Beachy Head
Beachy Head is a chalk headland in East Sussex, England. It is situated close to Eastbourne, immediately east of the Seven Sisters. Beachy Head is located within the administrative area of Eastbourne Borough Council which owns the land, forming part of the Eastbourne Downland Estate. The cliff is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, rising to above sea level. The peak allows views of the south east coast towards Dungeness in the east, and to the Isle of Wight in the west. Its height has made it a notable suicide spot. Geology. The chalk was formed in  the Late Cretaceous epoch, between 66 and 100 million years ago, when the area was under the sea. During the Cenozoic Era, the chalk was uplifted (see Cenozoic Era). When the last ice age ended, sea levels rose and the English Channel formed, cutting into the chalk to form the dramatic cliffs along the Sussex coast. Wave action contributes towards the erosion of cliffs around Beachy Head, which experience frequent small rock falls. Since chalk forms in layers separated by contiguous bands of flints, the physical structure affects how the cliffs erode. Wave action undermines the lower cliffs, causing frequent  slab failures – slabs from layers of chalk break off, undermining the upper parts of the cliffs, which eventually collapse. In contrast to small rock falls, mass movements are less common. A mass movement happened in 2001 when, after a winter of heavy rain, the water had begun to seep into the cracks which had frozen and caused the cracks to widen. This then made the cliff edge erode and collapse into the sea, destroying a well-known chalk stack called the Devil's Chimney. History. The name Beachy Head appears as 'Beauchef' in 1274, becoming 'Beaucheif' by 1317, and it  has nothing to do with the word "beach". Instead, it is a corruption of the original French words meaning "beautiful headland" (""). It was being consistently called Beachy Head by 1724. In 1929, Eastbourne bought of land surrounding Beachy Head to save it from development at a cost of about £100,000 (). This land became known as the Eastbourne Downland Estate. 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 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. Human remains discovered in the 1950s were subjected to forensic reconstruction, carbon dating, and radioisotype analysis, and it was concluded that they were those of a Roman woman of Sub-Saharan African origin who grew up in the Eastbourne area in about 200–250 CE. She became known as Beachy Head Lady. However, in 2021, DNA testing indicated she was of "southern European lineage, most likely from Cyprus". Lighthouse. The headland has been considered a danger to shipping. In 1831, construction began on  the Belle Tout Lighthouse on the next headland west from Beachy Head. Because mist and low clouds could hide the light of Belle Tout, it was decommissioned in 1902, after the Beachy Head Lighthouse had been built in the sea below Beachy Head as a replacement. At war. The third day of fighting in the Battle of Portland in 1653 took place off Beachy Head during the First Anglo-Dutch War. The Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 was a naval engagement during the Nine Years' War. The so-called Second Battle of Beachy Head took place over a week  in September 1916 during the First World War. Three German U-boats sank 30 merchant ships between Beachy Head and the Eddystone. This was despite a major effort involving the Royal Navy and 49 destroyers, 48 torpedo boats, seven 'Q' ships and 468 auxiliaries. During the Second World War, the Royal Air Force (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. The area had an important wartime radar station. During the Cold War, a radar control centre was operational in an underground bunker from 1953 to 1957. Tourism. West from Belle Tout, the cliffs drop down to Birling Gap, then ascend through the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs to Haven Brow, overlooking the Cuckmere valley. The area is a popular tourist attraction. Birling Gap has a restaurant and, in the summer, multiple ice cream vans serve the area . There are many choices of walking routes. Suicides. Estimates of the number of annual deaths at Beachy Head vary from 20 a year to many more. In 2010, it was the third most common suicide spot in the world, after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Aokigahara Woods in Japan, according to "The Wall Street Journal". The Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team conducts regular day and evening patrols of the area in attempts to locate and stop potential cliff jumpers. Workers at the pub and taxi drivers are also on the lookout for people contemplating suicide and there  are signs with the telephone number of the Samaritans urging potential jumpers to call them. Deaths at the site are often covered by the media, and Ross Hardy, the founder of the chaplaincy team, has said that this encourages suicidal people to choose the site. Eastbourne Borough Council drew media coverage in 2018 for its policy of removing shrines and crosses left at Beachy Head by families of suicide victims. The earliest reports of deaths by suicide at Beachy Head come from the 7th century. Between 1965 and 1979, there were 124 deaths at the location. Of these, S. J.  Surtees wrote that 115 of them were "almost certainly" suicides (although a coroner's verdict of suicide was recorded in only 58 cases), and that 61 percent of the victims were from outside East Sussex. After a steady increase in deaths between 2002 and 2005, there were only seven fatalities in 2006, a marked decrease. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency, whose Coastguard Rescue Teams are responsible for the rescue of injured jumpers and the recovery of the dead, attributed the reduction to the work of the Chaplaincy Team and good coverage of services by the local media. At least 26  people died at the site in 2008. Use in entertainment and media. In technology. A photo of Beachy Head was used as a desktop wallpaper on Windows 7.