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

In mentioning recently to Ian Wilkinson, ex-work colleague and active member of Hessle Local History Soc., of my current blog title he commented that he and his wife sometimes drive to Sunk Island, particularly the part around Stone Creek, for although the landscape is monotonous the magic is to ‘hear the quietness’ (this not so at

It is not known whether the mudflat that was to become Sunk Island was established by the early-mid 14th century when Ravenser was functioning as a port (s.p.b.s). Certainly two centuries later when Lord Burleigh commissioned the first navigational map of the Humber Estuary (c. 1560) the mudflat on which, at its western end, the