A local paper, the Hastings and St Leonard Observer, has published two very interesting photographs of the coastal cliff collapse at Rock-a-Nore in Hastings, which was caught on video.  The images were taken by a local man, Dan Crouch:

Photpgraph by Dan Crouch
Courtesy: http://www.hastingsobserver.co.uk/news/local/dramatic-landslide-photos-1-5788039

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Photograph by Dan Crouch
Courtesy of: http://www.hastingsobserver.co.uk/news/local/dramatic-landslide-photos-1-5788039

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Of course it is the first of the pair of photos of the Hastings cliff collapse that is the most interesting, capturing the pillars of rock mid way through their toppling movement.  At this point most of the columns were intact, but note the very high level of fragmentation and disintegration at the foot of the rock blocks.  This is the second collapse event, as shown in this video:

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The failure seems to have developed primarily through failure of rock at the foot of the unstable mass.  As the columns toppled they would have induced very high levels of local stress at the bottom of the rock masses, driving very dramatic, almost explosive, local failure events.  This is captured in the images.