crumbling

An odour of age and decay pervaded the whole crumbling building.

Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp.

Descending into the grotto, he lifted the stone, filled his pockets with gems, put the box together as well and securely as he could, sprinkled fresh sand over the spot from which it had been taken, and then carefully trod down the earth to give it everywhere a uniform appearance; then, quitting the grotto, he replaced the stone, heaping on it broken masses of rocks and rough fragments of crumbling granite, filling the interstices with earth, into which he deftly inserted rapidly growing plants, such as the wild myrtle and flowering thorn, then carefully watering these new plantations, he scrupulously effaced every trace of footsteps, leaving the approach to the cavern as savage-looking and untrodden as he had found it.

Born in 1799, Mary learned from her father to search the crumbling cliffs for the fossils that winter storms washed out of the rock, but he died in 1810, leaving the family deeply in debt.