The Great Terrain Robbery

Railway official assess the damage Nov 1901

he fact that The Cliff Walk is slowly crumbling into the sea won’t come as any kind of surprise to those who know their coastal erosion.

And to those who know their Greystones history.

Anytime the land meets the sea, there’s likely to be a battle for real estate, and willing to play the long game, the sea usually wins.

So it is now, with negotiations with nearby residents underway to move much of The Cliff Walk inland.

The Paine lad

It’s not the first time Greystones has come out bloodied by Mother Nature though, as the great Gary Paine explains below…

The Great Storm of 12th November 1901 saw 75mph winds lash the eastern coast of Britain with more than 40 ships wrecked and the loss of over 200 lives. The east coast of Ireland did not escape and the railway line south of Greystones suffered its most serious inundation from the sea with around one and half miles of track washed away.

Buckled track side of Ballygannon

The exposed position of Ballygannon Point has always rendered it susceptible to easterly gales and the ravages of the sea. Wooden groynes had been constructed by the DW&W Railway in the 1880s to help stabilise the beach shingle and protect the foreshore and adjacent railway line.

Groynes on South Beach 1900

South easterly gales in December 1893, coupled with the high tide washed away the stones from beneath the sleepers at Ballygannon. The line was subsequently breached in January 1895, in October 1896 (when Kilcoole station also suffered extensive damage) and again in October 1898 when teams of railway workers were deployed to repair the line.

The repairs begin…

The report on the half-yearly meeting of the DW&W Railway in the Wicklow People dated 17th February 1900 noted “that the piling and groynes between Greystones and Newcastle have been greatly extended during the half year and are still being pushed on”. Notwithstanding these improvements, the ferocity of the November 1901 storm and damage sustained at Ballygannon, resulted in the closure of the line for a more prolonged period than heretofore, lasting around a fortnight.

The Dublin Evening Mail dated 13th November 1901 reported that “the watchmen of the railway observed signals of distress from a vessel at sea last night south-east of Greystones, but at day break nothing could be seen of the ship. A lifeboat believed to have belonged to the steamer was washed ashore today at the south beach, Greystones with a dead man on board. There was no name on the boat, but from the papers in his possession, it is believed he had shipped at Glasgow. He wore a lifebuoy which bore no name, so that it is impossible to trace the name or destination of the ship, which it is feared went down during the night”.

The damage done…

In the immediate aftermath of the November 1901 storm damage, large boulders were brought under contract from the Balleese Quarry Company near Rathdrum which it was felt would be more effective than the wooden groynes. The implications of the November 1901 storm damage to the track were further highlighted at the half yearly meeting of the DW&W Railway held the following August. The Chairman laid out the two stark choices facing the company, namely “(i) adopt a large scheme of coast defence, such as we can feel assured will permanently prevent further encroachments of the sea and place the exposed portions of the line in safety or (ii) the railway itself must be diverted from its present course to a position so far inland as to altogether be removed from danger”. Though plans relating to the second option were referred to the renowned civil engineer, Sir John Wolfe Barry (of Tower Bridge fame) for his opinion, it was never proceeded with and the line remained at the mercy of the sea over subsequent decades.

Locomotive No.17 named Wicklow

Further storms undermining the line at Ballygannon occurred in March 1905, January 1910, February 1912, February 1914, November and December 1915, various dates throughout 1916 and March 1917. Records at The National Archives in Kew reveal that in the summer of 1917, the Board of Trade at Westminster appointed an inspector to report on the state of the railway line from Dublin to Wicklow. It is interesting to note that in section 6 of the report the inspector wrote that ‘when originally constructed [in 1855] there were, for the distance between Greystones and Newcastle Station, about 40 yards of ground between the railway and the shore, but this ground has practically disappeared at the present time and the permanent way has from time to time been moved inwards considerable distances, but even now it is practically on the sea shore’.

DWWR Railway ticket 20th Jan 1908

The inspector’s report also disclosed that for the section of the line between Greystones and Newcastle, damage caused by storms led to the line being closed for a total of 35 days during 1916. Interestingly, he wrote ‘I am rather surprised that Kilcoole Station has not been washed away. I believe the Station Master and his family had a very narrow escape a short time ago’.

Coastal defenses Nov 1918

In August and September 1917, seven additional wooden groynes were constructed on the beach at Ballygannon Point at a cost of £700 and over a thousand tons of rock were sent by rail from Aughrim to Ballygannon and Kilcoole for the protection of the railway. Despite this, a storm in late December that year caused further disruption to rail services passing Ballygannon. The diagram below dated November 1918 shows the various coast defenses constructed to protect the line from Greystones to Newcastle.

Erosion to rock armour

To this day, close attention to the state of the line at Ballygannon is paid by Iarnrod Eireann following storms.

 Ironically, almost 100 years to the day of the 1901 Ballygannon wash out, 500 tonnes of rock armouring was unloaded at Ballygannon Point. In this photograph taken by Eric Spurling on 19th November 2001, the TOPI, a Finnish registered self-discharging rock carrier can be seen discharging boulders via hydraulically operated side tipping skips onto the shore at Ballygannon.

There are plenty more historical nuggets told in Gary Paine’s glossy 296-page historical archive of the town, A Pictorial History of Greystones & Its Coastal Environs 1760 to 2018, which is still available from Greystones Antiques beside the train station or to order online for €35 plus postage.

Full gallery of hi-res pics here, our 2018 int with Gary here and more scary storm damage here.