125 
present one could not have been the cause of destruction, both on 
account of the suddenness recorded, and because, in that case 
Skinburness would not have been the only sufferer. The one 
probable agency, therefore, is that erosive force of waves and 
currents, unaided by any change of level, which acts so powerfully 
on the coast of East Anglia at the present day. 
It follows then (as the record tends to show) that the destruction , 
must have been the consequence of violent irruptions of the sea, 
which took place between the years 1301 and 1305. But it is 
extremely difficult to understand in what way such irruptions could 
have occurred on the east side of Grune Point. For the shingle 
ridges which there end—being prevented from extending to the 
north-east by the stream draining Skinburness marsh—are, as the 
discovery of the Roman Camp on them at Beckfoot proves, pre- 
Roman in date; and their-existence must always have protected 
the land to the east of them from the fury of the waves. While, 
on the other hand, any destruction in what is now the foreshore 
adjacent to Skinburness marsh, resulting from changes of channel 
in the streams flowing through Moricambe Bay, would not have 
been considered as arising from the sea, nor could it have been of 
the sudden and violent character indicated by the records. 
My own view is that Skinburness at the beginning of the 14th 
century occupied a site a few yards westward of its present one, on 
a spot now covered by the waves, and that the “way to it,” which 
was also destroyed, was a road along the coast which approached 
it from the south. This road would keep, like the present one 
from Allonby and Maryport, on the shingle ridges close to the 
shore, and thereby avoid the (then) undrained marshes covering 
so large an area on the eastern side of the ridges. And the 
destruction of a very few yards of it, when coupled with the expense 
and difficulty of maintaining it against the inroads of the sea, would 
be a sufficient reason for abandoning the remains of Skinburness, 
though so important as a depét in the Scottish wars. The import- 
ance of Skinburness as a port, at this time, shows that the channels 
to it were comparatively deep, and their navigation fairly free from 
difficulty and danger: advantages which it does not enjoy at 
