Filey to Spurn Head and Holderness

The historic coast of Yorkshire’s East Riding stretches from Filey, Flamborough Head and the priory town of Bridlington in the north, all the way south to Spurn Head in the Humber estuary.

This is a beautiful and often quiet coastal region featuring the prominent headlands of Filey Brigg, Flamborough and Spurn Point. Chalk cliffs dominate here in the north, followed by long sweeping beaches on the shore of Holderness to the south.

On this page we feature Filey, Flamborough and Bridlington and then head along the rapidly eroding lower-lying coast of Holderness. We take in coastal places like Hornsea, Withernsea and explore the length of Spurn Head that juts out into the Humber estuary.

In Holderness we recall several long lost places that have been swallowed up by the sea, including the once busy medieval port of Ravenser Odd at Spurn. We then head inland to explore Holderness towns and villages like Hedon and Patrington.

This is one of four pages covering the Yorkshire coast and features a coastal region that is geologically and scenically quite distinct from the old North Riding coast to the north in Scarborough, Whitby and Cleveland.

It is also one of five pages covering the old East Riding of Yorkshire. Separate pages cover the City of Hull; the historic minster town of Beverley and the Howden and Hemingbrough area. Another page features the Yorkshire Wolds and their surrounds and includes a brief introduction to the East Riding.

Filey

The town of Filey is situated six miles south of Scarborough and although now in a county called North Yorkshire it was historically in the East Riding. The historic coastal border between the East Riding and North Riding was north of Filey along the North Cliff, a little to the west of Filey Brigg.

Filey Brigg is a pointed, pin-shaped rocky reef forming a narrow peninsula of cliffs, where the Romans are thought to have once anchored their ships. ‘Brigg’ in place-names usually comes from an Anglo-Saxon word ‘brycg’ meaning ‘bridge’ but in this case it is thought to come from an Old Scandinavian word ‘bryggja’ meaning ‘jetty’ or ‘landing-place’.

The Brigg is technically the eastern seaward end of the peninsula while the landward end is called the Naze. In late Roman times the peninsula was the site of a Roman watch tower dating from the fourth century that was first discovered in 1857 when five Roman altars were uncovered at the site.

Filey’s name may derive from ‘Five leys’ meaning ‘the five meadows’ or ‘five forest clearings’. An alternative view is that it derives from a combination of ‘ley’ with an Old Scandinavian word ‘fifill’ of ‘fifa’ meaning cotton grass, that is recorded as having grown here.

Filey Brigg forms the northern perimeter of the four and a half mile long Filey Bay that is made up from Filey Sands, Muston Sands, Hunmaby Sands, Reighton Sands and Speeton Sands. The bay terminates where the Speeton Hills meet the sea near the villages of Speeton and Reighton. The presence of this beautiful sandy bay is what makes Filey a popular little coastal resort, which it became following the arrival of the railways in 1847.

The coastal resort town developed alongside the bay, most notably in the form of a new street called the Crescent. This street, that barely curves at all, is fronted by grand white classical buildings that reflect Filey’s Victorian heyday. This coastal resort was really a ‘new town’ as the old village of Filey, a little fishing port, was slightly further inland away from the shore and still survives, centred on Church Street.

Today, the little town is a merging of the old fishing port and later seaside resort. The church from which Church Street is named, is also set inland but separated from the rest of the village by Church Ravine formed by the now culverted Filey Beck.

Dedicated to St Oswald, the church was described by the architectural historian, Nikolaus Pevsner as “easily the finest church in the north east corner of the East Riding”. It is a Norman church and was completed in less than fifty years, probably on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon one.

The adjacent Church Cliff House, a private home, is a former farm house of 1799. Just to the north, close to the church and the house is a country park and nearby car park from which walks linked to the Cleveland Way long distance coastal path are connected to a pathway that heads out along the Naze and Filey Brigg.

The old village, on the south side of the ravine, is reached from the church by an iron footbridge across Ravine Road. Close by, in the ravine itself, is an interesting old well with an information board that explains it is on the site of a number of springs that were a source for fresh water for hundreds of years.

Though now unsafe to drink, the water was once used by the people of Filey and by Dutch fishing fleets, fishing off the Yorkshire coast. They would roll barrels up the bank to collect the fresh water.

The old village is centred on Church Street and the adjoining Queen Street that terminates at a small cliff overlooking the resort town below. Church Street has the most character in the village but although it is a steep and an interesting street it would be unfair to compare old Filey to the North Riding fishing villages of Staithes and Robin Hood’s Bay to the north.

To the north of Filey Brigg, into the old North Riding, are Gristhorpe cliffs where we find various rocky coastal formations overlooked by the Blue Dolphin Holiday Park and further to its north is Cayton Bay with Scarborough beyond. The villages of Gristhorpe and Lebberston are north west of Filey.

Slightly to the south east of Filey is the village of Muston which has a name that means ‘mouse-infested farm’. To its west are Flotmanby, Folkton and Flixton along the northern edge of the Yorkshire Wolds.

Along the coast to the south of Filey near Hunmanby Sands is Primrose Valley Holiday Park in the Hunamby Moor area, part of which occupies the former site of a Butlins Holiday resort that operated here from 1947 to 1983. A little inland is the lovely village of Hunmanby itself.

Hunmanby

Hunmanby is a substantial village with a long history and a Viking name that means ‘village of the houndsman’ or possibly the village of someone with a personal name meaning ‘houndsman’.

Streets at the heart of this village include Stonegate, Northgate, Hungate Lane, Bowling Green Lane, Church Hill and Castle Hill, the last of which was formerly called ‘Ratten Row’.

Castle Hill stands below the well-wooded site of a hill that contains the earthworks of the former Hunmanby Castle. This was a Norman motte and bailey castle built by Gilbert de Gent (1048-1095). The castle was destroyed during the Anarchy, a period in which King Stephen was fighting against Matilda, his rival claimant for the English throne, when the barons were divided in their support.

The large Norman church at Hunmaby, dedicated to All Saints, reflects the historic importance of this village. A rather large stone gateway to the churchyard called the Admiral’s Arch, dates from 1870 and was erected to the memory of an Admiral Mitford.

The Mitford family, whose roots are in Northumberland, inherited the estate of Hunmanby from its previous owners, the Osbaldestons who had come into possession of the manor in the 1620s.

Hunmanby Hall, a large three-storey brick building of the seventeenth century on Hall Park Road at the western edge of the village was once the home of the Osbaldeston family. It later became a boarding school for girls.

Until the eighteenth century Hunmanby was the site of a market that was held here from 1241, so it was once a market town rather than a village. The only reminder of this today is the old market cross in the Cross Hill area of the village.

Wrangham House, close to the church, is a Georgian house that was once the home to Francis Wrangham (1769-1842) an Archdeacon of the East Riding.

The best way to return to the coast from Hunmanby is along a minor road that passes Graffitoe Farm towards Reighton and Speeton. Following the road past this curiously named farm will give you some superb views of the coast and particularly Filey Brigg with the sea on two sides of its long, thin pinnacle.

Reighton is a little village with a church dedicated to St Peter. The church is mainly a late nineteenth century and early Edwardian rebuilding of a Norman church though there are still remaining traces of the Norman original. Reighton derives from ‘ric’-ton which means strip, strap or ridge of land. There was once a place called ‘Strop’ (strap) in this neighbourhood, mentioned in the twelfth century but its location is unknown. A similar East Riding place-name is Thwing (a ‘thong’) that likewise derives from a strip of land.

East of Reighton are the Reighton Hills and Speeton Hills near the village of Speeton that are formed from chalk where the Yorkshire Wolds meet the sea. Speeton means ‘speech-ton’ and was possibly a meeting place for a hundred. Interestingly, the north eastern part of the East Riding formed a Wapentake called Dickering but at the time of the Domesday Book this wapentake was divided into three ‘Hundreds’.

Flamborough Head

From the village of Speeton a road called Speeton Gate leads towards the village of Bempton and onward to Bempton Cliffs to the north of Flamborough Head. Bempton village has a thirteenth century church dedicated to St Michael. The centre of the village has a mix of brick buildings and white rendered frontages. Its streets include the former ‘Teapot Row’ in High Street, sharing a corner with St Michael’s Walk (formerly ‘Poor Folks Lane’). Teapot Row is home to the cottage of the Bridlington Town Crier.

The wonderful Bempton Cliffs on the coast north of the village are an important RSPB reserve noted for Puffins, Gannets, Kittiwakes and Guillemots.

Heading along the Flamborough Road to Flamborough Head we cross the Danes Dyke. This prehistoric defensive ditch (mistakenly associated with the Danes in later times) stretches for two and a half miles across the neck of Flamborough Head. It begins at Bempton Cliffs on the north side and crosses towards Danes Dyke Beach on the south side, between Flamborough and Bridlington.

The Danes Dyke ditch is thickly wooded with trees along its entire course and forms part of a nature reserve. The ditch is thought to date from the middle to late Bronze Age or possibly Neolithic but there is no consensus. It has also been connected with the Iron Age.

It seems reasonable to assume that the defensive coastal potential of Flamborough Head and its associated dyke for both invaders and defenders would also have been recognised in the later Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Viking eras just as much as it was in prehistoric times.

Flamborough Head is a great nose-shaped peninsula or headland of chalk where the Yorkshire Wolds meet the sea. It is the only chalk cliff in the North of England. In Iron Age times the Flamborough Head headland was, like Scarborough, the home to a great fort but it was the Anglo-Saxons or the later Vikings who gave it the name Flamborough.

Flamborough means ‘Fleinn’s fort’, the Old Scandinavian personal name Fleinn means ‘hook’ though it could mean ‘hook-shaped fort’. Interestingly the name has sometimes been interconnected with the founding of Scarborough by a Viking called Skarthi.

Skarthi had a brother called Kormak mentioned in an Icelandic saga (see Scarborough) but in later stories Skarthi’s brother is called Flayn (Fleinn) which may have been Kormak’s nickname. During the fourteenth and fifteenth century the Danes Dyke was called ‘Flaynburgh Dyke’, although its more general association with the Danes came much later.

Near the tip of Flamborough Head is the Flamborough Head lighthouse which dates from 1806. It of course uses automated light and is not manned. Nearby is a fog signal station dating from 1859. Now using diaphones, the signal station previously used a siren and before that it utilised explosives. During its early history it used an eighteen pound gun.

About a quarter of a mile west of the lighthouse is Flamborough Head’s earlier lighthouse of 1674. It is an octagonal stone structure built of chalk by Sir John Clayton. There is a row of houses along the road opposite the old lighthouse but like the neighbouring caravan park to the west, they belong to the modern age.

In 1779 the Flamborough Head area witnessed a sea battle against the Americans during the American War off Independence. This involved the American Privateer John Paul Jones, whose ship was sunk off the coast. Jones managed to escape. During his expeditions along the North Eastern coast, Jones also launched attacks at Alnmouth in Northumberland and at Skinningrove on the Yorkshire coast.

Flamborough village is located a mile and a quarter to the west of the old lighthouse. Flamborough was the site of a castle, or at least a fortified manor house built for the Constable family who were given a licence to crenellate (fortify their home) in 1351. Three standing walls of its ruins remain in a neighbouring field near the war memorial.

The church at Flamborough, like that at Filey, is dedicated to St Oswald, presumably from the Northumbrian king of that name. The church is Norman, although its western tower was built in the 1890s by Hodgson Fowler.

Several houses in the village are built with chalk white stone although some are of brick. Streets in the village include High Street, Carter Lane, Tower Street, Post Office Street, School Lane and the Dog and Duck Square.

To the south of the village, towards the sea cliffs of the South Landing, is a nature reserve, a sculpture trail, Living Seas Events Centre and a hill called Beacon Hill, at which a rare early Neolithic timber house was once excavated. The sculpture trail follows a bright white chalk path, partly running along the banks of a deep wooded ravine.

Near the path is a former World War Two magnetic sea mine that was one of a number that proved to be a major hazard for shipping off Flamborough Head. It is no longer a live mine of course.

About three quarters of a mile to the west of Flamborough village we head back across the Danes Dyke and begin to approach the outskirts of the town of Bridlington. Here we find the Bridlington Links golf course and a number of caravan holiday parks. Just to the south near the northe end of Bridlington’s beach (Sewerby Beach) is Sewerby village along with Sewerby Hall and Gardens.

The village name Sewerby is of Danish Viking origin and means Siward’s farmstead, though whether this was connected with Siward, the Anglo-Danish, pre-Conquest Earl of Northumbria is uncertain. In pre-Norman times, Sewerby belonged to a Carle and Torchil before passing to Robert, Count of Mortain, a half brother of William the Conqueror. In 1088, Sewerby was confiscated from Mortain and the property passed to a family who took their name from the village. The Sywardby family held Sewerby until 1545.

Successive owners included the Carlylls of Bootham in York, the Greames in the eighteenth century, followed by the Yarburghs and various descendants who eventually sold the property to Bridlington Corporation in 1934. Most of the present day hall dates from 1714. The hall and its gardens are open to the public.

Bridlington

From Sewerby Beach we may continue along the mile and a half long North Beach of Bridlington sea front as far as Bridlington Harbour. The grandest sea front houses in this famous coastal resort town are to the south at North Crescent and Bridge Crescent.

Like the Crescent at Filey, they are really not crescents at all but probably named to suggest a refinement that appealed to Victorian tourists. To their south, just before Bridlington Harbour, is the Esplanade where we find the usual seaside amusements. All of this is, however, actually the Victorian coastal resort town of Bridlington rather than the historic old town of Bridlington that lies slightly to the west away from the sea in and around Bridlington Priory.

The old town of Bridlington began as an Anglo-Saxon settlement, with a name that may mean Beohrtel’s ton – ‘the farm belonging to Beohrtel’. It is a coastal market town with lots of character and its most important historic feature is undoubtedly Bridlington Priory.

The priory was founded in 1120 for Augustinian canons by Walter de Gant but of the present remains, nothing dates from before the thirteenth century.

Bridlington Priory was largely destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and its last Prior, William Wode was executed at Tyburn for his part in the Catholic rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.

The church of the priory, dedicated to St Mary, remains in full, escaping the destruction that followed the Reformation, because it served as the parish church of Bridlington. Some of the stones from the old priory were used in the construction of Bridlington’s piers.

One of the best known characters associated with Bridlington Priory was John of Bridlington, who was born at Thwing, a few miles to the north west in 1362. He was famed for working miracles and after his death in 1401, was made a saint by the Pope.

The green near the priory is called Church Green, where fairs and livestock markets were held in times past. To the south of the green and priory is the medieval Bayle Gate that now houses Bridlington’s Bayle Museum in seven themed rooms. It was the old gateway to the priory and constructed in 1388. Remarkably, like the priory it survived the dissolution of the monasteries during the Reformation, as it served as a courthouse to the manor of Bridlington.

The name of the gate derives from the French word ‘Baile’ that signified an enclosure (a Bailey), that would normally be associated with a castle or fortified site but in this case defended the priory. When William Le Gros took control of the priority in 1143 it was used as his place residence.

It would be through this gate that the pilgrims visiting the shrine of St John of Bridlington would pass on their way to the priory. In later times the gatehouse fell into private ownership. During its history Bayle Gate has served many roles including a school, prison, town hall and a meeting as well as serving as a museum since 1928.

The gate has close links to the Lords Feoffes of Bridlington and contains their meeting room. This body of men was formed in 1636 from a group of townsmen who purchased the manor of Bridlington from its then owner, George Ramsey of Coldstream and they became the town’s officials.

Near the east end of the Bayle Gate is the short street called Baylegate that connects to neighbouring Kirkgate (‘the church street’) leading us into the ‘Old Town’ area of Bridlington.

Bridlington Old Town is somewhat brimming with character and particularly the High Street that has an almost Dickensian feel to its relatively narrow High Street, with lots of old shop fronts that aren’t too twee.

The street features lots of Georgian houses with two buildings of particular interest just after we enter the street from Kirkgate. One of these is Craven House that may be in part late seventeenth century.

This house with its pleasing window shutters was the home and workplace of one of two renowned architects associated with Bridlington. He was Dr Francis Johnson CBE (1911-1995). A little further along is a prominent house at number 22 with a Roman Doric porch entranceway and a carriage entry.

A little further along still, on the right is a group of shops that make up a row of six bow-fronted windows that add a particular charm to the street. Another single example of a bowed shop front can be seen towards the Kirkgate entrance of the street opposite Craven House. Opposite the group of six bowed windows is another house with window shutters and next door to its right is the Old Town Gallery that features twin bowed windows.

This was the childhood home of Bridlington’s most renowned architect, William Kent (1685-1748). The Bridlington-born Kent (his surname was originally actually Cant) was a sign and coach painter in Bridlington, whose talents were quickly recognised by a patron. He was given the opportunity to go and study in Rome.

Kent was a talented architect, landscape architect and furniture designer. His most famous work was the interior of Holkham Hall in Norfolk but he is also credited with the introduction of the Palladian style of architecture to Britain and as one of the fathers of English landscape gardening.

Further along the High Street and also on the left, is a seven bay Georgian house of two storeys and next door is another twin bowed window bordered by exposed stone. It is currently home to a little restaurant. Next door is a butchers shop with another Georgian house, with a door bordered by fluted Doric columns. Its neighbour, the Board Inn is one of several old pubs in the old town.

Further along is another old shop (number 67) featuring an original bowed window but flat at the front and bowed at the sides. It is on the corner of High Street and neighbouring Gordon Road, which breaks the south side of the High Street into two parts.

On the north side (right) are more Georgian houses and a three-faced clock facing along both directions of the High Street as well as along Gordon Road. Beyond Gordon Road there are further bowed windows to the right and the left as we approach the Market Place end of the street.

Here too we find pubs called the Queens, Globe and Black Lion. At the junction with the street called Market Place, to the right, the High Street becomes Westgate.

On the corner of the Market Place and Westgate is the old corn exchange, a brick and ashlar stone building of 1824. It is complemented by a former bank across the road in Westgate.

In the Market Place, the Pack Horse Inn features Bridlington’s old stocks and pillory situated on the cobbles outside the pub. They are replicas of an earlier stocks and pillory, placed here in the 1630s.

Places to explore inland to the west of Bridlington include Rudston, home to Britain’s tallest prehistoric monolith and the Elizabethan Burton Agnes with its neighbouring Norman hall.

Returning to the coast, Bridlington harbour was historically distinct from the old town and the later resort. It is situated at the mouth of the Gypsey Race and has been a harbour since medieval times. Its piers, however, are Victorian and built between 1816 and 1848.

In the English Civil War, Bridlington was the landing place of Henrietta, Queen of Charles I, on February 22nd 1643. She was escaping the canon fire of Parliamentarian ships. Fourteen years later a Quaker, Robert Fowler, set sail from Bridlington to America with eleven Quakers and no experience of sailing. They landed safely in America a few miles from their intended destination.

Holderness

South of Bridlington harbour is Bridlington South Beach beginning near Hildersthorpe (‘Hildiger’s village’). From here, sands stretch many miles along the bight of Bridlington Bay. This whole coastline stretching south to Spurn Head lies mostly within Holderness, that is geologically different from the chalk cliffs of Flamborough to the north. It consists of glacial tills, sands and clays forming and is the fastest eroding coastline in Britain and Europe. Inland, Holderness is distinct from the chalk hills of the Wolds to the west and north. It forms low-lying alluvial terrain, richly fertile but sometimes marshy.

Between Bridlington and Spurn Head, the Yorkshire coast has receded significantly since Roman times. Many villages that came into being after the Roman era have since been claimed by the sea. Hartburn village was one example, situated somewhere off the coast between Bridlington and Barmston. It was one of around thirty villages along the East Yorkshire coast lost to the sea.

Fraisthorpe (Freisting’s Village), about a mile inland from Fraisthorpe Beach south of Bridlington is still there and quite safe for now. However, one day in the future it too will find itself swallowed by the sea as will several other villages and towns to the south along this coast. It is a humbling thought.

Situated between Bridlington and Barmston, Fraisthorpe is home to a part-thirteenth century church of rubble and cobble dedicated to St Edmund. South of Fraisthorpe is Barmston (‘farm of Beorn or Bjorn’) that is closer to the sea. Its Norman church, also of rubble and cobble is dedicated to All Saints is situated inland to the west of the village.

A fragment of a Viking sculpted ‘hogback stone’ similar to those found at Brompton near Northallerton was found at Barmston church and another, featuring a muzzled bear was found at the church of St James in the village of Lissett to the west. Lissett’s name is possibly from ‘laes-sett’ meaning ‘pasture dwelling’.

Between Fraisthorpe Beach and Barmston Beach, a stream called the Earls Dyke enters the sea. This stream marks the historic northern edge of the region called Holderness that stretches all the way south to Spurn Head and the Humber estuary, Holderness stretches inland westward to the River Hull. This region was held by the Earls of Aumale (Albermarle) in the thirteenth century, from whom the Earls Dyke is named.

Holderness is a Viking name and means ‘headland (the ness) of the hold’. A hold was a man of high rank in the Danelaw areas of England. Holderness wapentake was later divided into three divisions (North, South and Middle Holderness) and today the name is especially associated with the extensive peninsula between the Humber and the North Sea.

Skipsea

As we have mentioned, the Holderness coast is prone to erosion, so a number of villages that existed at the time of the Domesday Book have since been washed away. Erosion continues today and Holderness villages like Barmston, Ulrome and Skipsea were once much further from the sea than they are today. Somewhere out at sea from Ulrome and Skipsea once stood villages called Hyde, Withow and Cleton. Early spellings of Ulrome (‘Ulfram’) suggest it means ‘Wulfhere’s homestead’.

Skipsea, a village to the south is home to the Norman church of All Saints. This village may have been the site of the Viking administrative capital of Holderness or its court. It was later the site of a castle built by a Flemish man called Drogo de la Beauvrière who fought at the Battle of Hastings alongside William the Conqueror.

Dating from 1086, Drogo’s Norman motte and bailey castle was later used by the Earls of Albermarle who succeeded him. The castle was destroyed during the reign of Henry III. The remaining earthwork is quite impressive and excavations undertaken by archaeologists from the University of Reading in 2016 discovered it was actually a unique Iron Age earthwork, dubbed ‘the Silbury of the North’. This may explain the name of neighbouring little village of Skipsea Brough near the castle. Brough is likely a reference to the ancient ‘burh’ or fortified site.

The later Norman castle built upon its site was destroyed in 1221 after its owner rebelled against Henry III but the original Iron Age mound remains. Skipsea is a Viking name and means ‘Ship Lake’ – a lake upon which ships could sail. The lake was perhaps an outlet to the sea which has long since eroded away.

The castle itself was surrounded by marshy land crossed by causeways and at some point was flooded by the creation of earthworks to create a defensive lake. There were no doubt interesting elements and clues relating to Skipsea’s early origins that have been long-since lost to the sea forever.

Further inland, west of Skipsea and Skipsea Brough, are the farms of Dringhoe (from Dring’s Hoe – ‘hill of the free tenant’) and the village of Beeford on the A165. The village of North Frodingham, beyond to the west, possibly has a link to the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.

About a mile south of Skipsea is Skirlington holiday park and outdoor market site and about a mile further south is the village of Atwick (‘Ata’s dairy farm’) centred on a little village green a short walk from the sea. Two and half miles inland from Atwick at a farm called Nunkeeling was the site of a twelfth century Benedictine monastery that fell into ruin. In 1810 a church was erected using material from this site but it too subsequently fell into ruin.

Hornsea

Two miles down the coast from Atwick we meet the little town of Hornsea. Like Old Bridlington, the old part of the town is set away from the sea front, while the later Victorian resort of Hornsea developed closer to the shore. Hornsea is thought to have already become a popular resort for the people of Hull by the 1830s and its accessibility to visitors increased further following the opening of a railway station in 1864.

Looking out to sea we can reflect that the coast of Holderness has receded by three and a half miles since Roman times with perhaps as many as thirty villages lost to the sea through coastal erosion in the post Roman era. At least two villages or settlements, Hornsea Burton and Hornsea Beck, were situated just east of Hornsea but their locations are lost forever, somewhere offshore.

Hornsea Beck, which was a little to the south east of Hornsea was first mentioned in 1228. It received a charter to hold a market later in the century. Towards the end of the following century Hornsea Beck was a thriving little fishing port with a pier situated at the mouth of a small stream.

It was of similar size to the lake-side town of Hornsea itself. From the 1540s coastal erosion increasingly came into play and one by one its houses were gradually claimed by the sea. At the end of the following century its days as a port were long since over and it was reduced to a hamlet of a few houses. These too, would be claimed by the sea.

Further to the north and also claimed by the sea was a smaller settlement called Hornsea Burton. By the end of the seventeenth century it was lost forever. Another village that once stood in the Hornsea area was Southorpe, much further inland on the south side of Hornsea Mere. The site of this deserted medieval village is still there and only remembered in the name of the neighbouring Southorpe Farm and Southorpe Road.

The heart of the old town of Hornsea itself is situated close to the north side of Hornsea Mere and centred on the Market Place with adjoining streets including Chambers Lane, Westgate, Southgate and Atwick Road. Leading towards the seafront are the streets of Eastgate and Newbegin. Eastgate terminates in the Victoria Avenue and Esplanade area at the heart of the resort.

Newbegin is effectively the main street and focal point of the town rather than the market place. It becomes New Road at is eastern end, close to which it connects with Railway Street. There we find the lovely former railway station of red brick that is now forms homes called Station Mews.

Like the street called Newbegin in Richmond, Newbegin means ‘new building’ and also sometimes occurs in the names of villages under the different spelling ‘Newbiggin’. The Hornsea Museum is situated in Newbegin, partly occupying a former eighteenth century farm.

The museum is dedicated to portraying life in Hornsea and Holderness and includes examples of pottery made by the well-known Hornsea Pottery that operated from 1949 to 2000.

In 1974 the pottery opened a second factory in Lancaster and although at one point employing around 700 people, the pottery struggled with this expansion and ultimately went into receivership. The rights to its designs were acquired and can still be found online. Hornsea Freeport, a factory outlet shopping village on the southern edge of the town includes a ‘pottery painting experience’ at the site of the old Hornsea Pottery.

Alongside the museum is Burns Lane recalling a family called Burn that once owned the neighbouring farm, although the sign ‘Chambers Lane’ situated here and salvaged by the museum from another lane in the town might cause a little confusion.

A little east of the museum the opposite side of the street is joined by Willows Drive. Here there is a peculiar dark brick tower known as ‘Bettison’s Folly’ built in 1844 by a Hull brewer called William Bettison, who settled in Hornsea in 1838.

Towards the east end of Newbegin just before its splits into Cliff Road and New Road we find Hornsea Town Hall and a neighbouring Methodist church, both of red brick. Hornsea Town Hall, though built in 1875, has only been a the Town Hall since 2011 and was originally a Wesleyan school. It was built by the same architect as the Methodist Chapel next door.

Further east, on the corner of Cliff Road and New Road is the United Reformed Church with its prominent broach spire and clock. Built as a Congregational church, it dates from 1868.

At the western end of Newbegin, where it joins the market place, we find the parish church of Hornsea, dedicated to St Nicholas. It was built of cobblestones in the fourteenth century and underwent restoration by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the 1860s. Inside the church is an early fourteenth century monument of a knight with his legs crossed along with his lady. It was recovered from Nunkeeling.

At the edge of the churchyard close to where Newbegin meets the Market Place is a tall medieval cross of white limestone that was restored with some additions during the twentieth century. The Market Place itself is really a street and the actual square itself forms little more than a mini roundabout.

Overlooking the street here is Hornsea Old Hall, a private house. As noted on a blue plaque at its entrance gateway, this house was built about 1687 for Hornsea’s Lord of the Manor, Peter Acklam. In later times its owners included Margaret Strickland Constable and her husband Frederick. Margaret, who could speak Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German and French, worked as a nurse at a hospital in Hull during the First World War and helped save the life of the writer J.R.R Tolkien who was a patient in the hospital suffering from trench fever.

At the roundabout, Hornsea Market Place meets the adjoining Westgate and curls north passing another Methodist Chapel. It joins Eastgate and Mill Lane which is linked to the Atwick Road that continues north along the coast to the village of Atwick. The chapel was built for Hornsea’s Primitive Methodists in 1864.

Heading back along the Market Place to its junction with Newbegin, near the parish church, the Market Place becomes Southgate, a street that continues south through the town to become the B1242 coastal route to Withernsea.

‘Hornsea’ means ‘horn-shaped lake’ and the lake in question is Hornsea Mere, a freshwater lake less than a mile from the sea. This mere is remarkable, in that despite being only 467 acres, it is Yorkshire’s largest natural lake, although some man-made reservoirs up in the dales are considerably larger.

In the thirteenth century, the abbot of St Mary’s at York and the abbot of Meaux near Beverley disputed the fishing rights at Hornsea Mere. It is said that they eventually settled their argument in a duel employing champions to fight their cause. St Mary’s were the eventual winners, although it is said that no blood was shed during the dispute.

The presence of the freshwater mere and proximity of the sea are a double attraction at Hornsea. In the heyday of railway tourism Hornsea was marketed as the ‘Lakeland by the Sea’, notably through the railway posters of Harry Hudson Rodmell who painted Hornsea scenes from his attic studio in Newbegin in 1926.

Hornsea Mere was one of a number of meres once situated along the coast of the East Riding. At least eight further meres have been identified from old records stretching from Wilsthorpe near Bridlington in the north to Easington near Spurn Head to the south. Like a number of villages they have been long since washed away by the sea.

The mere can be reached along a lane called ‘The Mere’ off Southgate which terminates at a little peninsula that juts into the lake called Kirkholme that is the home to Hornsea Mere sailing club. From 1915 to 1919. during the First World War, this peninsula was home to a Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) base, a substation of RNAS Killingholme on the Humber estuary.

Before that war, during 1913, the mere had hosted an air display attended by a crowd of 5,000 people in which a ‘Water Hen’ hydro plane gave flying demonstrations then provided five minute flights for paying members of the public at a cost of two guineas per person. To the west of  the Kirkholme peninsula, in the centre of the lake, is a little isle called Swan Island.

Hornsea to Leven and Brandesburton

Further inland, to the west of Hornsea and its mere, is a Regency house called Wassand Hall (the owners of the mere). It was historically the home to the Constables and then the Strickland-Constables. Further west are the villages of Seaton, Sigglesthorne and Catwick and then we have the villages of Leven and Brandesburton, just beyond the A1035, about three miles west of Hornsea Mere.

Seaton, means ‘farmstead near a lake’. This derives from an Anglo-Saxon word ‘sæ’ meaning ‘lake’ that also occurs in the name of Hornsea and in the name of Semer Water in Wensleydale. Seaton is only a mile from Hornsea Mere.

Sigglesthorne, south of Seaton and three and half miles north of the of Skirlaugh means ‘thorn tree belonging to Siggel’. Its thirteenth century church of St Lawrence has been much restored in brick including its tower, repaired in the 1670s. Catwick, a village to its west means ‘dairy farm of Catta’ and has a Victorian restored fourteenth century church, dedicated to St Michael.

Brandesburton, ‘the fortified farmstead belonging to Brand’ is a substantial village of brick-built houses and a little green featuring a village cross. Its church of St Mary is mostly thirteenth century with Norman traces. Leven village to its south, derives from a river-name meaning ‘slow-moving one’ and was presumably an old name for one of the neighbouring streams.

Leven is also the name of a river in the Cleveland area of Yorkshire as well as the name of rivers in Scotland and Cumbria. An Anglo-Saxon cross shaft has been found at Leven’s thirteenth century church of Holy Trinity. A little over three-and-a-half miles south west of Leven, we reach the village of Tickton and the River Hull, forming the old western boundary of Holderness, near the outskirts of Beverley.

We now return to the coast where the B1242 from Hornsea takes us south through Mappleton (this village-name means ‘farm by the Maple Tree’) with a fourteenth century church of All Saints, much restored in the mid nineteenth century. A glance at the Ordnance Survey 1888-1915 six inch series map shows the village set slightly away from the neighbouring Mappleton Cliff but today the cliff has receded right up to the edge of the village.

A mile to its south, the same map shows Great Cowden village (historically ‘Colden’) including the Cross Keys pub and a Methodist Chapel. It was once also the site of a church, swept away by the sea in 1690. In the 1940s, the village was requisitioned for a military tank range and the villagers were moved out. This was no doubt a sad time for its residents, but in truth its days as a village were already numbered as its site has since been taken by the sea. The present Great Cowden, to the north, including the neighbouring holiday park and present Cross Keys bar are from more recent times.

Further inland to the west is the village of Withernwick which should not to be confused with Withernsea on the coast twelve miles to the south east. The relationship between the two place-names is not clear but may have some connection to a lost place called Witthorn.

Aldbrough

South of Great Cowden, about five miles down the sandy Holderness coast from Hornsea is Aldbrough village, situated about three-quarters of a mile from the sea. Its name means ‘old fortified manor or settlement’. Perhaps this was a site of some importance in ancient times, particularly when you consider the significant ancient history of the village of Aldborough near Boroughbridge or the village of Aldbrough St John near the Iron Age fort of Stanwick.

East Yorkshire’s Aldbrough’s church of St Bartholomew is mostly thirteenth century with some Norman features and includes an Anglo-Saxon sundial with an inscription that reads: ‘Ulf who ordered this church to be built for his own and Gunware’s souls’.

The church would seem to be situated on a long-occupied site but was there an earlier major fortified site, such as what we find at Aldborough or Aldbrough St John? There is a hill called Burst Hill (meaning broken hill) to its east near a holiday park but it is barely a hill at all. Interestingly, nearby somewhere further to the east, there was once a place called ‘Old Aldbrough’. It was claimed by the sea.

About a mile along the coast to the south of Aldbrough there was a farmhouse called Ringbrough with a name that likely means ‘circular fort’. This name probably referred to a site washed away many years ago. Offshore from here, belonging to a more recent age and visible at low tide is the wreck of a Victorian ship called The Earl of Beconsfield that ran aground on November 6, 1887, at the end of a journey from Calcutta.

Grimston to Roos and Burton Pidsea

South of Aldbrough we reach Garton and Grimston. Grimston is nearer the coast (a quarter of a mile from the shore). Like North Grimston near Wharram it means ‘Grim’s Farm’. Garton is sometimes called Garton-in-Holderness to distinguish it from Garton-in-the-Wolds, both from ‘gara’ a ‘triangular piece of land’. Garton is home to a thirteenth century parish church dedicated of St Michael, the parish church for Garton and Grimston.

At Grimston there are two moated sites close to the coast with the larger one containing a farm. This was the site of a hall called Grimston Hall, later called Grimston Garth. The smaller moat nearby is thought to have been ornamental. Further south in a private park near Grimston village is Grimston Hall (also confusingly called Grimston Garth) built in 1781-86 by John Carr of York for Thomas Grimston and superseding the earlier moated site to the north.

To the south is the village of Hilston (it means ‘Hildolf’s farm’). The church here dedicated to St Margaret dates from 1957 and replaced a church built for Sir Tatton Sykes in 1862 that was bombed during World War Two. There had been an earlier Norman church and the present one incorporates its Norman doorway. In a field on slightly higher ground just north of the village is the octagonal Admiral Storr’s Tower built in brick in 1750, as a landmark for sailors.

South of Hilton are the villages of Tunstall and Roos with Burton Pidsea to their west. Here we enter the peninsula area of South Holderness. This peninsula is bounded by the Humber over to the west; the coast over to the east, and Spurn Head at the southern tip of Holderness to the south.

Of the three villages we mention, Tunstall is the nearest to the coast near Tunstall Beach. Its name, first recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086 means ‘farmstead’. That is still essentially what it is with large farm buildings dominating a handful of houses in the village.

Roos, to the west, is thought to have a Celtic name that derives from ‘rhos’ meaning moor or heath and related to the Irish word ‘ros’ meaning promontory or wood. Ros Castle in Northumberland (the site of an Iron Age fort) derives from the same word and also possibly Melrose in the Scottish Borders. All Saints church at Roos built of cobble and rubble is a heavily restored fourteenth or fifteenth century church.

To the west, Burton Pidsea is home to another church built of cobble and rubble and is dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. The ‘Pidsea’ of the village name seems to mean ‘pool or stream in a marsh’. At the south west end of the village is the tower of a converted brick windmill in the garden of a neighbouring house.

Withernsea

We now reach the little town of Withernsea on the coast about three miles south west of Roos. It was recorded as ‘Witfornes’ and ‘Widfornessei’ at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086. The original village (Old Withernsea) was claimed by the sea along with its church of St Nicholas that had been abandoned in 1444.

A small lake or mere associated with the village was also lost to coastal erosion at some point. Like other places in Holderness such as Seaton, Hornsea, Kilnsea, Burton Pidsea and Skipsea, the ‘sea’ part of the name actually means ‘lake’ or ‘pool’ rather than the sea itself. There were around eight lost lakes or ‘meres’ situated along the Holderness coast that have been taken by the sea. Little seas claimed by a big sea. The first part of the name ‘Withern’ may mean ‘White-thorn’ or ‘with-thorn’ (meaning ‘beside the thorn’).

Withernsea’s church of St Nicholas (near the town’s leisure centre) was completed around 1488 after the old church of this name had been abandoned. Built of cobble stones, it has seen much restoration.

The arrival of a railway line from Hull enabled Withernsea to develop its potential as a coastal resort but the building of Withernsea Pier in 1877 was beset with disaster. In October 1880, the pier was struck by a coal barge called the Saffron creating a 200 feet wide hole.

The pier was struck again in 1890 by a fishing boat and then again in 1893, so that by the beginning of the twentieth century virtually nothing was left of the pier.  The remains of the pier were removed altogether except for its castellated entranceway on the shoreline, that is now essentially a romantic folly overlooking the beach.

Slightly inland is the prominent Withernsea Lighthouse that now serves as a museum. It includes an observation area at the top which can be reached by climbing 144 steps.

The local history themed museum includes features on the life of the actress Kay Kendall (1927-1959) who was born in Withernsea not far from the lighthouse. She was best known for her starring role in the 1953 comedy film Genevieve about a veteran car race, appearing alongside Kenneth More, Dinah Sheridan and John Gregson. Sadly, Kendall died of Myeloid Leukaemia in 1959 at the age of 32.

Another well-known Withernsea born entertainer was the Jazz trumpeter, Kenny Baker (1921-1990). Interestingly, in one scene from Genevieve Kay Kendall’s character plays a trumpet with a jazz band but the actress is in fact miming to a Kenny Baker soundtrack.

We have mentioned the loss of Old Withernsea and its church to the sea. Just to the north of Old Withernsea was another little ‘town’ or lost village called Owthorpe that was the home to Withernsea’s sister church (the sister Kirk) dedicated to St Peter. Owthorpe and its church were taken by the sea in 1816.

Further inland to the west of Withernsea is a farm called Frodingham Hall or South Frodingham, situated to the north of Patrington and Winestead. Like North Frodingham twenty miles to the north and Frodingham in Lincolnshire (a place absorbed by Scunthorpe), it may recall the tribal name of a people called the ‘Froddings’. Frodingham Hall was a medieval moated site.

Easington

South of Withernsea are the villages of Hollym and Holmpton both of which have churches dedicated to St Nicholas. Holmpton was the home of RAF Holmpton, an early warning station and and extensive bunker complex built in the 1950s during the Cold War era. The bunker is now a museum.

Heading southward along quiet roads through the low-lying Holderness countryside we reach the village of Easington (it means ‘Esa’s Farm’) about three miles south of Holmpton.

The village is set back from the coast but its neighbours on the coast to the north and south are respectively the Easington Natural Gas terminal which dwarfs the village and Easington Beach caravan park.

Easington’s church of All Saints is thirteenth century and stands on the site of an earlier Norman one. Nearby is a thatched timber-framed barn that dates from the fourteenth or fifteenth century. In addition to the church there are two pubs in the village and a brick-built Methodist chapel.

Along the coast, Easington Beach near the caravan park continues into Grossman’s Beach near the neighbouring Kilnsea wetlands. More lost villages, claimed by the se,a were once situated hereabouts. They included Dimlington, Northorp, Hoton and Old Kilnsea.

The village-name Kilnsea means ‘pool near the kiln’ and the present village of that name is a little to the south of Easington. We have now reached an area where the Holderness peninsula between the Humber estuary and North Sea has begun to narrow considerably as we approach Spurn Head.

The village of Kilnsea itself, just under two miles south of Easington, is on the west side of the peninsula and its pub, the Crown and Anchor has super views across the Humber estuary with Spurn Head and Grimsby to the south. Only half a mile across the other side of the peninsula is the North Sea.

Spurn Head

Spurn Head is one of the best-known coastal features in the British Isles. It is a narrow hooked-shaped peninsula formed from sand and shingle, some three and a half miles long. Terminating as a spit of land at Spurn Point, it is created from the deposits of coastal erosion along the Holderness coast to the north and by silt carried by the Humber estuary from the east.

Spurn, as it also simply called, juts out half way across the very broadest part of the River Humber estuary where the river meets the sea and forms the most southerly point on the Yorkshire coast.

Spurn is an important National Nature Reserve and has been owned by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust since 1959. It is rich in wildlife with sea birds and other nesting birds including rare visitors. Butterflies and moths are also abundant on Spurn, though visitors should be wary of the Brown-Tail Moth caterpillars whose hairs can cause irritation to the skin.

Spurn Head is not accessible to vehicles so cars must be left at the car park to the north of the Spurn Discovery Centre. From the Discovery Centre, visitors (without dogs) can walk to Spurn Lighthouse. The walk to the lighthouse is typically estimated as taking five hours (six miles there and back) or is an eight mile walk there and back if we reach the very end of the peninsula at Spurn Point and take in the ‘Land’s End’ signposts and the significant military remains.

Dogs can only be walked in the northern part of Spurn that adjoins the broader Holderness peninsula near the Discovery Centre. This includes the Kilnsea Wetlands and a beach to the east but dog walkers may not enter the narrower part of the peninsula to the south for the protection of the nature reserve and safety of dogs.

Here to the south we enter an area of the peninsula that is potentially a ‘danger area’ as it is only accessible to the public when the tide allows it.

Consisting of sand and shingly beach without any firm grassland this part of the peninsula is subject to a tidal wash-over area at High Tide that cuts off most of the remaining part of Spurn to the south from the mainland in a similar manner to Lindisfarne in Northumberland and forms Yorkshire’s only coastal island. This island eventually terminates beyond the Spurn lighthouse in a broader bulbous tip that is home to most of the former military site as well as a former lifeboat station and a jetty.

It is important to check tide times before embarking on a walk along Spurn Head and to ensure there is enough time to cross and return. Visitors who find themselves stranded at High tide on the island part of the peninsula to the south of the tidal wash-over can take refuge in the High Tide Shelter.

South of the tidal wash-over area, we effectively enter the island and continue beyond into the firmer ground formed by grassland. Here we leave the unmarked sandy path behind and follow a road that dates back to the time of the First World War. The road was linked to the mainland to the north until 2013 but was ripped away in what is now the sandy wash-over area, by the sea storm of that year.

The narrow ridge of grassland that we now enter in the northern part of the island area is bordered on the estuary side by a sea grass protection area. An information board explains the wonders of seagrass which is described as a ‘planet saving plant’.

The shallow, muddy waters of the Humber estuary here provide the ideal conditions for this plant to grow. Seagrass can help stabilise the peninsula and trap polluting items such as plastic before it drifts out to sea. It creates a food and shelter habitat for wildlife too but there is something even more remarkable about seagrass. As mentioned on the information board, 1m² of seagrass can generate ten times more oxygen than trees. Not only that but seagrass is thirty-five times more effective at storing carbon than rainforests.

For those who love strolls along the coast, it is well worth the walk along the entire peninsula of Spurn to Spurn Point with the sea effectively on two sides. Generally there are sandy beaches along the coastward east side of the peninsula whereas sands on the estuary extend into extensive mudflats at low tide. There are good views across the estuary, with the dock tower at Grimsby clearly visible on the horizon in the distance and there are regular glimpses of ships navigating the Humber waters.

Along the way as we walk the peninsula, there are numerous information boards featuring themes such as the natural history of Spurn; the maintenance and protection of the peninsula and Spurn’s military history.

To the south of the seagrass area we reach what is called Chalk Bank. In 1849 and 1850 the sea punched a hole in the peninsula here to the extent that some ships could pass straight through. If this erosion had continued it would have had negative consequences for shipping channels in the Humber so the gap was filled with large quantities of chalk that have grassed over and stabilised.

Continuing south on the walk, as the lighthouse very gradually comes closer into view, is an information board highlighting the history of Spurn with a timeline of events. It notes that there was a Napoleonic fort here in 1805 and highlights the military installations of later times including the Port War Signal Station or PWSS at this site that controlled maritime traffic. Women played a significant role in its operation during the later part of World War Two.

A little further south, heading towards Spurn lighthouse, is a huge sculpture of a green hairstreak butterfly by the Whitby artist Emma Stothard that was unveiled in 2021. It is a reminder of the importance of the Spurn nature reserve.

A little further on we reach Spurn’s most prominent landmark, the Spurn lighthouse, which dates from 1895. At 128 feet, this lighthouse is the tallest in the North of England.

It is located on the central grassy area of the peninsula itself. Also situated close by, but out in the Humber estuary is the old low lighthouse of 1852.

There have been a series of lighthouses at Spurn, with the first that was mentioned being a tower in 1427 built by Richard Reedbarrow, a hermit who resided on the peninsula at a place then called Ravenspurn. The tower served as a beacon by day and as a guiding light by night, designed to guide ships into the estuary.

Beacons rather than lights existed hereabouts during the sixteenth century but in the following century a pair of lightouses were built by the local landowner, Justinian Angell, in 1675. They were subjected to repairs until a new pair of lighthouses were built by the renowned engineer, John Smeaton at Spurn and first lit in 1776.

Pairs of lighthouses (Low lights and High lights) served as guiding lights for shipping or ‘leading lights’ that marked out safe channels for channels when aligned.

Smeaton’s Low Light needed to be replaced in 1816 with a new one, built by John Straw, but this had to be replaced again after storm damage in 1829 and then again following further damage to the new light in 1851. The present Low Light was built in 1852 by James Walker and is now topped by a water tank rather than a light.

Smeaton’s High Light lighthouse survived until 1895 when it was necessary to replace it with the present Spurn Lighthouse built by Thomas Matthews. This lighthouse, with a light that once covered a range of seventeen nautical miles, was decommissioned in 1985 and restored by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust in 2016. It is sometimes open to the public.

Southward from the lighthouse is the RNLI lifeboat station and its associated buildings, including houses built for the lifeboat crew and their families that were lived in as recently as 2012.

The lifeboat station was founded here in 1810 but in 2023, the work of the station was transferred to Grimsby after structural problems were identified on the neighbouring pier or jetty used by the station. This jetty, which is closed to the public, was also used by the Humber Pilots whose fast-moving vessels guide ships in the Humber estuary.

The former RNLI station and jetty can be found at the bulbous broad end of the peninsula that forms the actual Spurn Head. This part of Spurn Head is home to a number of interesting military remains that were used during the Second World War and is also home to the former tower of the VTS (Vessel Traffic Service) station that dates from the 1960s.

The role of the VTS tower included an Automatic Identification System (AIS) as well as radar tracking and vessel reporting but the station was relocated to Grimsby following the storm that created the wash-over in 2013.

In its situation at the entrance to the Humber Estuary, Spurn Head had an important role to play during both World Wars. The vulnerability of the east coast was highlighted by the bombing of the towns of Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool by German battleships in December 1914.

During the period 1914-1916, Spurn was developed as a fort and gun battery and two additional Humber forts were built within the Humber estuary itself at Bull Sands and Haile Sands. They can still be seen, protruding 59 feet above the water. Spurn Head more or less points across the estuary in the direction of the two forts.

The most northerly of the two former forts is the Bull Sands fort while the Haile Sands fort lies off the coast of Humberston on the Lincolnshire side of the Humber to the south of Cleethorpes. Both forts were modified and reused during the Second World War.

Trenches and gun emplacements of a coastal artillery battery were developed on Spurn Head itself during the First World War and replaced with smaller and faster guns in the Second World War that were designed to meet the threat of those Luftwaffe raids that followed the Humber, destined for Hull and the industrial towns of Yorkshire and the North beyond.

I have a particular interest in the extensive remains of the World War Two battery at Spurn, as my grandfather, Albert Simpson, from County Durham, was stationed here at the beginning of the war. My father, also called Albert, has written about my grandfather and the military features at Spurn Head.

Helpful information boards at the site highlight features and locations such as the parade ground and the gun emplacement and there are extensive remains of underground buildings.

The remains of the gun emplacement for two six pounder guns are still prominent, with the roof of the building that contained them now hosting a picnic bench in what is now a relatively tranquil spot and a great viewpoint.

There are several other buildings associated with this military station including the brick wall bases of former Nissen huts that formed the camp.

Further to the south, close to Spurn Point, at the terminus of Spurn Head are the remaining superstructures of powerful search lights that were designed to pick out enemy aircraft.

At the very tip of Spurn Head is Spurn Point, known as ‘Yorkshire’s Land’s End’ where we can enjoy the view of passing ships in both the North Sea and the Humber estuary from this most southerly point on Yorkshire’s coast.

As at Land’s End itself, a signpost points in the direction of numerous locations along with the distance in miles that we would need to travel to reach each of them. As well as Land’s End itself (348 miles) and John O’ Groats (371 miles) there are directions and distances to Amsterdam (218 miles); Copenhagen (371 miles) Reykjavik (1,067 miles) Sydney (10,474 miles) and New York (3,137 miles).

Ravenser, Ravenspur and Ravenser Odd

On our return journey north to the mainland from Spurn Point, we might contemplate the earlier history of the peninsula and the forces of nature that have played such an important role in its story and formation.

Spurn Head peninsula, as we have noted, has been subjected to constant erosion over time and is continuously moving westward at an extraordinary rate of six feet and seven inches a year. This enables it to keep up with erosion along the rest of the Holderness coast to which it is joined to the north.

Eroded material from that very same coast also helps to create the Spurn peninsula itself, as too does tidal sediment carried by the Humber. Prevailing sea currents cause the Spurn peninsula to curve south-westward into the estuary.

Surprisingly, there is some debate about the process of Spurn’s creation and its locations in historic times. One view is that the whole peninsula, including its tip, is completely washed away and rebuilt further to the west in a cycle that reoccurs every 250 years. Another view is that during this process, the broad tip of the peninsula remains situated in its original location due to its position on an underwater glacial moraine deposited during the last Ice Age.

What makes the whole process and debate about its history all the more fascinating is that it is a key to unravelling the mystery of three lost places from history that all have very similar sounding names. One of these places was called Ravenspur and is mentioned in two of Shakespeare’s ‘History Plays’. It was a famed landing place for two English kings, while another place with the quite literally ‘odd’ name of Ravesner Odd was a major town and port that was of at least equal importance to the neighbouring ports of Hull and Grimsby.

The third place was a village simply called Ravenser and was sometimes referred to as ‘Old Ravenser’. It was located at the northern landward or Holderness end of the old Spurn peninsula, somewhere close to the also lost village of Old Kilnsea. It seems to have been the least important of the three places but inevitably there has been considerable confusion between these three different places that existed at different times.

Ravenser is ultimately a Viking place-name of Danish origin that derives from ‘Hraefen’s eyrr’ or ‘Raven’s Ear’, meaning ‘Hrafn’s sandbank’ but whether Old Ravenser was the site of ‘Hraefen’s sandbank’ or was the name given to the entire peninsula is not known.

In Roman times Spurn Head (wherever it was then located) was called Ocellum Promentorium and in later Anglo-Saxon times was called ‘Cornu Vallis’ meaning ‘horn of the valley’ – the valley possibly being a reference to the vale of Holderness itself or perhaps the valley of the Humber. In the seventh century a hermit called Wilgil, the father of a Northumbrian saint called Willibrord settled here.

In later times ‘Hrafnseyri’ is mentioned in Viking Icelandic and Orcadian sagas as the place at which Olaf, son of the Norwegian king, Harald Hardrada, embarked with the remnants of the Norwegian army following the death of Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge near York in 1066. Olaf’s father was defeated by Harold Godwinson, the king of England, after which Godwinson, famously headed south to ultimately meet his own end at the Battle of Hastings.

Old Ravenser village, at the northern Holderness end of the Spurn peninsula, is thought to have moved westward over time as the neighbouring coast eroded and it came to be completely overshadowed by the nearby town of Ravenser Odd.

Built, it is thought, on a sandbank on or near the bulbous tip of the peninsula (wherever it was then located), Ravenser Odd had come into existence as an inhabited place by at least the 1230s and is referred to in 1235 as a ‘burgo’ (a town) called ‘del Odd juxta Ravenserre’ meaning the ‘headland near Ravenser’. The peninsula was likely already called ‘Odd’ before the town came into existence. Odd means ‘headland’ and is derived from an Old Danish word ‘Odde’ meaning ‘tongue of land’.

The town seems to have emerged and grown very rapidly. Perhaps this was because of a recent change in the structure or re-emergence of Spurn Head that provided an ideal location for a port town to grow in this important medieval shipping route at the mouth of the Humber. William de Forz, the Count of Aumale and Lord of Holderness, was a key figure in the town’s development on a location described as an ‘island’.

From 1295 Ravenser Odd had two Members of Parliament and was the site of a market and fair when it was granted a borough charter in 1299. At its height, the town was a home to around 300 houses and 1,000 inhabitants. It was the setting for two windmills, a church of stone, a court, a prison and a tannery as well as wharves and warehouses. Its merchants also seem to have been somewhat piratical in their behaviour at times, for example sailing out into the Humber estuary and bullying Grimsby-bound ships into using their port.

From the third decade of the following century the port seems to have been increasingly prone to flooding and destruction from the ravages of the sea. There are six recorded grants made by the king for the repairs of its quays between 1329 and 1347. In 1356-1357 the town was completely flooded and abandoned and its whole site was swept away in 1362. Some of its former inhabitants are known to have moved to Hull, others perhaps moved to other ports.

Though largely forgotten today, Ravenser Odd lived on in the memory for some centuries, long after it was lost. The Tudor historian John Leland made mention of it, as did the eighteenth century writer and traveller, Daniel Defoe.

What is not known, however, is where exactly the thriving town of Ravenser Odd was situated. It was most likely located somewhere to the east of the present Spurn peninsula but it could have possibly been to the west. The chances of any remnants ever being found are probably quite slim.

Long after Ravenser Odd was lost, a landing place called Ravenspur developed perhaps again associated with a new reincarnation of the Spurn Head peninsula. In 1399 it is recorded as ‘Ravenserespourne’ and in 1406 is called ‘Ravenser Spurne’. Both of these include the word ‘Spurn’ that derives from the word ‘spur’ meaning ‘projecting piece of land’. The name Spurn Head  is first recorded as ‘Spun Head’ on a map by John Speed in 1610 and Spurn Point is first recorded in the 1670s.

In 1399 ‘Ravenserespourne’ was the landing place of Henry IV (Henry Bolingbroke) who came on a mission to overthrow Richard II. It is through this connection that the place receives a mention in the much later history plays of Shakespeare who calls it ‘Ravenspurgh’ in Henry IV  Part I; Henry IV Part II and in Richard II.

Another king to land at Ravenspur, during the Wars of the Roses, and arriving here from the Netherlands, was Edward IV in 1471. He was met with some resistance from a local knight called Sir Martin de la See, of Barmston near Bridlington.

Like the long lost town of Ravenser Odd, before it, Ravenspur would also eventually succumb to the greedy claims of the sea. Just as with Ravenser and Ravenser Odd we may never know its location. It was already lost by the time Shakespeare mentioned it in the 1590s.

Skeffling and Sunk Island

We now leave Spurn behind and head back north through Kilnsea and Easington to explore some other parts of Holderness further inland. To the west of Easington is the village of Skeffling with another medieval church of cobble and rubble; this one dedicated to St Helen. Skeffling is a place-name of uncertain origin, perhaps meaning ‘Sceftela’s place’.

Skeffling is located only half a mile to the north of the bank of the River Humber and its estuary. Offshore from the coast here there was once a village called Sunthorpe and a monastery called Burstall Priory founded in 1219. It was dissolved in the administrative sense during the Reformation by Henry VIII and in later years its site was quite literally dissolved by the sea.

No other standing villages come anywhere near the Humber estuary to the west of Skeffling until we reach Paull near the outskirts of Hull. As the crow flies Paull is about eleven miles west of Skeffling or fourteen miles if we follow the curving shoreline of the Humber. The name Paull seems to derive from a word meaning stake or pole and is the site of an historic fort that we have already mentioned on our Hull page. Presumably Paull was where the prominent medieval Hull family called De la Pole originated.

The area between Skeffling and Paull is low-lying and mostly empty, except for fields and scattered farm houses, with a significant part of the land forming an area called Sunk Island.

Sunk Island was once a sand bank in the Humber estuary that had in earlier times been open water. It was developed into agricultural land that formed an island about a mile and a half off the Humber shoreline in the seventeenth century. In the 1660s the surrounding water was drained so that it became part of the Holderness mainland. It is effectively polder land, like that you would find in the Netherlands.

Patrington

North west of Skeffling but all situated somewhat further from the Humber are a string of villages starting with Weeton and Welwick.  The village of Welwick is the larger and more westerly of the two and has a thirteenth century church dedicated to St Mary.

Just west of Welwick, near Plowlands Farm, is a sculpture of 2013 depicting four of the gunpowder plotters of 1605. They are Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby, Christopher Wright and John Wright. There were fourteen men involved in this plot and they included the brothers John and Christopher Wright, who were born and raised at Plowlands Farm.

Along the Welwick Road to the north west of Welwick is Patrington, the largest and most prominent village in this south eastern corner of Holderness. It is the wonderful Church of St Patrick that makes Patrington particularly prominent.

This beautiful thirteenth century church has a cathedral-like quality and can be seen from miles around. It has sometimes been described as the ‘Queen of Holderness’.

Patrington village was called ‘Patrictone’ at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 but earlier records of 1033 point to a name ‘Paterings’. Its origin is obscure but clearly came to be associated in later times with St Patrick, to whom the church is dedicated. This is an unusual dedication for a church in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

The village is centred on High Street, to the north of the church. Other old streets in the village include Church Lane to the south of the church, Greenshaw Lane and Kiln Lane to its west and east, with Southside, Northside, Tithe Barn Lane, Eastgate and Westgate nearer the outer limits of the old village. High Street is the home to a pub called the Wolf Pack, a surprising change from the more typical ‘Wool Pack’ pub name.

Patrington to Hedon

From Patrington, the A1033 can take us north east towards Hollym and the coastal town of Withernsea or west towards Hull and Hedon. Along this road, a little to the west of Patrington, we reach the church of St Germain at Winestead, which is fifteenth century with some Norman traces. It contains seventeenth and eighteenth century monuments to the Hildyards a prominent family, who were also associated with Patrington.

Winestead village itself is situated just off the A1033 to the north, where its houses are broadly spaced, in linear fashion, along Bydales Lane. The village was the home and birthplace of the metaphysical poet, Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), who is commemorated by a statue outside the old Hull Grammar School near Hull’s Holy Trinity Minister. Early spellings of the name of Winestead as ‘Wiustead’ (‘Wivestead’) suggest it means ‘woman’s place’.

Continuing along the A1033 road to the west of Winestead we reach the village of Ottringham which is situated to the south of the road. Its main streets are Sunk Island Road, South End Road, Chapel Lane and the short Main Street where we find the Watts Arms. Ottringham’s church is dedicated to St Wilfrid and includes a Norman tower with a recessed spire. Otteringham looks like a typical early Anglo-Saxon name and means ‘home of Oter and his people’.

On a back road, a mile to the north of Ottringham, is the village of Halsham with a church dedicated to All Saints, dating in part to Norman times with a fourteenth century tower. To the north of the village is a beautiful mausoleum to the Constable family with a Pantheon style domed roof. It was built in 1792-1802 by a Thomas Atkinson as a memorial to Sir William Constable.

Now, heading back along the A1033 to the west of Ottringham is the village of Keyingham meaning ‘the homestead of Caega and his people’. Keyingham features some older buildings along its main street with housing estates to its north and south. It is home to the large late thirteenth century church of St Nicholas on the western edge of the village.

To the west of Keyingham along the A1033 road to Hedon and Hull are the little villages of Ryehill and Camerton followed by the larger village of Thorngumbald where housing estates have developed around the village in connection with its commutable distance to Hull. Simply called ‘Thorn’ in earlier times the addition of Gumbald (Gumbaud) from the family of a Thomas de Gumbaud is first recorded in the 1350s. Before that time it was described as ‘Thorn juxta Hedon’, (Thorn near Hedon), Thorn of course simply refers to a thorn tree.

From Thorngumbald, a road called Hooks Lane (further on called Dark Lane) leads south east towards Paull on the banks of the Humber east of Hull. The A1033 main road through Throngumbald, heads north west towards Hedon and the city of Hull.

North of Thorngumbald is the village of Burstwick which means ‘dairy farm belonging to Brusti’, with Brusti being an Old Scandinavian personal name. The church here is thirteenth and fourteenth century and like so many parish churches in the East Riding is called All Saints church.

North of Burstwick, the B1362 main road out of the village will take us onwards north east to Burton Pidsea via Daisy Hill Road or westward to the historic town of Hedon.

Hedon

In the twelfth century Hedon was a busy port just north of the watercourse called Hedon Haven. This stream or little river still enters the Humber a little under two miles south west of the town between the village of Paull and City of Hull. The channel was supplemented at Hedon itself by medieval man-made harbours of the twelfth century that took the form of canals.

Hedon was in its early heyday more significant than neighbouring Hull. It was a carefully laid out and planned Norman town, rather like Richmond and an important centre for trade that generated commercial wealth. Early spellings of the name suggest it derives from the word ‘haeth’ meaning ‘heathery or uncultivated land’ rather than the expected ‘hea-dun’ meaning ‘high hill’.

At the time of the Norman Conquest it was not yet a place of consequence, so in 1086 it received no mention in the Domesday Book. At that time it belonged to Drogo de la Beauvrière who had fought alongside William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings.

Slightly later, the Norman development of Hedon as a town was encouraged by William Le Gros, the Earl of Aumale (Albermarle) who resided in a manor house at nearby Burstwick. Hedon was a feudal lordship called a Seignory and its first known charter as a town was in 1158 during the reign of Henry II. By 1162 it was hosting a fair.

In 1358, when Hedon was officially incorporated as a borough it had already passed its heyday and had been somewhat eclipsed as a port by Ravenser Odd (on Spurn Head) and by nearby Hull which was developed from 1299. The demands of larger ships and the silting of the haven at Hedon contributed to Hedon’s demise. However, it did continue to be used by barges. The Hedon Haven was not closed until 1970.

In medieval times the town’s importance was reflected in its representation by two Members of Parliament. Until the political reforms of 1832, MPs were still being elected for Hedon at a time when several major British cities had no MPs at all. Hedon would also see a loss of civic status in the following century when it ceased to be a borough in 1974 as a result of local government reforms.

However, you still get a sense of Hedon’s former importance. The rather grand church of St Augustine at Hedon is perhaps the most obvious reminder. It was constructed from 1190 with the backing of the town’s burgesses. In Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England series it is described as “one of the five largest and grandest churches of the East Riding”, the others being St Mary at Beverley, St Patrick at Patrington, Howden Minster and Hull Minster.

The church of St Augustine has sometimes been called ‘the King of Holderness’ as opposed to St Patrick at Patrington which is the ‘Queen of Holderness’. There were once three other parish churches in Hedon. They were dedicated to St Nicholas, St John and St James and reflected the town’s significant status and population.

One of the best views of the church of St Augustine is at Market Hill, an old market site that now forms a secluded little green close to the north west corner of the old town. Market Hill was once the site of Hedon’s early Town Hall but is now something of a quiet village-like backwater. It should not be confused with the street called the Market Place in the town centre.

East of the church old streets in the town include Magdalen Gate, Distaff Lane and the main streets of Market Place, Soutergate and St Augustine’s Gate. Soutergate means Cobbler’s Gate or ‘shoe maker’s street’, from an old word ‘Souter’ meaning shoemaker.

Part of this street was once called Bedlam Street or Bedemangate. Bedesmen were people that performed special duties in a church such as lighting candles.

The old Painters Cottages in this part of Soutergate date from 1562 and were bequeathed by George Painter, a chantry priest of Holy Trinity in Hull (Hull Minster) for the upkeep of poor men and women from the town. They were each granted half a chaldron of Newcastle coal and three pence a week for their living. Opposite these buildings is Burnham House of 1770, whose former residences have included Mayors of Hedon.

St Augustine’s Gate, another of Hedon’s principal streets, is named from the church and recorded as ‘via Sancti Augustini’ in 1439. It is the location for Hedon’s Town Hall of 1683 and home to a Civic mace of 1415 that is thought to be the oldest in England.

Baxtergate on the eastern edge of the old medieval heart of the town was first mentioned in 1401 as ‘Bakestergate’ and means the ‘street of the baker or bakers’.

A medieval cross called the Kilnsea Cross stands in the Baxtergate area. This cross was supposedly washed up on the shore at Old Kilnsea in 1818. It is said to have originally stood at Ravenspur, the famed but now lost landing place of King Henry IV, mentioned by Shakespeare and located near Spurn Head. The cross later stood at Burton Constable before it was brought to its present location in Hedon.

At its south end, Baxtergate joins Fletchergate. A fletcher was of course a butcher and this street is recorded as ‘Fleshmarketgate’ in the 1470s. Leading south from Fletchergate is the Sheriffs Highway on the old road to Paull and called ‘Shirefbrygway’ in 1459 meaning Sheriff’s Bridge Way.

Lost recorded streets of medieval origin, mostly of unknown location in Hedon include a Walkergate (the cloth-fuller’s street); Wayfraingate (the wafer-maker’s street); Outgate (an exit-way from the town); Wyndgate (perhaps named from a William Wind rather than a ‘wynd’). There was also of course the inevitable Grape Lane (Grope Lane – a place for a grope) such as we also have at York, Whitby and several other historic towns and cities.

Hedon to Skirlaugh and Meaux

To the north of Hedon is the substantial village of Preston which means ‘Farm of the Priest’. The prominent church here is of the fourteenth century dedicated to All Saints. From the centre of Preston the main roads head south to Hedon, south east to Burstwick, westward to Hull and north to Sproatley, Bilton and Coniston.

Bilton and Coniston, on the road north west from Hedon, are little villages a little outside the north east corner of Hull. Bilton means either the farmstead of someone with the name Billa (an Anglo-Saxon name) or Billi (an Old Scandinavian name). Coniston means ‘the king’s farm’ and like Coney Street in York, its name features the Old Scandinavian word ‘Konungr’ meaning king.

Sproatley, on the road directly north from Hedon, comes from an old word ‘sprot’ meaning sprout, shoot or twig. It was a clearing (ley) ‘where shoots were springing up’. The church here has the unusual dedication to St Swithin.

From Sproatley roads head west to Bilton and Hull and east to Flinton and onwards to Aldbrough near the coast. Just to the north of Sproatley are the grounds of Burton Constable Hall which should not be confused with Constable Burton in Wensleydale.

A significant part of Burton Constable Hall is Elizabethan, dating back to around 1570 and the lower part of one of the towers is part of an earlier medieval defensive pele tower built in the twelfth century during the reign of King Stephen. However, the house was restructured and heightened in 1760.

The Constable family have lived in the area since the eleventh century and Burton Constable has been connected with this family since the early twelfth century.

The manor was recorded as Burton Constable in 1265 but its earlier recorded names were ‘Santriburtone’ in the Domesday Book in 1086. The meaning of this is unknown. By 1190 it was called Erneburgh Burtona and named from Erneburgh, a widow of Gilbert de Alost. She married Ulbert le Conestable (‘the Constable’) after which Burton was held by the Constable family. Until the late fifteenth century nearby Halsham was the principal seat of the family.

Burton Constable Hall is owned by the Burton Constable Foundation but the present Chichester-Constable family, who are descendants of the Constables, still own the surrounding estate and occupy a part of the house itself.

To the north of Burton Constable Hall are the little villages of Old Ellerby and New Ellerby and to their west, alongside the A165, is the larger village of Skirlaugh.

Skirlaugh was the home village of the fourteenth century Prince Bishop of Durham, Walter de Skirlaw, who took his name from the place. He was actually born in the nearby parish of Swine towards Coniston and Hull to the south.

The Bishop built the lovely medieval church of St Augustine at Skirlaw village in 1401 which Nikolasus Pevsner described as a “perfect piece of Perp” or Perpendicular style architecture in The Buildings of England series. Before becoming Bishop of Durham in 1388, Skirlaw had also been Bishop of Lichfield (from 1385) and Bishop of Wells (1386). He had previously served as Archdeacon of the East Riding (1359-85).

During his time as Bishop of Durham Skirlaw built Yarm Bridge, on the River Tees, linking the counties of Durham and Yorkshire and he was a significant figure in the building of Howden Minster in the Howdenshire district of the East Riding which had strong historic links to Durham. Skirlaw was also an important contributor to building the central tower of York Minster. In fact he was expected to become Archbishop of York but his appointment was overturned by Richard II in favour of Richard le Scrope.

To the north of Skirlaugh are the villages of Arnold and Long Riston with the village of Leven, that we have already mentioned, a little way beyond. About two and a half miles west of Skirlaugh, towards Beverley is the site of the Abbey of Meaux, of which there are no traces, although fragments have been found and a cottage on the site is thought to incorporate features of one of the abbey buildings. Meaux Abbey was founded in 1150 by William Le Gros, the Earl Aumale, with monks from Fountains Abbey.

At the time of the Domesday Book Meaux was recorded under its earlier Anglo-Saxon name Melse. Along with other early forms its name seems to derive from ‘melr-sae’ meaning ‘sandbank pool’ it became ‘Meaux’ under the influence of French pronunciation.

Amongst the lands owned by the Abbey of Meaux was a little settlement called Wyke that would late become the town (and later city) of Kingston-upon-Hull.

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