The sketch above dated 1805 shows Waterside House and stables in the parish of Barton on Humber alongside the mouth of Barton Haven flowing into the Humber. The two sailing boats are sailing to/from two jetties, one serving the Barton to Hessle ferry, the other the Barton to Hull ferry. A vague image of the […]

The Meaux Abbey Chronicle further records that in the 1340s Burstall Priory suffered the ‘ruin of much of their property by inundation’. Burstall Priory was an ‘alien cell’ (monastic site belonging to a foreign order) in the parish of Skeffling between Patrington and Kilnsea. Despite the above it was still mentioned in the documents covering

The above photo was taken on 7th December, 2013, two days after the great flood resulting from the combination of a spring tide and coastal surge happening at the same time in the Humber Estuary. The view is looking west from a point east of the working clay tile works east of Barton’s coastal nature

The photo above shows a section of clay bank along the southern coast of Holderness (s.p.b.s), it is in the area of Cherry Cobb Sands, this a western extension of Sunk Island. This is clearly not a medieval clay bank because of its size and because the history of this whole area is complex with

Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond the basic form of flood defence was the linear ‘clay bank’, a potentially misleading name as the soil that was piled-up would have often been estuarine silts. If available, the ‘bank’ might have been reinforced by turves. The tidal range in the Humber Estuary is second only to that

The story of the Estuary’s wetlands, past, present and future is both interesting and very relevant. The extent of the wetlands, as seen in black in the map above, is second only to that of the Fens of Norfolk, Lincolnshire (Holland) and Cambridgeshire. Moving from right to left across the north bank the areas at,