BURIED FORESTS. 171 



to a depth of twenty feet ; and below these traces were 

 met with in places of a former surface, the bottom of the 

 hollow formed by the slope from the coast on one side, and 

 from the wolds on the other, to which Holderness owes 

 its name. 



The completion of the drainage works, which occurred 

 in 1835, produced a surprising change in the landscape. 

 Green fields succeeded to stagnant water, and the*islets 

 are now only discoverable by the holm, which terminates 

 the name of some of the farms. But natural changes are 

 ever repeating themselves, and what is occurring to day 

 may suggest some idea of what occurred long, long 

 ago, submerging and covering with lacustran deposits 

 these woodlands of a former day. 



Mr Walter White, in his work entitled A Month in York- 

 shire, from which some of these statements have been given, 

 tells : 



" At the bank which extends to Kilnsea, at times, after a 

 lashing storm has swept off a few acres of the mud, the 

 soil beneath is found to be a mixture of peat and gravel, 

 in which animal and vegetable remains, and curious anti- 

 quities are embedded. Now and then the relics are washed 

 out, and show by their character that they once belonged 

 to the Burstall Priory, a religious house despoiled by the 

 sea before the Reformation. Burstall Garth,- one of the 

 pastures traversed by the bank, preserves its name the 

 building itself has utterly disappeared. 



" Adjoining Witheringsea is all that remains of what once 

 was Owthorne, a village which has shared the doom of 

 Kilnsea. The churches at the two places were known as 

 ' Sister Churches ; ' that at Witheringsea yet stands in 

 ruins ; but Owthorne church was swept into the sea within 

 the memory of persons now living. The story runs, that 

 two sisters living there, each on her manor, in the good 

 old times, began to build a church for the glory of God and 

 the good of their own souls, and the work went on pros- 

 perously until a quarrel arose between them, on the ques- 



