Back in October I highlighted the case of a house in Torquay in Devon that was being affected by landslides.  This is rather a sad story in many ways – the house was bought for a knock-down, but not insubstantial, price, apparently unseen, before the most recent problems began.  The buyer has now suffered very high levels of loss as the house has been destroyed.  The Daily Mail yesterday ran a photo story about the house, which has subsequently suffered a series of landslide events.  The result is that it is possible to put together a sequence of photos of the loss of the house:

The house in question (from the Daily Mail):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2221965/Torquay-house-left-teetering-cliff-edge-landslide-week-disabled-Sue-Diamond-paid-154k-it.html

After the landslide in October 2012 (from the Daily Mail)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2221965/Torquay-house-left-teetering-cliff-edge-landslide-week-disabled-Sue-Diamond-paid-154k-it.html

By February this year the landslide had retrogressed sufficiently that the house was starting to show severe signs of distress (from the Daily Mail):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303412/Sea-red-landslide-claims-Torquay-cliff-face-taking-154-000-house-owned-London-woman-bought-viewing.html

A couple of weeks later and a further collapse had occurred (from the Daily Mail):

In the last few days a large landslide event occurred, taking a part of the house with it (from the Daily Mail):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303412/Sea-red-landslide-claims-Torquay-cliff-face-taking-154-000-house-owned-London-woman-bought-viewing.html

So now the endgame for this house is very close (from the Daily Mail):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303412/Sea-red-landslide-claims-Torquay-cliff-face-taking-154-000-house-owned-London-woman-bought-viewing.html

This is clearly a tragedy for the owner.  Unfortunately, although the period of very heavy rainfall in the UK appears to have ceased now (at least temporarily), it is likely that water levels deep in the ground are continuing to rise.  This means that we are very likely to see some more large landslides in the weeks ahead.