Being Cromer born and bred, the Poppyland coast has always been a source of interest for me. From an early age I was captivated by the idea of finding flint tools on the beach, or Bronze Age pots stashed with axes in the side of the cliff (never happened!).
During a round of golf at Cromer, I always stopped to look out over the precipitous cliff edge on the 15th tee and try to imagine Shipden or how far out the ice sheets would have been. It is all very difficult to imagine a lost landscape stretching out into the grey North Sea which is why any painting or sketch of this coastline from the past is fascinating to me.
Today, with Google Earth, free LiDAR data and advances in software, it is possible to for me to reimagine the lost coastline and perhaps make an attempt to offer a glimpse into the past. The villages of Shipden, Clare and Eccles are obvious targets, but my ambition is to reimagine the Deep Coast from Weybourne through to Eccles during Medieval times. This, of course could go beyond the recent past to the ice sheets as I've always wanted to create a 360 degree panorama from the lighthouse with the ice in the far distance pushing up the moraine.
I've made a start. I have spent some time creating a 3D model of the surfzone between Weybourne and Eccles and mapped Google Earth imagery onto it. I'm currently looking at Shipden and assessing what would be the best workflow going forward and I have used Martin Warren's plan of church rock together with estimates of the Medieval coastline.
The intriguing aspect of Shipden is the harbour. If Shipden did have a harbour then you would think it must of been a natural one, perhaps something similar to those further up the coast, so I'm currently toying around with the idea of some kind of headland or spit, but I'm not sure how that works with cliffs!
Comments are so very much welcome, I would love this to be a collaborative effort in terms of ideas.
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