Author name: Richard Clarke

The above photo (taken from Wikipedia) shows Canadian troops advancing behind the cover of Mark 2 ‘tanks’ (see Article in this website on my father’s Great War service in the Tank Corps, 1917-1921) at the battle of Vimy, 1917. An interesting episode in the history of the Sunk Island community was the ‘Crown Colony’. It has […]

The above early photo shows the interior of the second church on Sunk Island consecrated in 1877, the apsidal east end shown as viewed from the nave. Like much of the information conveyed recently this image comes from Meadley, J. A Sunk Island Miscellany (Malet Lambert Local History Original, Vol. 40, p. 22). The lancet

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