Qualla: Land's End Disaster

Land's End Disaster: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Jones, CC BY 2.0. They had called the game 'dodge the spray.' Eleven children between the ages of 10 and 12 had scrambled down a path on the cliffs at Land's End on the afternoon of 6 May 1985, found a platform of rocks ten or fifteen feet above the sea, and stood there for about half an hour daring the swell to reach them. Above them, on the famous signpost at the headland, the rest of their school party was queuing for a group photograph. The Atlantic that day was uncomplicated. A wave came in larger than the ones before it. Six children climbed clear. Five did not. The Land's End disaster, as it came to be called, killed four primary school pupils and rewrote the rules of every school trip in Britain.

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Image: David Jones | CC BY 2.0

Land's End Disaster: The Children

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0. Their names should be said. James Holloway was 11. Ricky Lamden was 11. Robert Ankers was 12. Nicholas Hurst was 10, and he had been swept away after trying to rescue the others. Heather Price, who was 12, was washed into a cleft in the rock face and pinned there long enough for ...

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Image: Olaf Tausch | CC BY 3.0

Land's End Disaster: Stoke Poges

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Uploaded to Wikipedia by Mammal4., CC BY-SA 2.5. The children were pupils at Stoke Poges County Middle School in Buckinghamshire, a hundred-odd miles from the Cornish coast, on a week-long adventure holiday based at the Duporth Holiday Village near St Austell. Fifty-one of them had come for the week. The Land's End visit was on...

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Image: Uploaded to Wikipedia by Mammal4. | CC BY-SA 2.5

Land's End Disaster: The Inquest

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Uploaded to Wikipedia by Mammal4., CC BY-SA 2.5. Parents asked the obvious questions almost immediately. Why were children that age allowed onto rocks usually frequented only by experienced climbers? Where were the adults? Why had nobody warned them, given them safety briefings, kept them off paths that had no railings? At the ...

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Image: Uploaded to Wikipedia by Mammal4. | CC BY-SA 2.5

Land's End Disaster: The Inquiry and the Boat

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Buckinghamshire County Council opened a private inquiry on 4 September 1985. It ran for six days. The 64-page report, published on 11 November, reached harder conclusions than the inquest had: Askew's planning and preparation had been 'inadequate and, in a number of ways, serious...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0