Why Did They Use a Beach in Devon to Rehearse D-Day_ _ Our History

Today I'm in Devon, with not one but two separate coastlines. It's a haven for beach lovers everywhere. Heavenly is a word that comes to mind when you think of Devon, particularly on a day like today, as well as cream teas, ice cream and long lovely walks on beaches. But these Devon beaches have witnessed some key events in our national story. From the tragedy of a lost village. Stories of the sea coming down the chimney and knocking out the doors of the houses and the windows. To the triumph of a beautiful railway. It's gorgeous. From one man's mission to expose the truth. I didn't understand it when he said what he was going to do, but as soon as I saw it here I thought yeah, it makes perfect sense. To the secrets of the world's best-selling novelist. No spoilers. No spoilers. Don't tell us, don't ruin it. Welcome to the beautiful beaches of Devon. My journey begins on Slapton Sands. Over three miles long, in an area of outstanding natural beauty, it's one of South Devon's most spectacular beaches. But this beautiful beach also hides a dark, secret, unknown story. In the mid-1940s, with World War II raging, this gorgeous stretch of beach was the perfect setting for a D-Day rehearsal. D-Day, set for June 1944. And in April of that year, on a cold dark night here at Slapton Sands, things went so disastrously wrong that it could have changed the outcome of the entire war. That D-Day rehearsal was called Exercise Tiger, and it was a vital part of preparing for D-Day, the huge amphibious landing in German-occupied France that the Allies hoped would win the war. Historian Harry Bennett is based in nearby Plymouth and has been studying the impacts of World War II on Devon for more than 30 years. Harry, why was Slapton Sands picked for Exercise Tiger? Well, the Allies, to win the war, know that they've got to force a landing somewhere on the west coast of France. Invasion was piled high in Devon and Cornwall. Invasion stretched its long lines of tanks and guns and vehicles down the rolling English roads. As part of the process of building up towards D-Day, they've got to pack the country full of troops, of equipment and resources, but they've also got to practice the techniques that they're going to use to get ashore on D-Day on heavily defended enemy beaches. So they're going to take over places like Slapton to practice the amphibious landings that they are going to utilise to put into play on the 6th of June D-Day. You can see the beach. If you want to practice amphibious landings, fantastic. This area here also resembles Utah Beach. Now, Utah Beach is one of the beaches where the Americans are going to land. So, this coastline is vital to prepare for all of that, but it's inhabited. People live along this coastline. What would it have looked like here? In late 1943, this area and the villages around here are evacuated. People are given very, very little notice to pack up their belongings and move. Move where? Wherever. Simply out of the area. People whose family goes back generations here are basically told to pack your bags. This is genuine, rarely seen archive of the evacuations when more than 3,000 civilians were uprooted from Slapton and the surrounding villages. It's so hard to imagine right now, standing here on this perfect day with people holidaying on the beach, what this would have looked like. I mean, essentially a war zone. Exactly. You've got to train with the most realism possible, including use of flamethrowers, anti-tank guns, mortars, bazookas. And real live munition they're using. Absolutely, absolutely. It's April the 27th and Exercise Tiger is underway. The huge fleet of over 200 vessels moves into position, ready for the rehearsal landings next day. Such a big force is vulnerable and Allied warships patrol the perimeter. But just across the channel in Cherbourg, the Germans detect the Allied fleet and launch nine motor torpedo boats to see what's going on. So you've got these German motor torpedo boats crossing the English Channel. These are big, very fast and they're very, very heavily armed and they're able to evade and slowly penetrate the Allied defences. Eventually they detect a convoy of tank landing ships. These are large vessels over 300 feet in length and they're packed full to the gunwales of ammunition and men and vehicles containing fuel. We call them LSTs, landing ship tanks. Some people call them large, slow targets. The German boats fire multiple torpedoes, sinking two of the LSTs and badly damaging a third. The British and the American naval units are coming from every direction to try and cut them off. But the Germans managed to make their escape. But what it leaves is it leaves hundreds of men in the water. Many are dead already. Many have been badly burnt from the fires that have raged on the LSTs. Many are now succumbing to hypothermia in the water. The official death toll is 749. Now that's both sailors on the LSTs and the soldiers who are there effectively as part of cargo which is going to be landed on the beach. I'm thinking about the sense of panic out there when your ship's been hit. Well I mean some of these guys are literally going over the side. Some of them don't know how to swim. Yes they've got life preservers but with bulky equipment on, in many cases with their helmet on, which means when they begin to lose consciousness in the water they begin to lose their stability. So guys who are passing out are literally ending up face first into the water with predictable results. So Harry why don't we know about it? Because what happens is when the survivors are landed clearly they don't want the Germans to know just how significant the damage has been. Nor do they want potentially these traumatized soldiers and sailors talking to others who are going to land on D-Day and say well look what happened to us. And it was a training exercise. So you don't tell anybody, you're sworn to secrecy, you're given orders, you're told to keep quiet. Despite the tragic losses, Allied military planners learned valuable lessons from Exercise Tiger and when D-Day happened for real just over five weeks later it was a total success. On Utah Beach in fact, the Americans lost fewer men than died off the coast of South Devon in Exercise Tiger. And there was a surprising twist to come. More than 700 men died that evening and their memory might have been completely forgotten had it not been for one man's determination to find out more. That man was Ken Small, a former hairdresser from Hull who moved his family to a dream home on the Devon coast and ended up revealing the story of Exercise Tiger to the world. It all started appropriately enough on the beach as his son Dean explains. Dean, how did the initial discovery begin? It was a really strange beginning because he was as happy as anything. He had got rid of the rat race, he had moved to Devon but then for some unknown reason he suffered what was then called a nervous breakdown. He didn't know why, he just felt awful, he didn't want to leave the house and then a local fisherman friend of his said come on Ken, you can't just sit in these four walls all the time, get out, walk up and down the beach, it's lovely, you might find stuff and that's what cured him. So the therapy was the beach? Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. So what did he find? Oh there was old coins, bits of ID bracelets and then bullet cases, bullet heads, bits of shrapnel. So this is what he picked up along the beach? Sure. Right so that, it looks like a bullet. Yeah. Did he know what it was? Yeah he knew straight away that that was a bullet and with the other stuff he wasn't too sure. And all of this was just? Yeah I mean literally he had buckets and buckets of it. Then what did he do with it? Well what he couldn't understand was why would it be on the beach? So he asked locally and a few people said oh well look you know it's almost certainly to do with a period of time when they evacuated the whole area and practiced landings on the beach with live fire. And so then I mean it was a snowball effect he just thought this is crazy why don't I know more about this? But of course it was kept secret and even the local people they knew that they had to be evacuated and they knew that there was something going on but they didn't know exactly. And so the same fisherman that recommended my dad walked up and down the beach told me about something on the seabed around about three quarters of a mile off the shore that they regularly snagged the nets on. So my dad who couldn't swim kept asking this fisherman to dive down and have a look and eventually he gave in we went out and the guy dived down and about 15 minutes later he comes up and he says to my dad it's a tank and my dad says well what water tank oil tank? And he said no it's like an army tank. I'm here in South Devon on the beautiful beach of Slapton Sands. Over 40 years ago Ken Small got the surprise of his life here when he located a Sherman on the seabed. The most widely used allied tank of the war more than 50,000 were made. This one was lost during D-Day rehearsals here in 1944. For Ken the tank became a symbol of the forgotten disaster of Exercise Tiger. In May 1984 after many years of effort he raised it and the new story went round the world. And so the operation that began as the dream of one single individual and became something of a minor tourist attraction is now very nearly over. The tank will be cleaned up and parked not very far from here as a permanent and grateful memorial to those who died during the war. Four decades of secrecy was finally at an end. When the tank was recovered there was American TV here and once they started to put out in America the footage of the tank being recovered people started to come forward people who had survived Exercise Tiger because now they felt they could talk about something that they had been told under threat of court-martial they must never speak about and they were getting in touch with my dad. And so that's when much more became known. I remember one day I went to see my dad and he was very quiet and I said are you okay dad and he said oh Dean he said this car turned up and the doors opened and this guy got out and he walked towards me and he was in tears and he fell into my arms. This guy had seen the footage of the tank being recovered he realized that his brother may well have been one of those who was lost and then this guy mentioned his brother's name and my dad got a book out which had a list of those who had died in the back and he went through it and there was his name and that was the first time he knew what had happened to his brother and this was the point at which my dad realized that the tank should form part of a memorial to those who lost their lives. The permanent memorial to the 749 forgotten US servicemen proudly stands just behind the beach. Isn't that something? I still think it's incredible now really. Well what does it make you think when you look at it? It reminds me obviously of my dad but also you know of what went on here and the importance of this memorial site. Well this is very special because people often leave bits and pieces. Yeah this is really normal your lovely stones with little messages and pictures flowers get tucked in all over the place it's lovely. But that's because it means so much to people. Yeah I think a lot of people tell their kids about it and it is a great place for people to come. And what's this here? I wanted something on the tank to do with my dad really and I felt that this was a great way of doing it so we did this a few years ago. It's my little thing me thinking of dad and all those men that lost their lives. And it is of this land. Yeah. It belongs right here. Yeah. It was meant to stay here. It was yeah. I didn't understand it when he said what he was going to do but as soon as I saw it here I thought yeah that makes perfect sense. Oh well done Ken. Yeah well done dad. Right let's go find some chips. Yeah come on. Thanks to Ken Small, Slapton Sands will always be associated with Devon in wartime. Just up the coast though at Bigbury-on-Sea is a beach that tells a remarkable pre-war story about luxury and pleasure. Today Bigbury is one of South Devon's most loved beaches. Back in the late 1920s it was just getting into its stride. And I have a treat in store. Just offshore lies Burr Island, home to a Devon gem, the Art Deco Burr Island Hotel. It's cut off twice a day at high tide but there's always been a rather cool way to get there. Well I've been on a few tractors in my time but never one on stilts that chunks along through the sea. But look at that place. Luxurious, glamorous, decadent. My three middle names. I'd get here any way I can. My guide to the hotel's remarkable history is the owner Giles Fuchs. Giles. Anita. Nice to see you look the part. Thank you very much. So has this always been a hotel? Well back in the late 1800s a very famous musical artist called George Sherwin built his first hotel which was nine bedrooms for getting away from London. And then he sold it to a chap called Archie Nettlefold. And he owned theatres and made films up in London and was in the Bloomsbury set. And he wanted to get away from the hubbub so he bought an island off Mr Chergrim. So the likes of Noel Coward came to stay and didn't leave. Famously he came for three days, stayed for three weeks. Fair enough. Yeah. Can I have a little snoop inside? Please come in. I mean I may never leave. Well you'll be welcome to stay just like Noel Coward. Oh yes this is fantastic. I stepped back in time. It is awesome isn't it? Yes. Apparently one of the collections of art deco artifacts and antiques in the country. Is that right? Yes. Oh wow. Now we're talking. What a great room. I know this is the party room. The ballroom from the 1930s. What's original? A lot of the kind of architraving and the doors and the windows. The floor, the original sprung dance floor. There's such an amazing sense of glamour already. I'm ready to dance Giles. You can actually picture them in your mind's eye. The flappers and the men in their white tie. Tripping the light. Fantastic. Who was here? Well the likes of Noel Coward and Agatha Christie. Mountbatten came. Edward and Mrs Simpson. Actually the Beatles have been here as well. They were playing in Plymouth and they wanted to escape all the screaming whores. So they've been as well. So it really was a who's who. I mean this is the place to come to. Absolutely. Get away from it. And of course what goes on on the island stays on the island. You know what's amazing is talking to you but looking out of that window and that view and then behind me that view. They're very different aren't they? Very different but spectacular. On a day like today, are we in England? No. Where are we? We're in the Isle of Burr. This room is what it's all about. I mean it's fantastic. Has it always been this glamorous? Well no. The hotel has suffered during its life. I mean in World War II a bomb was dropped on the hotel just after Churchill and Eisenhower had been discussing the D-Day landing and the top two floors of the hotel on this side were totally demolished. But it was rebuilt and recovered. But in the 60s and 70s it became derelict when, as I call him, the saviour of Burr bought it, Tony Porter. So Tony and Bea Porter were art deco nuts and they brought all their art deco antiques and fully furnished with more and of course the original stuff that was here. And brought it back to its former glory. Former glory. Fully appreciated at this very moment in my life. It's stunning. Thank you Giles. Pleasure. Cheers. Cheers. Just soaking up the beauty of this Devon coastline. It's otherworldly maybe because we are cut off from the mainland but it feels timeless. I can almost imagine Agatha Christie stepping out of those double doors with a martini in hand plotting her next murder mystery. Some more evil under the sun. The world's best-selling novelist of all time wasn't just a frequent visitor to the hotel. She wrote here too it's said. In what's now called Agatha's Beach House. What better place to meet Agatha Christie expert Dr Mark Aldridge. So Mark what was Agatha Christie's relationship to Burr Island? Well Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, Devon. So not very far from here. And so you can understand her curiosity about coming and seeing what all the fuss was about with this luxury hotel that was built on this beautiful island. What was her social standing that meant that she could access it if it was you know for the elite? Well the thing about Agatha Christie is I think it's really easy to assume that she might have been like Miss Marple. That she was some sort of quiet old lady. But actually she was very adventurous. She loved to do new things. So she was one of the first sort of British women who really knew how to surf. She loved driving. She loved all of the new sort of mod cons. She was very excited about changes in society. So although she had been brought up slightly nervous about money because although she had a household where they had servants their wealth was slightly precarious. So when she starts to make more money from her books because her first ones published in 1920, you can imagine that actually that gives her some security that perhaps she's able to enjoy herself a bit more and have this luxury life that things like visits to Burr Island would certainly be a part of. And were any of her stories inspired by Burr? Yeah I think we can definitely pinpoint one in particular, Evil Under The Sun, where it even has, I can show you actually if you want to see it, it actually opens with a map of the island and we can very clearly link what we see on the map to what actually Burr Island was really like or is still like. So she was thinking about what Hercule Poirot would be thinking about what he saw on the beach here and so she has him say in response to someone saying there are no bodies on Smuggler's Island. Ah but that is not strictly true, he pointed downwards. Regard them there lying in rows. What are they? They are not men and women, there is nothing personal about them, they are just bodies. This is great, first of all that's a really good observation. Isn't it? But secondly, and I'm not going to ruin it, it's a really good clue. So those people who are reading it might think that's a very Poirot observation to say actually once you are stripped of your day clothes and wearing pretty much the same as everyone else, sunbathing, you could be anyone. But we know that by the end of that book that's going to have an extra bit of significance too. No spoilers. Don't tell us, don't ruin it. The 1930s boom at Burr Island was mainly about the elite. But the 30s also saw beach holidays becoming more accessible for working people. Thanks to a new 1938 law giving all British employees one week of annual paid holiday. But the boom could only happen because people could get here. And one man was responsible for that. I'm on one of the most spectacular beachside train lines in the world. Genius engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel's South Devon Railway opened in 1846. It took 10 years to construct and for four wonderful miles runs right along the coast giving visitors their first heavenly glimpse of the sea. So beach holidays were becoming the thing. But they wouldn't have been possible had it not been for this Brunel's Great Western Railway, the line I'm riding right now. It turned this area which was a sleepy backwater into a holiday hot spot. But the GWR offered much more than just train journeys. They did everything from cruises to coach trips to country house hotels and people started calling it God's Wonderful Railway. You can see why. It's gorgeous. Iconic GWR posters celebrated expanding resorts like Torquay. Even small coastal towns like Dawlish benefited from the boom. Brunel gave the town a spectacular sea wall right on the beach, offering glorious views for passengers and a promenade for pedestrians. But glory came at a price. When Brunel built this stretch he insisted it'd be no more expensive to maintain than any other stretch of railway in the country. It is in fact officially mile for mile the most expensive stretch of railway in the whole of the UK. It's wonderful for sure. Wonderful doesn't come cheap. Over the last century and a half Brunel's sea wall here has been severely damaged and repaired many times. The storms of 2014 were catastrophic with the sea wall collapsing and the line itself suspended in mid-air. And with climate change increasing the frequency and severity of storms something had to be done. This new 80 million pound sea wall is the answer. The massive multi-year project is now in its final stages as Network Rail's Julie Gregory explains. How's climate change going to impact all of this? Surely the sea levels are rising, how do you know your wall is high enough? We've taken the best available information that we've got and designed this according to that to give 100 years of resilience to withstand the sea. And what's the final bit? So the final thing that we're doing to really give us resilience to the railway is put these recurve sections on the top of the facing panels. So they've got a slight curve on them to deflect the wave energy out to sea and that's what stops the overtopping which is where you get the huge waves crashing you know 50 foot into the air and just soaking the railway. It floods the tracks here so we sometimes end up with Dawlish station looking a bit like a narrowboat station. You know you used to get absolute drenching sometimes coming off trains here in Dawlish so it will protect passengers and trains alike. I think we're doing what Brunel would have done had he been alive today. Brunel clearly loved a challenge but given the cost and the difficulty why build right by the sea at all? Seems like a good question for geographer John Shaw. So John of all the places in Devon he could have put this railway why here? It's because it's flat. When he first surveyed the line in 1836 he was going to take it a little bit inland but if he'd have gone another way he would have had to do a lot of tunneling because there's a lot of hills. It would have been really really difficult and expensive to do it. He's a brilliant engineer so he must have come up with a plan to protect the railway from the sea. What did he come up with? Well Brunel was always the optimist he was renowned for being really optimistic and he thought that his sea wall wouldn't ever be except in the worst of storms. But also it's really key there are towns here and Dawlish already had a reputation for having a nice winter climate and of course if you've got people who are already here and you've got towns that people want to come to that's going to make the railway money and shareholders who were putting up the money to build the line wanted to make sure they were going to get the return on their investment. So it was a number of things because it was flat and because there were towns already here so there would be a market for the new train service. So it all comes back to those beautiful Devon beaches this lovely coastline being connected so that people could go and just have a good time. Yeah one of the things that the railways did it was it enabled working class people to go and spend time by the sea for the first time. Dawlish was really getting a reputation as being a resort and it made Dawlish much more of a resort. The locals valued their beach so much in fact they were willing to battle with the great man to keep it. He originally wanted to bring the line a little bit further out away from the cliffs because the cliffs pose their own danger collapsing on the line and so on and so the original line of the route would have come out here pretty much where we're standing yeah yeah absolutely and threw off there. So why didn't it? Well there were lots of local protests. Dawlish was a resort we want to have beach it was kind of 19th century Nimbys they said look you know we want the line the line's a great idea but we just don't want it here put it anywhere else but here. So Brunel agreed that he would push the line back closer to the bottom of the cliffs and that meant that he had to do a little bit more tunneling so there are a number of tunnels now along the route which originally weren't going to be here because he was going to push it out that little bit further. And the people of Dawlish managed to keep their beach? They did and the Nimbys had a partial victory but the rest of the southwest peninsula got its main line down through Newton Abbots In Devon big waves can certainly be destructive but they can also be put to more pleasurable use. 70 miles from Dawlish Devon's other coast has long been famous for one thing. Facing straight into the Atlantic North Devon has the perfect waves for surfing and big beaches like Woolicum have an international reputation. There's a wild rugged remote feeling to North Devon really different to the softer landscapes of the south and it is different these long beaches they've got high winds and big waves coming in off that Atlantic and in the 50s and 60s this became a new kind of paradise not one about cream teas and luxury hotels this was about counterculture and surfing and people descended here from all over the world. Devon was about to become cool. Local boy Kevin Cook now in his 70s was here at the start. One of Woolicum's first ever lifeguards this veteran surfer dude is known to all as Cookie. Right Cookie you're the perfect person to tell me about when surfing first arrived in this part of Devon. Well I guess it would have been our mid-60s the whole surfing thing had come from abroad particularly during the war there were servicemen who had seen the beaches and the surf that was possible over here and so they came back and they thought they'd have a go at it. Some of the servicemen came back and they created surf life-saving clubs all around Great Britain. Others brought their surfboard shaping skills taught them to the locals. Locals then went on to make their own surfboard and the whole surfing business just took off. So what was it like here in the 70s I suppose you've got people from all over the world descending here what did that do to the culture of Woolicum? It certainly mixed it up a lot the locals when they realised that surfing was going to be a big thing they all started making the plywood surfboards all the garages around here were making them. And what did the locals make of all these kind of surfer dudes descending on the area? It depended who you spoke to there are a few of them who look over their shoulder and say you know long-haired hippies what are they doing here you know go back to where you came from well this is where I came from. And you've lasted the test of time because now this area is associated with surfing in the UK isn't it? Absolutely it is one of the best places not only in the UK but in the world. So what is it particularly about this stretch of coastline that makes it perfect for It comes down to the fact that where we are we're on the southwest peninsula so the predominant swell comes from the west so they come in from the Atlantic the swell is what you need to be able to generate the power for the waves then when it comes in close to shore you need geological features to make those waves build up even higher and create shapes that are special meaning that you can use the power of the wave to just take your places that you've never been before. What is it about surfing what makes it so special? It's a vibe that is being at one with nature sharing the ocean with your fellow surfers and the mammals the marine mammals that are there being able to look out on the most amazing coastline and environment and really just saying I want to look after that for a long time so that other people can take advantage of it as well it's not about the last 50 years it's about the next 50 years and the next wave. I'm rather inspired by Cookie's 50 years of surfing and by my new heroine Agatha Christie. There's only one thing for it I'm going to give it a go thankfully in the expert hands of surf coach Aliyah Curtis I need all the help I can get that was so much fun you're an amazing teacher and apparently I'm a surfer oh my god all right don't put that in I completely get it now look at this this grin actually my cheeks are aching that was so much fun Aliyah thank you that's all right come on good job yes sick what a teacher did you hear that I'm sick on Devon's beautiful beaches I've encountered stories of wartime suffering and peacetime pleasure now I'm at a little place called Hall Sands not far from Plymouth the scene of an extraordinary man-made tragedy there used to be a beach here and a village these ghostly ruins are all that remain because Hall Sands was destroyed on a single night just over a hundred years ago the story of Hall Sands is about more than just the destructive power of the sea it's about human interference because in the late 1890s thousands of tons of shingle was taken from the seabed here to help build Devonport Dockyard which ultimately had catastrophic results for the village Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth the beating heart of the navy is one of the largest and oldest military dockyards in the world from the late 1600s as Britain became a maritime superpower Devonport grew by the 1890s with empire at its height a massive expansion was underway to make the concrete for the vast new docks the builders needed huge amounts of gravel it would come from Hall Sands in the late 1800s it was a thriving fishing community according to the 1891 census 159 people lived here in 37 houses to find out more I'm meeting Jonathan Hale whose great-grandparents grew up in the village and witnessed the disaster this viewing platform is as close as we can get to the precarious ruins so Johnny why was this such a good fishing village at the time there was a beach that used to run along the shore here so it means the fishermen could keep their boats on the beach which was relatively near to the houses which were along the cliff and also it was very near to the fishing grounds where they would go and fish so they could just set sail from their front doors basically absolutely and so there was a real sense of community everybody knew each other what do you know about it I think life was very very hard here it was like fishing it was feast or famine but everyone would look out for everybody else if a boat was laid back from sea then you know the village would know about it they would probably start to look for that boat so a real sense of community spirit so what happened to the shingle what happened to the beach what happened to this area when they were building Plymouth Dock so a license was granted to Mr Jackson to dredge the shingle here to use it to build a Devonport dock yard in Plymouth John Jackson was one of the great engineers of the day and the Devonport project was massive running to around half a billion pounds in today's money over the course of the dredging villagers noticed that the beach levels were at some point dropping severely so much material was eventually removed that the beach just basically disappeared in front of the villagers eyes over five years of dredging nearly half a million cubic meters of shingle was removed from the seabed in front of Hall Sands needing around 600 separate barge journeys to carry it all the way to Plymouth and what did the villagers make of it when the license was first granted they weren't terribly happy about it but as things progressed they started to get compensation from Jackson on a yearly basis for the disruption to their fishing so he knew that he was upsetting them absolutely but he also knew the villagers quite well he used to come here hold regattas here used to bring his yacht rounds used to pay for all the drinks in the pub that type of relationship was going on Jackson's dredging continued until 1902 when protests from the residents finally brought it to an end but with the beach lowered by nine feet the village was fatally exposed and on the night of January the 26th 1917 a big storm came there was probably about two or three weeks of nor'easterly wind so very much in the same direction as the winds coming from today but a lot stronger maybe 70 80 miles an hour and a culmination of the wind building over a long period of time with exceptionally high tides then meant that the sea encroached into the defences washed away the footings of the houses and a lot of the houses collapsed over what period how long did it take it was over a two-week period but there was one night in particular when most of the damage was done and the villagers had to leave their houses the whole village the whole village and were any of your family involved yes my great-grandfather my great-great-grandfather my great-grandmother all had to leave the village that night there's stories of a child being pulled up the cliff in a wicker basket because they couldn't walk in and out of the village as they would normally have done stories of the sea coming down the chimney and knocking out the doors of the houses and the windows so it must have been quite a storm i reckon i'm just trying to picture that situation utter devastation i mean this village was destroyed yeah overnight the village was destroyed they had to grab whatever they could leave the village that night and then come back the next day and really just see what was left and what they could salvage but the whole sand story doesn't end there after the disaster some residents left forever but others moved to new houses in the next cove at north hall sands and the spirit of the old village lives on fisherman tim lynn is the great-great-grandson of james lynn one of the last men to leave hall sands on the night of the disaster so do you feel as though the ghosts of your ancestors and james lynn are watching over you oh yeah most definitely you know even when you get a problem out there there's always somebody watching over you so when you get in your boat and you're sailing past the old village do you look up yeah i always look in the old vision if i had a good day's fishing you always have a look in light and say that i've done right a day so where do you live i live in the house that the lynns have lived in for many years so your family was rehoused yeah and they stayed in hall sand yeah but your ancestor's village fell into the sea you're living right here on the seafront do you ever think of moving never never ever there's no way you see me blood i've always said give me a viking funeral or whatever but they ain't taking me out of all sounds salt water running through me veins lovely salt water running through me veins i love it i can't think of a better end to my journey these amazing devon beaches really do get under your skin and into your soul for me all these stories show the extraordinary strength of character of the people who make devon's beaches what they are each has looked like a little bit of english paradise but when you dig down into their past you find the struggles that have also helped define the devon coast from the hard times at the art deco hotel to the diy era of surfboarding to the many batterings that brunel's railway has received and the village that got swept away the story that stands out for me has got to be kens a man suffering from depression who stumbled across an astonishing piece of hidden history if it wasn't for him the memory of the men who died on that beach may well have been forgotten but instead they're honoured and ken's legacy lives on through his son dean and i adore that