Slapton, Devon

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Slapton Sands

Slapton is a village in Devon, England, between Kingsbridge and Dartmouth that lies within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

Collegiate Chantry of St Mary was founded in 1372 or 3 by Sir Guy de Brian.^[1] The Tower Inn and West tower remain and the tower has been designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building.^[2]

The Church of St James dates from the late 13th or early 14th century, and is also grade I listed.^[3]

The nearby beach, known as Slapton Sands, was in 1944 the site of the ill-fated Exercise Tiger. A Sherman tank that was sunk in this action has been recovered and now stands on the road behind the beach at nearby Torcross. Behind the beach is Slapton Ley, a nature reserve and good example of serial or ecological succession — the process whereby open water becomes reed bed and eventually, as silt and leaf litter builds up, woodland. The beach itself is a good example of a bar: the material that makes up the beach was pushed up by the rising sea levels during the Flandrian transgression after the last glacial period (from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago). A similar process formed Chesil Beach. Beaches formed like this are reworked by coastal processes now but are not supplied by enough material to recreate them, should material be removed. This had terrible consequences nearby at Hallsands where most of the beach was removed as building material for Devonport dockyards, leaving the village exposed to storms. It was struck by a storm in 1917 and most of the village was washed away although fortunately no villagers were killed. The eastern mile of the beach from the car park is generally regarded as one of the most attractive nudist beaches in England.