Emma Fox: The Lost Villages of the South hams

Hallsands - The Village that was Reclaimed by the Sea

In the Western Daily Mercury, 1917, it was reported that the village of Hallsands had “ceased to be” (1). This came after a mass of storms and horrific weather conditions rendered the village uninhabitable. Almost the entirety of the village was built on the shore-front and was engulfed by water, battered by storms, and destroyed. By the end of winter 1917, only one house in the entire village was left habitable. One house – from a population of 189. A stark and life-changing natural disaster which left the citizens of Hallsands facing the awful truth that this was, “The end of [their] village” and that they would have to “go elsewhere” (2)

These days, there’s not much left of the village. A few modern houses and an old guesthouse are perched up on the cliffs above and now make up what is still known as the village of Hallsands. There is a small beach cove and the ruins of the chapel on the hill. The path down is broken and unwalkable so the National Trust has installed a viewing platform for people to look down on the two remaining houses and the ruins of the rest. (3)This was a natural disaster caused by unnatural means. This disaster was completely man made. The BBC Devon website gives the details: from the spring of 1897 - 1901, 660,000 tonnes of material were dredged from the shorelines around the village to provide silt for the new expansion on the naval dock in Plymouth(3). It took 18 years for this dredging to herald the end for Hallsands. What’s more, the villagers tried to warn the men responsible more than once.

This was not just local news but was even reported nationally. In the Scotsman in 1903 an article appeared entitled “A Village Threatened.” (3) In this article a correspondent from Kingsbridge claimed that “for years, the contractor has been taking the beach shingles which rise up the terraces. […] he has also taken away a large amount of sand from the skerries which form the breakwater which protects the village”.

For much more in-depth info on what happened at Hallsands, look HERE

SOUTH HUISH - Quietly Abandoned

Another, much lesser known abandoned place in Devon is the village of South Huish. South Huish is a tiny village (and also a civil parish) out in the countryside near Kingsbridge. Not truly abandoned, there are now several homes on the land which was once the original South Huish Village surrounding the only true ruin which remains, the old church which was abandoned in the 1860s (6). The church itself is quite eerie, especially on a quiet day. The old graves lay mainly untended as the old ruins stand preserved by the Friends of Friendless Churches charity.

The reason for South Huish’s downfall is much less dramatic and is a tale of simple migration. By 1869, the church was considered no longer viable, as the population using it had grown so poor.
Nowadays, there are no housing or cottage ruins, but four homes still standing as well as a couple of farms thereabout. After the church was abandoned, making an end to the village, the congregation was all moved to the more viable Galmpton Village. The ruins of the church and graveyard are free access and worth a look. I photographed the stones and submitted the files to the “findagrave” website recently, so if you are a family historian with a family member in South Huish, Malborough or Gamlpton before the 1860s, those might be of use to you :)

“Hallsands disaster”, Western Daily Mercury, 29^th January, 1917. P.3
This quote was printed on the national trust’s information board at the scene.
Go here for a copy of the information boards supplied by the National Trust: http://www.slaptonline.org/library/
"Inside Out - Hallsands; The Village That Collapsed Into The Sea", Bbc.Co.Uk, 2002 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/southwest/series1/hallsands.shtml> [Accessed 20 January 2020].
The Scotsman, 03 March 1903, p.6
http://friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk/south-huish/