Grandmother watches as her home is lost to the sea... for the second time
An 81-year-old grandmother watched on as her home on the crumbling East coast was torn down - 13 years after seeing her first house there bulldozed.
Bryony Nierop-Reading lives in the north Norfolk village of Happisburgh, on one of the fastest-eroding coastlines in Europe.
In 2013, her first home was demolished after it was left teetering dangerously over the cliff edge.
On Tuesday, the property she retreated back to was also razed to the ground after the coast crept closer to its front door.
ITV News Anglia has followed Mrs Nierop-Reading's battle against the encroaching North Sea for more than a decade in the documentary Against the Tide, available to watch above on ITVX and YouTube.
"It's such a gruesome business watching the demolition. It's very brutal," she told ITV News Anglia.
"I spent the whole weekend having panic attacks and I haven't been sleeping very well at night.
"I was awake all night looking out at the house and thinking that when I next go to bed, it won't be there.
"And it won't be."
Dubbed Granny Canute for her determination to stay by the sea, Mrs Nierop-Reading said coastal communities had been badly let down by the failure of successive governments to prepare sufficiently for coastal erosion.
Her home is one of three being demolished in Happisburgh, where North Norfolk District Council has been supporting owners - even buying properties at risk. They say some have received between £40,000 to £100,000.
Rob Goodliffe, coastal manager at North Norfolk District Council, said: "If we tried to build traditional sea defences along the whole of the Norfolk coast we’d actually be creating problems for future generations in cost.
"We would lose our natural beautiful coastline which people come here for.
"There has got to be a balance and this is the balance we're trying to get - protecting where we can but then adapting and supporting communities when that's not possible."
Happisburgh cliffs is a site of special scientific interest (SSSI), which makes it difficult to get permission to install coastal defences.
The cliffs are composed of soft glacial sediments - sands, silts and clays - and so are highly susceptible to fast-paced erosion from waves and ground water.
The weak cliffs make engineering long-term defences extremely difficult but it is not a situation unique to Happisburgh.
A little further south in Hemsby, 20 houses were demolished in the space of five weeks earlier this year.
But Mrs Nierop-Reading said there was much more that could be done.
"All these demolitions would not be happening if we had a proper programme of defence against coastal erosion.
"We've got tides coming in and out and they are not being used to generate electricity which they could be. If we had tidal power schemes here it might reduce the erosion that we've had here.
"As awful as it is what's going on here, I'm conscious of the fact that I am so lucky that I have somewhere else to live.
"When I think of those poor people at Hemsby, they've been turfed out of their homes at very short notice with nowhere else to live.
"It's appalling and the government needs to step in a buy the full value of their buildings so they can find somewhere else to live.
"I have stayed in Happisburgh very deliberately because I know that if I move away I would stop caring about coastal erosion.
"But I want to keep going, I want to keep campaigning to get proper coastal defences at Happisburgh. I'm not giving up."
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