An account of the mighty landslip at Dowlands and Bindon near Lyme Regis, December 25, 1839 / [George Roberts].

  • George Roberts
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of the mighty landslip at Dowlands and Bindon near Lyme Regis, December 25, 1839 / [George Roberts]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    an arable field on the other side, which was strangely torn and dis¬ ordered. 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 ter¬ minated 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, or safe for pastur¬ age, till considerable labour and expense had been bestowed in level¬ ling the surface and filling in the gaping fissures.’* MOUNTAIN-SLIP, OR SLIDE OF THE CERNANS MOUNTAIN. Foreign papers give a grand account of the Mountain-Slip near SalinoOn the night of 29—30 January. The mountain known as the Cernans, a part oftihe Jura and of the geological formation, generally known as Jura limestone, slipped forward into a valley and destroyed the high road from Dijon to Pontarlier by depressing it in one place 300 feet. A fountain which disappeared 25 years ago is supposed to have been preparing a soft launchway for the mountain; and the slip is attributed to this cause. “A brief account of the earthquake, the solemn event &c.” is the title of a London pamphlet, price 2d. It crowns the late war—the recent insubordination—the cholera—with this earthquake, shewing that it is that prophesied in Rev. xi, 13, according to Dr. Goodwin, 1639, and foretold in the autumn, by some old man, near Lyme; aged 70. The writer, a Millenarian, seizes with avidity upon this another signal token as he takes it, and which he asserts exceeds ‘anything that the inhabitants of this country remember to have occurred in England.’
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