THE RECLAIMED LAND OF THE HUMBER DISTRICT. 225 



Island foreshore, and there is a further patch of about two 

 acres at Welwick. At Cherry Cob Sands and Stone Creek 

 are two extensive " strays " outside the bank, but these are 

 covered chiefly with grass, and are only flooded by the highest 

 spring tides. Clement Reid ('Geology of Holderness," 

 18S5) wrote: "The foreshores of the Humber when the 

 tide is out are generally wide flats of bare mud or sand, 

 cut up by multitudes of channels and creeks, and passing 

 upwards into salt-marshes;" and Beazeley ("Reclamation of 

 Land," 1900) states: " In some parts of the Estuary of the 

 Humber between Sunk Island and Spurn Point extensive 

 tracts of ' outstrays ' or (locally so-called) ' growths ' exist 

 beyond the banks." Both these were incorrect: there are 

 no "growths" between Sunk Island and Spurn, and the 

 average Humber foreshore consists of a mud flat without 

 creeks, which is either continued to the foot of the bank or 

 else rises abruptly by a cliff four feet or so in height to a 

 narrow grassy strip on which the bank is built. Only in the 

 two places mentioned above is there any gradual transition. 



The rapid growth of Sunk Island in its later stages has 

 created a somewhat erroneous idea of the rate of accretion 

 of land in the Estuary. Ten thousand acres in two hundred 

 years is often quoted, but who thinks of the centuries, even 

 before the first embankment of the Humber, during which 

 the foundations were being laid down ? Probably the lost 

 towns of the Humber were deposited on its site. 



Sunk Island owes its present size to a happy combination 

 of currents which placed its nucleus to the west. Had it been 

 central, Sunk would have been an island still, for there would 

 never have been called into existence the enormous backwater 

 in which the floating mud of the Humber was deposited. 



There is a common East Yorkshire saying, that a man 

 can get plenty of land, but can't find a place to put it. 

 Materials for another Sunk Island drift about the Estuary at 

 the present day, but there is no spot where the river can 

 permanently deposit its load. Deposited at one tide, churned 

 up by the next, carried up the river at springs and down 

 again at neaps, its individual particles may travel about the 

 Estuary for years before they are borne out to sea, or find a 

 resting-place in some corner where the currents are checked. 

 The earliest portion of Sunk Island lies suggestively opposite 

 the outfall of the old Keyingham drain. 



No matter how favourable the conditions, the process of 

 reclamation can be accelerated only to a slight extent by 

 artificial means. Of Oldham's 3000 acres, we have secured 



