The Coast That Is Disappearing
🌊 The Coast That Is Disappearing
On the Holderness Coast in East Yorkshire, whole villages have vanished. In the village of Skipsea, a farmhouse photographed standing on clifftop ground in the 1990s is now gone — swallowed by the North Sea. Thirty villages that existed at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 are now underwater. The coastline here retreats by an average of 1.7 metres every year — and after storms, sections can collapse by up to 10 metres in a single night.
The coast is not a passive, stable boundary between land and sea. It is an active battlefield, where waves carrying the energy of thousands of miles of open ocean meet rock and cliffs that have been weakening for centuries. Understanding that battle — the processes, the landforms, and why some coasts retreat while others resist — is the heart of this topic.
Geography glossary
- What is attrition?
- Rocks and pebbles carried by waves knock against each other, breaking into smaller, rounder, smoother fragments over time.
- What is longshore drift?
- Waves approach the beach at an angle, moving sediment along the coast in a zigzag pattern. Swash moves material up at an angle; backwash pulls it back at 90 degrees.
Every wave that crashes against a British cliff started as a tiny ripple hundreds or even thousands of miles away. When wind blows across open water, friction between the air and the water surface transfers energy into the ocean. The water particles begin to move in circular orbits — they don't actually travel with the
Earn the mark scheme marks
🧠 Memory Frameworks for Coastal Processes
HASA — The Four Erosion Processes
Remember the difference: H, A and S attack cliffs. The second A (Attrition) acts on sediment in transit — it rounds pebbles, not cliffs.
CASE — Factors Affecting Erosion Rate
The Headland Sequence: C — A — S — S
Cave → Arch → Stack → Stump. Each stage in the destruction of a headland begins with hydraulic action exploiting a weakness and ends with the complete collapse and erosion of the remaining structure.
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 20
Which of the following best describes a destructive wave?
Tap an answer to check it
This topic in real past papers
Every real exam question we've found on coastal processes and landforms, with a full worked answer.
AQA Paper 1
Whenever a student answers Question 3 (Coasts), it includes a 4 mark question explaining the formation of a specific coastal landform, always level marked across two bands.
AQA Paper 1
Whenever a student answers Question 3 (Coasts), it closes with a 6 mark question judging the costs, benefits or effectiveness of coastal management strategies, always using a given figure.