A row of 'collapsible' homes could be built in a coastal village to replace three properties which were recently lost to the sea.
The new buildings are designed so they can be dismantled, moved and rebuilt further inland if they are also threatened by coastal erosion.
A planning application to put up four of the innovative structures at Easton Bavents is being considered by East Suffolk Council.
The village, just north of Southwold, was once the most easterly in England and home to a thriving community.
However, it has suffered extensively from coastal erosion, losing an average of three metres of land each year - with storms and high tides sometimes accelerating the loss.
Several houses have had to be demolished in the last 25 years, most recently in 2020 when three terraced homes, East End Cottages, had to be knocked down.
Now, landowner Anne Jones has applied for permission to build four new homes, just inland from where the cottages once stood.
Her application describes how the homes have been "designed for ease of assembly, and also ease of disassembly and reuse", making them suitable for a stretch of constantly shifting coast.
The documents say the design of the homes is sensitive to the "special characteristics of the coastline" and that the properties can be "easily taken apart, demounted and moved as nature dictates".
"If the encroachment of the sea threatens these homes", the documents add, they can easily be "disassembled, relocated to another site and re-erected".
The four new homes are intended to replace the East End Cottages as well as Warren House.
This property is still standing but is now just 57m from the cliff face and according to the documents will need to be demolished by 2040.
The site is along a lane leading to the cliff which, in 1998, featured several structures, most of which are now gone.
The East End Cottages were three-bedroom homes and the proposed replacements will also have three bedrooms.
Though The Warren House is a four-bed property, its proposed replacement would have five bedrooms.
EASTERLY EASTON BATTLE WITH THE SEA
Easton Bavents is first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it appears as Estuna.
It once had the distinction of being England's most easterly point.
But following the ravages of coastal erosion, this title is now claimed by Ness Point, just up the coast in Lowestoft.
Throughout its long history, Easton Bavents has fought and long - usually losing - battle with the sea.
Its parish church, dedicated to St Nicholas, was still in use in 1639 and a rector was appointed as late as 1666.
The church seems to have been lost to the waves later in the 17th century. The site is now far out to sea.
In 1672, the Battle of Solebay was fought in the waters off the village, as Dutch warships launched a surprise attack on an anchored English fleet.
Easton Bavents itself gradually shrunk in size but survived as a fishing village until the 19th century.
In 1925, Mrs Jones's great-grandfather Herbert Boggis used his life savings to buy a 400-acre estate in the village.
Mr Boggis had a vision of creating a 'leisure village' of more than 80 homes, a tea room, a bowling green, tennis courts and more.
He had plans drawn up by Patrick Abercrombie, a well-respected town planner.
However, the Second World War intervened, with the land put into more productive use and the plans shelved.
The sea did not stop in its advance on the village.
In the century since Mr Boggis bought the land, more than 200 acres of farmland and several properties have been lost to coastal erosion.
Mrs Jones estimated the financial value of the family's losses as being more than £1 million.
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