266 



Blashill: Changes in Spurn Point. 



town, which was often called Ravenser simply. Before the 

 year 1350 the sea was threatening- its existence. The narrow 

 connecting- beach disappeared first, so as to leave the town on 

 an island. This would cut off the supply of shingle needed to 

 maintain the waste of the shore of the island. The inhabitants 

 would know nothing- of groynes and could not drive piles ; and 

 long before the end of that century Ravenser Odd had entirely 

 disappeared, many of its inhabitants going to Kingston-upon- 

 HuU, the new port that inherited and still maintains the old 

 rivalry with Grimsby. rVnd the rivalry is still principally for traffic 

 with inland and distant places — not for any local requirements. 



It has been assumed, perhaps rather easily, that the ' Old 

 Den,' a stony bank west of Spurn Point, and sheltered by it 

 from the sea, is the site of Ravenser Odd. If the travelling- beach 

 on which that town stood was formed under conditions similar 

 to those which formed the modern beach and Point, the old site 

 of Ravenser Odd might be looked for at a distance of several 

 hundreds of yards to the east or seaward of the modern Point. 

 But there is no evidence of this. It may be possible that the 

 materials of the destroyed island were transported westward 

 and heaped up to form the Old Den. But, although the Old 

 Den is so far to the west of the place where we might expect to 

 find the site of Ravenser Odd, that situation may not be quite 

 impossible. I will offer a suggestion to those who may be of 

 that opinion. i\n examination of the beautiful order in which 

 the shingle is arranged at the extreme point at Spurn impresses 

 one with the notion that the direction of its growth is the result 

 of constant strug-gles between the tides and storms of the North 

 Sea and those of the Humber, the line of least resistance being 

 followed by the advancing shingle even to an inch. Let us 

 consider the conditions that existed when the thirteenth century 

 spur was growing out from the shore. 



The water area of the Humber, with all the inlets and 

 marshes that were overflowed at high tides seems then to have 

 been about 400 square miles. It is now only no miles, so that 

 290 miles have been taken from it by embankments, and these 

 areas no longer receive and return the tidal waters. The tide 

 flowing into the Humber encounters another considerable volume 

 of water brought down by the rivers from the greatest drainage 

 area in England, and the two volumes combined raise the Humber 

 from low-water to high-water level. The capacity of the estuary 

 must have been reduced by as much as a third through em- 

 bankments and reclamation since the twelfth century, and the 



Naturalist, 



