Kent 80-year-old pensioner refuses to budge from clifftop Folkestone house

The woman’s home has been propped up with pilings after two landslides caused major damage earlier this year. 

Having called her mid-century seaside property home for the last 48 years, UK resident Marian Walters is loath to leave. 

But catastrophe struck in January this year, when two landslips occurred on the cliff directly outside Walters’ home in Folkestone, Kent. 

“In the early hours of 27 January 2024, we received a call to clear fallen trees which had been reported to be blocking the road,” Kent County Council said in a statement. 

Photography taken by the council at the time reveals that the entire face of the cliff had collapsed, uprooting trees and leaving bare soil exposed. 

It’s a grim image, but Walters insists that she is in no danger. 

“I am very happy here and I won’t be moving for anyone. I have been made to feel safe,” she told KentOnline. 

“I’m on a floating platform and I’ve got 14-foot pilings at the back of my drive, so even if the land did slip I would be okay.” 

In fact, Walters shared that the home is likely to stand “for 120 years” thanks to high-quality work carried out by the local council. 

Unfortunately, landslides are a common sight for local townspeople thanks to a dangerous combination of coarse-grained sand and weakly cemented sandstone in the so-called “Folkestone Formation” that underpins the beachside town. 

It’s a dilemma that is all too common for coastal residents in Australia as well, with the Central Coast suburb of Wamberal one example of a community left teetering perilously on a cliff edge after intense surf caused significant erosion. 

But the storm damage hasn’t seemed to put a dampener on median house prices in the area, with the median Wamberal home currently selling for over $1.6 million, according to Domain data. 

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