It is intriguing to try to imagine what Raverser Odd (s.p.b.) looked like in its heyday, 1320s. Were there streets or just waterside warehouses with associated staithes and merchants houses and counting rooms, much like medieval High St. (originally Hull St.), Kingston upon Hull? What building materials and styles/size of buildings existed on Ravenser Odd?
With one exception the buildings materials would have had to have been accessed from the coast or mainland of Holderness. The exception would have been mud-walled buildings, the built-up part of the island would not (surely) have covered the whole of the ‘island’ so clay for clay/cob walling would have been locally available. That said the roof would still need materials for a timber-framed roof and thatch for the roofing material, neither of which would have been locally available.
Certainly at that time much brick making was taking place at Hull as those for the first tranch of town-wall making were by then being manufactured from warp-land estuarine clays immediately west and north of the medieval settlement. The very stuff of Ravenser’s island was warp-land estuarine clays but fuel for the kilns would have been needed for on site brick-making as well as chalk for the mortar. In Hull itself crushed chalk for the mortar in the town walls and town buildings came, almost certainly, from the medieval quarry at Hessle. To get the ready-made bricks and mortar from Hull/Hessle to Ravenser would have considerably increased their cost. Here again timber and thatch material for roofing would need to be shipped to Ravenser neither being available on the ‘island’.
Another possible building material would have been cobbles (stones from the Holderness beaches revealed by cliff erosion and rounded have the abrasive action of waves) for cobble walling. Although rare today, cobble walled building was the traditional everyman’s building material of Holderness, with chalk mortar, or maybe ‘puddled’ clay as the bonding.
(To be continued – will reference the photo next time).