Seaside Prohibition Some owners, indeed many owners of property along
the shore, an wise and careful enough. Over one very lovely stretch of coast in North Devon a proclamation is set up in bold capitals on a board, containing three prohibitions. You may not put up a tent dwelling, dig sand, or preach a sermon inland from the point reached by a moderately high tide. King Canute did not offend for his sermon was acted below high water mark. Such care of the sea's edge is not, however, universal and, generally speaking, landowners are poor and ready to sell land that approaches the artificial value set on the building site. The threat against access to the sea is general ; and more than rights of access are in jeopardy. Some of the villas and shacks recently erected are a grievous eyesore. The shacks are often half hidden in dunes, as at Saunton sands, but some of the cliff-side villas of Cornwall and of South Wales beacon their repellent colours and shapes from afar, and there is no chance of such disappearances as have been both welcomed and lamented on the " slipper " clay of the East coast, for they are founded on granite or the hardest of igneous rocks.
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