off shore Dunwich banks. Wave energy and direction at a coast is largely driven by wind strength and fetch – the distance over which the wind can interact with the sea surface to create waves. As waves approach the coastline, shallowing depths increase the friction on the water and this slows down the movement of the water, causing the waves to increase in steepness until unable to support themselves, they break, releasing the energy stored in the wave and driving sand and shingle transport (movement of sand and shingle due to the action of the waves). Off shore bars do the same although not always to the point of wave breaking.

The Dunwich bank (formerly two banks), grew and coalesced into a single bank sometime between 1867 and 1922. At the same time the depth over the banks shallowed by two meters. Wave modelling has demonstrated that the energy of wavs at the coastline at Dunwich is reduced by the Dunwich bank so one part of the story must relate to this natural protection. In the last 20 years the bar depths have deepened from a peak in 1980s as the Dunwich bank has flattened and migrated towards the coastline.

Dunwich cliffs and beach with the remains of All Saints Church still visible, at the turn of the 20th century. Dunwich Museum's Nicholson Collection of postcards, out of copyright.

The other main cause of slow down in cliff erosion is the sustained presence of a protecting beach. To get this you need a supply of sediment to offset the removal of beach shingle by wave action. The slow down since the 1920’s may in part be a result of the period of high rates of cliff erosion, coupled with a reducing wave energy that tipped the balance in favour of net accumulation of sediment at the tow of the cliffs at Dunwich. Subsequently, revegetation of the cliff face, and continual sediment supply from updrift areas has maintained a buffer between the sea and the tow of the cliffs. Recent growth of sea cabbage onto the single at the back of the beach at Dunwich points to the stability of the beach in this area. Cliff erosion over the last 10 years has been mainly caused by saturation and flows resulting from long periods of wet weather and intense rainstorms, coupled with animal burrowing and tree fall. Since these processes are very localised, so too is the cliff collapse.

The challenge in all this is that while the cliffs at Dunwich (by which I mean from the Flora Tearooms behind the beach to the end of Greyfriars monastery wall) are relatively stable now, the accumulation of beach material inevitably means a lack of material to beaches down drift unless there is sufficient supply and transport to supply them. What will be interesting to look out for is a change in the activity of the cliffs from Greyfriars to Minsmere naoture reserve, and to see how the beach elevations change along this section.

MS: At the recent Dunwich Museum talk by Graham Scott of Wessex Archaeology on the Dunwich Bank Wreck earlier this year, he said the wreck was being buried, with a lot of it buried since its discovery in the 1990s by Stuart Bacon. You said in the chat during the talk that there was the prospect of the wreck being uncovered again by some natural processes. (Did I get that right?) Can you explain that?

DS: One thing we know from Stuart Bacon's descriptions of diving at Dunwich is that the sea bed – by which I mean the sand banks, are highly changeable. He writes of ruins visible in one dive, being no longer there by the next time he dived. Overlaying historic bathymetric charts of the sea bed confirms this dynamism over the last 200 years (See Fig 43, pg 106 Sear et al 2012 Report to English Heritage) – documenting the movement of millions of tons of sand and shingle by tides, storms and waves. Over the time since I worked on the Dunwich surveys starting in 2008, the Dunwich bank has moved closer towards and coast and flattened, partly burying the sites of St Peter's church, St Nicholas's church and St Katharine's chapel. At the same time, reducing sand depths in the eastern part of the site may reveal some of the ruins of earlier churches like St John's and St Martin's.

Similarly, shifting sand bank around the Dunwich bank will bury and re-expose the site many times. Since we do not monitor these changes very often – it is only when divers or surveyors work on them that we discover what the conditions are – I've often though it would be fun to have a small buoy anchored over the ruins of St Peter's church, the largest area of ruins so far discovered, measuring the turbidity (the cloudiness or haziness) of the water and taking webcam images during periods when the water was clear during daytime. These could be relayed by an internet link into a screen in the Museum.

MS: Do we know whether the story of Dunwich being lost to the sea is one of constant erosion, or were there periods in history when the erosion reduced or stopped, or even the coastline recovering?

The cruel North Sea has claimed the city of Dunwich over the years. Photo: Matt Salusbury

DS: We do indeed, thanks to extensive research and analysis published in Sear et al. (2012) Dunwich Project Report 5883: Mapping and assessing the inundated medieval town – free to access on the Dunwich - the Search for Britian's Atlantis website or from Historic England Historic England.

Cliff erosion at Dunwich and indeed the whole Suffolk coastline is driven by two processes; the presence or absence of a protective beach at the toe of a cliff which significantly influences the rate of erosion and the height and frequency of large waves relative to beach height. Cliff erosion by the sea can only happen if the toe of the cliff is reached by waves of sufficient power to remove cliff materials. Conversely, the height of a beach is the result of the balance between the volume of sediment being supplied to the beach and the rate at which that sediment is being transported away from that point. Thus, the dynamics of the Suffolk coastline are strongly linked to the processes that generate cliff erosion and the transport of sediment.

Over the last one thousand years, the principal influence on these processes has been storm surges and storm waves, whereas the rise in relative sea level has had less effect locally. (Burningham and French 2017, 84; Sear et al. 2008; 2012, 14; Hamilton et al. 2019, 155; Shennan et al., 2018, 150.) This is because the direction and the magnitude of waves — their power and height — is the main influence on the volume and direction of sediment transport along this coast. The passage of very low pressure systems into the North Sea drives storm surges and creates high sea levels independent of wave height which flood low lying areas, breach shingle barriers, and erode beaches and cliffs: such as occurred in 1953 or the more recent 2013 event.

Intervening periods of lower wave energy tend to reconstruct breaches in barriers and to elevate beaches after normal winter storms. Another feature that can also influence the transport of sediment is the presence or absence, and the growth and decline, of off shore banks, because these alter the amount and direction of wave energy at a given point along the coastline. For example, the northern extension of an off shore bank at Dunwich during the early twentieth century appears to have reduced wave energy at Dunwich cliffs, contributing to the rebuilding of the beach and the reduction in the speed of cliff erosion.

The direction and size of waves, and the elevation and direction of storm surges, are ultimately controlled by the strength and direction of storm tracks from the north Atlantic Ocean. Storms that track over the north of England and Scotland are formed of low pressure systems, which create storm surges that travel south down the North Sea, and which are then followed by gales from the south and south east as the low pressure system heads east. These gales generate large waves from the south east that transport sediment north along the Suffolk coast.

Conversely, storm tracks passing along the English Channel or from the south create large storm waves from the northeast, driving drift south along the coast. The dominance of northerly or southerly storm tracks over the British Isles is caused by variations in the jet stream position over the north Atlantic, and by the spatial patterns and magnitudes of northern Atlantic ocean temperatures. In combination, these create low pressure systems that determine their route of travel over Britain. A measure of the pressure gradients in the North Atlantic, and by extension a measure of whether northern or southern storm tracks are dominant in the North Sea, is the North Atlantic Oscillation or NAO. During periods of positive NAO, the dominant storm tracks are generally from the north and followed by south to south easterly gales, which transport shingle north along the Suffolk coast. During negative NAO, storm tracks from the south generate north easterly gales with large waves, which transport shingle south along the Suffolk coast.

In addition to these natural forces, human interventions also alter the process of sediment transport and the patterns of drift and accretion along the coastline. Attempts to protect beaches and prevent cliff erosion by constructing groynes to alter the rate of longshore drift are well known.

So to answer your question directly, during the late 19th century into the early 20th century, beach levels at Dunwich cliffs were very low, and so it did not take large wave heights to reach the tow of the cliff. The frequency of erosion was higher which, coupled to a period of positive NAO and large storms combined to increase cliff erosion rates to their highest in the last 150 years – for the period 1894 – 1906 cliff retreat at Dunwich average 8.8m per year. Between 1930 and 1970 this fell to less than 0.5 metres a year, before rising to 2.8 m per year in the early to mid 1990’s before again falling to less than 1m a year since 2007. Rates of cliff retreat between 1695 – 1765 when the Church of St Peter’s was lost, were around 2-3m per year.

If we look at these periods of high cliff erosion, we see that they coincide with periods of high storm frequency and severity along the East coast and southern North sea basin, with positive winter NAO, and where we have evidence, these also coincide with periods when beach height were lower. In short, the cliffs at Dunwich are both a source of sediment to down drift beaches, but also a part of w wider natural system involving off shore bar growth and climate that together result in periods of stability and erosion.

MS: I remember being told when my family moved to Dunwich at around the turn of the century that Greyfriars had about 40-50 years left before it was lost to the sea. Do we have any estimate or projection of how long what's left of Dunwich will remain before we lose it to the sea?

Greyfriars monastery has an estimated 50-80 years before it's lost to the sea. Photo: Matt Salusbury

DS: Yes, in the Sear et al (2012) report, Fig 49, pg 114 there is a map showing the projected cliff line in 2050 and 2100. The good news is that based on extrapolations over the past century of cliff retreat, Greyfriars ruins will still be standing in the main although closer to the cliff top of course. The Pales Dyke and south east perimeter wall is likely to disappear over the cliff in the next 50-80 years. There is considerable uncertainty in these predictions and as past analysis shows, there are times when cliff retreat is much more rapid (the later 19th century for example – see above) – it is therefore highly dependent on two connected processes – rate of sediment movement from the beach in front of the cliffs and frequency and magnitude of storms. Currently the beach level if relatively stable at the toe of the cliff and cliff retreat is slow and largely determined by rainfall and slope processes.

Loss of the beach however will expose the toe of the cliff to much more frequent erosion by the sea during storms, and like the Francis Frith photos of the aftermath of the October storm 1911, drastic removal of the beach can expose the cliffs to erosion at high tides. For now, we can be reasonably relaxed about the future of Greyfriars, but residents can help by keeping a careful watch on changes in the beach and cliffs, which alongside regular surveys by the Environment Agency will provide the best early warning that the system is changing.

MS: Are there any questions I’ve forgotten to ask, or anything else you'd like to add?

DS: Enough I think, although a controversial question is the role of local coastal defences like the mesh bags of shingle – the evidence is that the cliffs and beach are stabilised naturally, so the effectiveness of the coastal protection works is uncertain. What they will do – if they are working is reduce the supply of shingle to downdrift areas, which means that these may get starved of sediment and the balance could tip towards beach loss in those areas. If this results in beach lowering then the larger storm waves might start to access the toe of the cliffs in those down drift areas, creating the condition for cliff erosion. In other words – local interference with the natural system has implications elsewhere and knowing that helps people make better informed decisions, one of which might be to accept it, but perhaps do local monitoring to check the health not just of Dunwich cliff beaches where they are protected but also downdrift.

The top a mesh bag containing shingle protrudes from Dunwich Beach - it's not clear whether these coastal defences have had any effect in stabilising the cliffs. Photo: Matt Salusbury

West Suffolk bobcat escaped while being transferred to a zoo, FIOA disclosure reveals

Big cat investigators spend a lot of time out in the wild with trail cameras and the like, but we can get a fairly good idea of what's happening by way of British big cat activity via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, to the police and to local councils, for example. This FOIA disclosure involves a escaped male bobcat shot and injured in Suffolk, after he was apparently rescued by the RSPCA who passed him on to a rescue centre where he was rehomed.

FOIA disclosures in response to my requests have uncovered the circumstances of the escape. They also hint at a former owner of multiple big cats somewhere in West Suffolk transferring a large number of "Dangerous Wild Animals" out of their ownership in the course of 2020.

Bobcat in Fort Worth Zoo by Wikimedia user "Malcolm", Wikimedia Commons Licence

Bobcats (Lynx rufus) are North American wildcats, similar in appearance to Canadian lynxes to which they are closely related (there are known lynx-bobcat hybrids). Bobcats are smaller than lynxes – bobcats can be up to 125cm (49.2 inches) long . They share the lynx’s characteristic of having distinctive tufts on the end of their ears and short tails – the name “bobcat” comes from its short tail, the short tails of rabbits being "bob-tails" in American English.

A Dangerous Wild Animals (DWA) Licence is needed to keep bobcats in the UK – they need an enclosure built to a standard specified in the Act, subject to inspection, which needs to be monitored with CCTV cameras. The owner also needs public liability insurance against damage caused by the animal. Animals have to be microchipped as well.

DWA licences are issued by local authorities, who are also responsible for enforcement of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act is down to local councils. In the case of West Suffolk it’s done through their licensing department. West Suffolk is a recent merger of the two Districts of West Suffolk, which are in turn devolved administrations – Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury – that fall within the boundaries of the county of Suffolk.

Those who keep big cats (in the UK it seems to be overwhelmingly men) are aware that in the UK’s current austerity regime, the ability of cash-strapped local authorities to actually carry out any enforcement. As we will see, West Suffolk took action to seize that bobcat once they’d identified its owner – probably through its microchip which would be linked to his owner’s DWA licence – but once it became clear that the owner was selling or giving away all their big cats (see below), West Suffolk probably decided to let it go, they probably didn’t feel like going through the expense of prosecuting the owner for negligence or for failing to report an escape.

As someone who investigates big cats in Suffolk, I was alerted by one of my many sources to the fact that an injured bobcat had turned up at a vet’s "near Bury" (Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk). The bobcat had been shot in March 2020 (during full-on Lockdown 1.0) by a farmer who’d lost a lot of chickens to something. They had apparently sought the advice of police, who advised him that the was within his rights to shoot at it to scare it away. I was shown photos of the injured bobcat in his huge pet carrier at the vet’s, also an X-ray showing pellets lodged in his front legs and one of his eyes. (I was shown the photos on the understanding that they were not for publication.)

I was also told that the vet’s assistant had by chance done their internship on a conservation project with Iberian lynxes in Spain, so treating a closely-related bobcat for its injuries was relatively straightforward for the team there. I cannot reveal the identity of the vet, other than to say there are so many vets "near Bury", Suffolk being a very agricultural county, that I can safely use the phrase "vet near Bury" without risk of identifying it.

The story broke shortly after, in an exclusive story in The Sun. This red-top daily is actually getting surprisingly good at covering big cat stories. Under the headline "Big Cat Rampage: Bobcat goes berserk and savages farmer's chickens after escaping owner before being shot and captured", The Sun of 24 March 2020, the story is online here. It revealed that West Suffolk Council had started in an investigation into the circumstances of the bobcat’s escape. On the basis of this information, I made a FOIA request to West Suffolk.

West Suffolk’s unnamed FOIA Coordinator was kind enough to pass on to me a series of emails, with the names and email addresses redacted in accordance with data protection regulations. Fortunately for me, they’d been a big slack at redacting the job title on some of these emails, a quick look at the RSPCA’s website confirmed that Animal Collection Officer is a job title from within the RSPCA. The injured bobcat had apparently come into the care of the RSPCA who took it to the vet and passed him on to an (unnamed) refuge centre where he was rehomed.

Here is West Suffolk’s correspondence with the RSPCA about the bobcat:

Correspondence between West Suffolk's licensing division and the RSPCA about rehoming a rescued, injured bobcat.

West Suffolk advises the bobcat's owner that they have seized it under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act

If I have understood the correspondence and the Sun story correctly, while waiting to find out if the bobcat would be claimed, either the RSPCA or the vet seems to have called up their contact who they would ring whenever there was a lynx or bobcat that needed fostering.

That’s right, if my information is correct, the RSPCA in West Suffolk has a number for a lynx fosterer that they regularly ring – suggesting that it’s a common enough occurrence that they have a lynx fosterer on standby. Ownership of lynxes and bobcats in West Suffolk – whether licensed or not – may be much more common than anybody thought.

West Suffolk’s Service Manager (Environmental Health) wrote to the bobcat’s owner. They advised the owner that the Council that as of 20 March 2020, they "have today seized... an injured bobcat belonging to you and kept under licence by you." The bobcat’s owner soon replied with an apology regarding this "unfortunate escape". (The disclosure confirmed it was the only DWA escape West Suffolk had on record.)

The bobcat's owner apologises for not having reported the escape earlier and admits that the animal had escaped while being transferred into a vehicle to be rehomed to a zoo.

The owner replied with a rather peremptory apology and the briefest of admissions that they had made an “error of judgement” in not reporting the escape of a bobcat. (As well as an error of judgement, it’s also a breach of the law, owners have a duty to report escapes and local authorities have a duty to record these. West Suffolk confirmed to me the bobcat on the loose was the only recorded DWA escape in their jurisdiction to date.

The owner explained, in a scene reminiscent of the opening of the original 1993 Jurassic Park film, that “the bobcat was being homed to a zoo when the escape happened, on loading the cat, he lurched forward with force and the carrier fell, hit the floor releasing the door, in which he then escaped.” The owner went on the say that "we have been rehoming all DWAL animals and will not be renewing our licence this year."

West Suffolk requests from bobcat's owner details of how many Dangerous Wild Animals Act notifiable animals they still have.

West Suffolk requests from the bobcat's owner an update on the wildcats that were in their possession.

There’s also correspondence between West Suffolk and another entity – possibly the bobcat’s owner – asking for data on their DWAs. From this it seems that whoever it was whose bobcat escaped near Bury was winding down their big cat keeping operation. They confirmed to West Suffolk that in the year up to May 2020 they’d offloaded two caracals, two bobcats, (plus the one that West Suffolk seized and the RSPCA rehomed), one serval and two jungle cats to at least one third party.)

Bobcat's owner provides information on the fate of their wildcats (including the injured bobcat), destinations of these are redacted.

West Suffolk asks the bobcat's owner if the jungle cats have gone to... (redacted).

By June 2020 the owner had confirmed that "all bobcats have been rehomed" (the Council had a list of four bobcats licenced to that individual.) The final email in the FOIA disclosure has the owner anticipating a visit from "licensing" to check that there were no longer being kept on the premises any DWAL animals for which a licence would be needed.

Former owner confirms all bobcats have been rehomed, and confirms that jungle cats have indeed gone to... (redacted).

Former owner confirms they will not be renewing their Dangerous Wild Animals Act licence

I am reminded of other evidence of there being more lynxes and bobcats than anyone realised in West Suffolk. I have heard accounts of strange screams coming from Thetford Forest, as well lynx sightings in West Suffolk, including one in Red Lodge. Around 2005, people regularly heard such screams around Santon Downham, and there was said to be a "lynx man" locally who "everybody knew" kept lynxes. There are legitimate lynx re-introduction programmes in progress in Europe at the moment – parts of Germany and the Czech Republic are re-introducing lynxes. While a plan for the re-introduction of lynxes into an enclosed area of Thetford Forest (Norfolk-Suffolk border) was rejected, a proposed lynx re-introduction in Aberdeenshire is going ahead. The "lynx man", if he existed, could have been breeding lynxes as part of such a programme, he would obviously want to keep such activities very low-key.

The Press Association’s investigation from 2016 showed that at the time there were Dangerous Wild Animals Act licences for seven lynxes and two bobcats in West Suffolk. These two bobcats would now seem to have been accounted for, one male rehomed by the RSPCA, the female rehomed to (redacted).

An RSPCA official has confirmed to me that "this is one of our jobs and the photos are ours" (the photos of the injured bobcats at the vet’s, as seen in the Sun story. I am in negotiations with the RSPCA about the possibility of getting permission to reproduce the photos.

My source in East Anglian animal rescue told me there are a lot of owners of exotic animals (monkeys, exotic reptiles and big cats in particular) who keep them under the radar and don't bother getting a licence for their animals, so unrecorded big cat ownership and escapes in the country may be more common than official data suggests.