Author name: Richard Clarke

The picture above is an early photo of the second church on Sunk Island with the elementary school building just showing on the left, this now a private house. The church is a very distinctive building built to a plan drawn by the appropriately named Ewan Christian ‘architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners’ (Hull Times, August, 1877). […]

‘Reclaimed land’ (a peculiar phrase seeing as shallow embanked mudflats were not previously claimed) such as Sunk Island was/is, by common law owned by the ‘Crown’, and the farmers that work the land were/are lessees. Under an agreement made in the early 19th century, between the Crown and the lessees it was agreed that the upkeep

The publication Sunk Island Miscellany (s.p.b.s) references a letter written in 1711 (this included in Leland’s Itinerary and referenced in Allen, T. A New and Complete History of the County of York (1831), written by a local incumbent, presumably of Ottringham or Patrington. After recording that local people state (in 1711) that at the time of

Given what was decided in the previous blog the building of new clay banks to expand the area of Sunk Island during the early modern period must have been a precarious business. A fully encircling new bank would have taken more than one day to construct so as the tide rose its waters would lap

Firstly an apology for short ‘break in transmission’ as have ben preoccupied with issues related to problems in selling my house. The photo above, taken from current front bedroom window, shows, in the foreground, the on-going work related to the local ‘Flood Alleviation Scheme’ whereby a reserve clay bank is being created just inland of the

The photo. above was taken at a point on the coast of Sunk Island near Hawkin’s Point, this at low tide and showing Cleethorpes water tower in the distance across the Estuary. It shows the mudflat foreshore, covered by shallow, brackish water at high tide and a little inlet in the vegetated foreshore. Here the silence