The unforeseen consequences of tidal surges and winter storms

As a rule, the only inherent dangers in promenading and eating an ice cream are seagull attacks and a spike in your delicious waffle cone calorie intake. Recent severe weather conditions and tidal/storm surges have however caused all manner of chaos across the UK, and uprooted some unexpected risks. Flooding in Somerset and the North-East still persists and is having direct impact on quality of life and property with no sign of abating.  While many people are suffering in, frankly, dreadful conditions a small story (but no less terrible) caught our interest:

Exmouth sea front is a 2km stretch of sand dunes, small nature reserves and an award-winning beach.  As with all the best UK beaches it also hosts fish and chip shops and a most excellent ice cream kiosk…up until a few days ago.

 

 

Severe winds and erosion of the sandy beach displaced the entire kiosk, causing a potential hazard to shipping. Emergency work was quickly carried out to dismantle the kiosk and, in the process, an alarming discovery was made. Unexploded ordnance, thought to be a smoke grenade (used in military training exercises from around 20 years ago), was discovered under the kiosk.

It’s a bit of a leap of logic but military training in the Exmouth area is well known locally.  Lympstone barracks are less than 5km away from the town and Straight Point rifle range is only 3km along the coast.  Could it be that a training exercise on Straight Point or at Lympstone lead to the grenade falling into the sea? Could the canister have travelled on the tides only to end up washed onto the beach like some sort of weaponised message in a bottle?

Regardless of how it ended up there what this highlights is the often unforeseen consequence of storms, flood and past land use.

The team at LandmarkInformation Group can help you identify areas of both potential flood risk, as well as land used by the military in and around your property area with our extensive analysis of historic mapping - over 10,000 areas of military land identified over a range of mapping from the 1850s up until the early 2000s.  

Daniel Lewis-Carter is Data Information Co-Ordinator at Landmark Information Group.