COALVILLE

coalville, a town in the loughborough parliamentary division of leicestershire, england, 112 m. n.n.w. from london. pop. of urban district (1901) 15,281. it is served by the midland railway, and there is also a station (coalville east) on the nuneaton-loughborough branch of the london & north-western railway. this is a town of modern growth, a centre of the coal-mining district of north leicestershire. there are also iron foundries and brick-works. a mile north of coalville is whitwick, with remains of a castle of norman date, while to the north again are slight remains of the nunnery of gracedieu, founded in 1240, where, after its dissolution, francis beaumont, the poet-colleague of john fletcher, was born about 1586. in the neighbourhood is the trappist abbey of mount st bernard, founded in 1835, possessing a large domain, with buildings completed from the designs of a. w. pugin in 1844. coast (from lat. _costa_, a rib, side), the part of the land which meets the sea in a line of more or less regular form. the word is sometimes applied to the bank of a river or lake, and sometimes to a region (cf. gold coast, coromandel coast) which may include the hinterland. if the coast-line runs parallel to a mountain range, such as the andes, it has usually a more regular form than when, as in the _rias_ coast of west brittany, it crosses the crustal folds. again, a recently elevated coast is more regular than one that has been long exposed to wave action. a recently depressed coast will show the irregularities that were impressed upon the surface before submergence. wave erosion and the action of marine currents are the chief agents in coast sculpture. a coast of homogeneous rock exposed to similar action will present a regular outline, but if exposed to differential action it will be embayed where that action is greatest. a coast consisting of rocks of unequal hardness or of unequal structure will present headlands, "stacks" and "needles" of hard rocks, and bays of softer or more loosely aggregated rocks, when the wave and current action is similar throughout. the southern shore-line of the isle of wight and the western coast of wales are simple examples of this differential resistance. in time the coast becomes "mature" and its outline undergoes little change as it gradually recedes, for the hard rock being now more exposed is worn away faster, but the softer rock more slowly because it is protected in the bays and re-entrants.