The naturalist. 



NEW SERIES, VOL. X. 

 1884:-1885. 



THE SPURN. 



By JOHN CORDEAUX, 



Great Cotes, Ulceby, Lincolnshire; Member of the British Ornithologists' Union; 

 and of the British Association. J]Iigration Committee ; S^c. 



The long, narrow, and curved promontory called the Spurn, Spurn 

 Head or Point,* lies between the northern sea and the Humber. 

 The actual Spurn of to-day is — geologically speaking — of modern 

 origin, a narrow ridge of sand and gravel, some three miles in length, 

 occupying the place of once solid land, the old Yorkshire coast line, 

 which terminates at or near Kilnsea. Northward from this point for 

 thirty-six miles, till we reach the chalk of Flamborough, the coast 

 presents no solid rock, low chffs of gravel, sand and clay, rising at 

 Dimlington to one hundred and fifty feet above high water, and 

 resting on purple boulder clay, of remarkable stiffness and tenacity, 

 containing an immense variety of derivative and far-travelled rocks. 

 Through all the range of history and probably far back into pre- 

 historic times the sea has been constantly stealing away the land ; 

 it is calculated that since the Norman conquest one mile in breadth 

 has been lost, and more than two miles since the Roman occupation ; 

 a waste equal to two and a half yards in a year on an average of the 

 whole coastt line. Our own experience points to a more rapid 

 waste, and near Dimlington we have seen large masses of cUff break 

 away fully fifty yards in length and several yards in breadth in the 

 course of a single winter. There are those now living who can very 

 well remember Kilnsea old church, which sixty years since stood on 

 an eminence east of the present village, with a road and intervening 

 lands between it and the beach. The site of the church is now 

 in deep water, from one to two hundred yards beyond the lowest fall 

 of spring tides. In 1836 the village itself was removed to the 



*The Rev. G. S. Streatfeild in ' Lincolnshire and the Danes,' p. 241, note 3, 

 says : ' Head is probably redundant ; of. Icelandic Spyrna, to strike with the feet, 

 Anglo-Saxon Spiirnan. But Mr. Charnock would derive it from Anglo-Saxon 

 Spyrian, to track. The two words Spyrian and Spitrtian are radically connected.' 



tPhillips's 'Yorkshire.' Ed. II., p. 122, 



Aug. 1884. B 



