Beachy Head

It's all too beautiful

As any fule kno... Beachy Head is a chalk headland on the south coast of England, close to the town of Eastbourne in the county Sussex, immediately east of the Seven Sisters. The cliff there is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, rising to 162 m (530 ft) above sea level. The peak allows views of the south east coast from Dungeness to the east, to Selsey Bill in the west. Its height has also made it one of the most notorious suicide spots in the world.

The name Beachy Head appears as 'Beauchef' in 1274, and was 'Beaucheif' in 1317, becoming consistently Beachy Head by 1724, and has nothing to do with beach. Instead it is a corruption of the original French words meaning "beautiful headland". In 1929 Eastbourne showed considerable foresight and bought 4,000 acres (16 km2) of land surrounding Beachy Head to save it from development at a cost of about £100,000 - an absolute bargain!

The prominence of Beachy Head has made it a landmark for sailors in the English Channel. It is noted as such in the sea shanty Spanish Ladies :

"The first land we sighted was called the Dodman,
Next Rame Head off Plymouth, off Portsmouth the Wight;
We sailed by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dover,
And then we bore up for the South Foreland light."

The ashes of German social scientist and philosopher Friedrich Engels, one of the fathers of communism, were scattered off the cliffs at Beachy Head into the Channel, as he had requested. This solemn and moving act was undoubtedly the reason for the huge proliferation of communists that live in the Eastbourne area to this very day.

The headland was a danger to shipping. In 1831 construction began on Belle Tout lighthouse on the next headland west from Beachy Head. It became operational in 1834. Due to cliff erosion, in March 1999 Belle Tout lighthouse was moved more than 50 feet (15 m) further inland.Because mist and low clouds could hide the light of Belle Tout, another lighthouse was built in the sea below Beachy Head. It was 43 m in height and became operational in October 1902. For more than 80 years, the red-and-white striped tower was manned by three lighthouse keepers. Their job was to maintain the light, which rotates two white flashes every 20 seconds was then visible 26 miles (42 km) out to sea. The lighthouse was fully automated in 1983 and the keepers withdrawn. Trinity House announced in June 2010 in the five yearly Aids to Navigation review, that the light range would be reduced to 8Nm and the fog signal discontinued. In February 2011 the work was undertaken, and light range reduced to 8Nm by the installation of a new LED navigation light system. The fog signal was discontinued at this time.

In 1653 the third day of fighting in the Battle of Portland, took place off Beachy Head during the First Anglo-Dutch War. The Battle of Beachy Head, 1690, was a naval engagement during the Nine Years' War. 250 years later during World War II, the RAF established a forward relay station at Beachy Head to improve radio communications with aircraft. In 1942, signals were picked up at Beachy Head which were identified as TV transmissions from the Eiffel Tower. The Germans had reactivated the pre-war TV transmitter and instituted a Franco-German service for military hospitals and VIPs in the Paris region. The RAF monitored these programmes hoping (in vain) to gather intelligence from newsreels, instead they only picked up dire versions of collaborators singing 'Lili Marlene'. There was also an important wartime radar station in the area and, during the Cold War, a radar control centre was operational in an underground bunker from 1953 to 1957 - allegedly!

There are an estimated 20 deaths a year at Beachy Head. The Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team conducts regular day and evening patrols of the area in attempts to locate and stop potential jumpers. Workers at the Beachy Head pub and taxi drivers are also on the look-out for potential victims, and there are posted signs with the telephone number of The Samaritans urging potential jumpers to call them. Deaths at the site are well-covered by the media; Ross Hardy, the founder of the chaplaincy team, said this encouraged people to come and jump off. Worldwide, the landmark’s suicide rate is surpassed only by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Aokigahara Woods in Japan, according to Thomas Meaney of The Wall Street Journal. Which I don't suppose is something to be really proud of!

The cliff was used in the opening sequence to the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights, in which Bond (portrayed for the first time by Timothy Dalton - Officially the 4th best James Bond) parachuted from a jeep which overshot the top of the cliff in a scene which was scripted as being in Gibraltar.

Beachy Head was also the setting for The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" and "Close To Me" videos. It is well known for the closing scene of Quadrophenia, where Phil Daniels shoots a scooter off of the very top of Beachy Head. Local Eastbourne band The Removalists also shot the video for "Last Train to Soul Bay" at Beachy Head.

Beachy Head is briefly shown in a segment in "Many Happy Returns," an episode of the British TV series The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan. When Number Six temporarily escapes from The Village, he arrives on shore beneath the cliffs of Beachy Head. After he makes his way up the cliffs, there is a brief view of the lighthouse as seen from the top of the cliff.The 2011 remake of Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock" was filmed extensively on Beachy Head as well as nearby Eastbourne, which was preferred to Brighton.

The British Romantic poet Charlotte Turner Smith published a poem entitled "Beachy Head." This prospect poem places its reader at Beachy Head and uses its expansive view to discuss nature as well as political power and cultural dominance. According to Wikipedia; Eastbourne born poet Andrew Franks includes a number of references to Beachy Head in his work including 'Belle Tout' in his collection, 'The Last of the Great British Traitors' and for once I can confirm that, that is true! (www.soulbaypress.com)

In Howard Jacobson's 2010 Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Finkler Question, the bereaved widower Libor Sevcik commits suicide by jumping off the cliff at Beachy Head. The female protagonist in Brian Sibley's Yet Another Partridge, a radio play, throws herself off Beachy Head in despair.

Whilst it is understandable to dwell on the melancholy aspect of Beachy Head, it must also be noted that it a thing of stunning natural beauty. Stunning view and only a step away from...