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From this subsidence, which may be considered the last important 
geological event of pre-historic times in this area, I now pass to an 
occurrence which took place between five and six centuries ago— 
the destruction of Skinburness by the sea about A.D. 1305. The 
facts, as given in the documents which allude to it, may be found 
in Mr. Jenkinson’s Guide to Carlisle, Gilsland, and the Roman 
Wall. They are also brought forward by Mr. R. S. Ferguson in 
his interesting paper on “Roman Cumberland and Westmorland,” 
in the Trans. Cumb. and West. Antiq. and Archzol. Soc. Mr. 
Jenkinson (who states that he has derived many facts about Holme 
Cultram Abbey and District from a paper by Mr. C. J. Ferguson,) 
thus writes :— 
“In 1301 we read that Bishop Halton granted to the abbot and convent 
of Holme Cultram power to erect a chapel at Skinburness. In 1305 we 
tind the abbot petitioning that whereas he has paid a fine of one hundred 
marks to the king for a fair or market to be held at Skinburness, and 
whereas that town, together with the way leading to it, is carried away by 
the sea, the king would grant that he may have such fair and market at his 
town of Kirkby Johan (Newton Arlosh) instead of the other place aforesaid, 
and that the charter may be renewed. Skinburness seems to have been a 
place of some importance, having been used as a depdt for supplying the 
armies then employed against the Scots.” 
Mr. R. S. Ferguson, in the paper just mentioned, appears to 
think, not unnaturally, that by “the way leading to Skinburness” 
is meant the way between the Abbey and Skinburness; and says :— 
“These estuaries (of Waver and Wampool) appear to have been 
solid ground occupied by the town of Skinburness till the sea broke 
Clay at Crossgates and Lindall. But I do not think this explanation likely 
to apply to the Cardurnock forest, which seems to me to owe its existence 
to the general submergence which has produced similar results on various 
parts of the shores of the British Isles, Brittany, Normandy, and elsewhere, 
where inland deposits corresponding to those at Crossgates and Lindall do 
not exist. 
Borings through the glacial drift into the underlying rocks near the 
Solway have never yet shown the existence of any interglacial vegetable 
deposit. But, on the other hand, low-lying post-glacial peat-mosses are 
very abundant there, and evidently had at one time a greater extension 
seaward than they now have. In the neighbourhood of Cardurnock, for 
example, the peat of the great moss that occupies most of the Bowness 
peninsula abuts against the slightly raised beach.—t.v.H. 
