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WILGILSLAND The homepage of Pete and Jan Crowther |
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Kilnsea |
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Lost TownsAuburn, Hartburn, Northorpe, Monkswell, Monkwike, Waxholme, Dimlington, Turmarr, Orwithfleete, Tharlesthorpe, Owthorne, Hoton, Sunthorpe, old Kilnsea, Ravenser and Ravenser Odd — they all lie under the sea off the Holderness coast, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. In their time they had churches, fields, farm-houses and cottages, mills and ponds, but they were established on the boulder clay coast of Holderness, and their down-fall was inevitable, as the cliffs crumbled into the sea. Some of their names are perpetuated in village street names or houses. Otherwise they are lost indeed. It has been estimated that when the Romans were in Britain the coastline of Holderness was about three and a half miles further east than it is now. And when the Domesday Book of 1086 gave us our first full list of settlements the coastline was probably about two miles further east. Some of the villages named above still had open fields stretching out to the sea at that date. Their downfall was however predictable, and the retreat of their populations must have been anticipated, though the loss of good farmland, their only support, probably meant penury. Most of the collapses of these little communities went unrecorded, since they happened before regular written records existed. But the end of Ravenser Odd is a different matter, because it was associated with the Abbey of Meaux, near Beverley, and the monks kept excellent records. Ravenser Odd was a thriving, bustling sea port with streets and buildings at the end of a peninsula (a predecessor of Spurn Head) at the tip of South Holderness. At the height of its fortunes in the early years of the fourteenth century, Ravenser Odd was a town of national importance, supplying the king with two fully equipped ships and armed men for his wars with the Scots. It even achieved borough status and received harbour dues from more than 100 merchant ships a year. Benefiting from a Royal charter, it had its own market and annual fair, a mayor, customs officers and other officials, and was furnished with cargo ships, fishing boats, wharves, warehouses, customs sheds, a tanhouse and windmills as well as boasting a court, prison, and chapel. The port flourished from about 1235, and it lasted over a hundred years. By about 1340 however, the town was being threatened by the inroads of the sea. Sea levels were rising at this time, and if the cyclical theory of the peninsulas at the end of Holderness is correct, this particular spit was coming to the end of its life. By 1346 two thirds of the town and its buildings had been lost to the sea by erosion, and the people that remained were no longer able to make a living by trade, or to pay the tolls and tithes that had been levied upon them. Between 1349 and 1360, the sea completed its destruction of Ravenser Odd. The chronicler of Meaux Abbey described how the erosion exposed the bodies buried in the chapel’s graveyard, much as it was to do some 450 years later at nearby Kilnsea and Owthorne (see below): ‘The inundations of the sea and the Humber had destroyed to its foundations the chapel of Ravenser Odd, built in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that the bodies and bones of the dead were horribly apparent ... ’ As was to happen later at Kilnsea, the bodies were re-buried in the churchyard at Easington. The final days of Ravenser Odd saw scenes of looting and panic-flight, when the town ‘lay open to devastation ... [with the] floods and inundations of the sea ... surrounding it from every side like a wall, thus threatening its imminent annihilation. And so with the terrible vision of waters seen on every side, the besieged persons ... preserved themselves at that time from destruction, flocking together and tearfully imploring grace.’ And so ended Ravenser Odd. The destruction of
Ravenser Odd was quite dramatic. But most of the other lost villages of
Holderness probably slipped slowly
With the church, once in the middle of the parish, gone, the villagers watched whilst the rest of their little settlement disappeared over the cliffs. When Owthorne’s southerly neighbour, Withernsea, was transformed by the new Hull to Withernsea railway line in 1864, almost nothing of Owthorne remained. Happily the villagers had a new source of income when Withernsea became a prosperous seaside resort. Old Kilnsea
When it was recorded in
the Domesday Book (1086), Kilnsea village was several miles from the sea,
and the dwellings of the village were established upon a hill. By the late
eighteenth century the sea was quite near the village but it was still
intact, though it had lost its East Field. Around the houses and cottages
were little gardens and small fields, with a village pond and a green, and a
Medieval church. Apart from the church itself, a large ornate stone cross
was the most prominent landmark in the parish. It had apparently been
erected on the peninsula By the early nineteenth century the little village was right on the cliff edge, and about half of the land of the parish had disappeared. The church of St. Helen’s, which was stone‑built with a nave flanked by aisles as well as a chancel, a clerestory, and a three-storey tower, was teetering on the edge of the cliff. In 1824 the chancel fell over the cliff, and a wall was built at the east end of the remaining part of the church so that services could still be held inside. A year or so later another large storm took the partition, with the north wall, its pillars, pointed arches, pulpit, the reading desk and books, down the cliff ‘with a tremendous crash’. The tower remained for only a year or two, before finally falling over the cliff in 1831. The dressed stones from the church can still be found in the gardens of Kilnsea, or incorporated in houses or walls. Even Easington still has stones from the church. At that time the villagers were still farming strips of the open field in the way that their ancestors had been doing since time immemorial. Until the arable strips, the pasture and the meadows were re-allocated they could not build new houses away from the sea. So in 1840, they decided to apply for an enclosure act, almost the last one in the East Riding. That allowed the villagers to build themselves a new settlement, on the western side of the parish. But those who remembered the old village, never ceased to mourn its loss — ‘old Kilnsea was the prettiest village in all Holderness, standing on a hill with a wide prospect over sea and land, and a noble old church, pleasant gardens sloping down the hillside and a fine spring of bright water surrounded by willows’
New Kilnsea New farmhouses, cottages, a pub, and a small church
began to appear on the western side of Kilnsea from the late 1840s. The
practical villagers of Kilnsea dismantled their houses and cottages before
they fell over the cliffs. Building materials were precious, and were saved
from the sea where possible. Soon after the enclosure award had been signed
in 1843 the new
Before the loss of the village, Kilnsea had several alehouses, shops, and even a school. After the new village was created it never got larger than about 30 houses, though it did manage to retain two public houses, the Blue Bell and the Crown and Anchor. The former closed in the 1950s, but the latter still flourishes. However there was no rush to build a new church. After the church went over the cliff, services continued to be held at Kilnsea, though for weddings, baptisms and burials the people of Kilnsea had to go to Easington. As a temporary measure, a room in a farmhouse was rented, and the rescued church bell was hung in the stackyard, being struck with a stone to call people to worship. Eventually the bell cracked from such harsh treatment, which rather quashes romantic fables about Kilnsea’s bells ringing under the sea!
John Ombler, of Westmere House, who became
the Board of Trade superintendent of the Spurn beach and sea‑defence works,
was apparently the last person to be baptized in the old St. Helen’s. and it
was to a large extent due to his efforts that in 1864 the decision was made
to build a new church at Kilnsea. The Diocesan Society contributed £102 to
the building of the church, and subscriptions were also raised locally. The
celebrated Victorian architect, William Burges, designed a building of red
and yellow brick, which was erected about For a time Kilnsea also had a Primitive Methodist Chapel. Henry Hodge, a Hull industrialist, had been born in Kilnsea, and he became a prominent Primitive Methodist. Finding that the village of his birth was without a Methodist place of worship he bought land near the Humber and in 1885 built a chapel, constructed of corrugated iron there. This so-called ‘iron chapel’ remained in use as a place of worship until it was converted into a cottage about 1917. Military HistoryIn the
twentieth century Kilnsea became an important military base, within the
complex of the Humber Defences (see Spurn web page for a fuller account).
Godwin Battery was built between 1914 and 1918, remained as a Territorial
Army base between the wars, and then was reactivated in World War II, to
become an important defensive site. A military railway was built to make the
construction work easier and to link Spurn with Kilnsea (see below) . Godwin
Battery in its heyday dominated Kilnsea, and many local girls married
soldiers. In World War I the hospital on the camp was used for recuperating
soldiers once the focus of the war moved to the Continent. In the First War
the country was for the first time experiencing attack from the air in the
form of airships (commonly known as Zeppelins). A strange half octagonal
concrete structure appeared in the field to the north of Godwin Battery.
This was the Kilnsea Sound Mirror, which remains to this day. Having been a camp used by the Territorial Army
between the wars Godwin Battery was reactivated for World War II and
soldiers poured into Kilnsea again. In the early years of the war, when the
threat of invasion was at its height, Spurn and Kilnsea were on the front
line. From 1942, when the centre of action moved to the Continent, Kilnsea’s
main role was with Spurn, to guard the Humber from attack from the air,
especially as the Humber estuary provided an obvious target for aircraft
laying mines, and served as a prominent feature whereby enemy aircraft were
able to orient themselves when proceeding to attack Hull and other inland
towns. After Dunkirk the accommodation at both Kilnsea and Spurn was used
for returning soldiers, tired and dispirited after the evacuation. In 1944
troops trained there in preparation for the Normandy landings. After the war
the military remained in the area for some years. During the Cold War in the
early 1950s new anti-aircraft guns were established in the Warren area, but
in 1956 the Coast Artillery of the British Army was abolished. The defences
at Kilnsea and Spurn were dismantled, and the armaments disposed of — some
of them apparently on site! In 1960 Godwin Battery, its gun emplacements,
two Battery Spurn’s Military Railway Line The railway line
between Spurn Head and Kilnsea was built to facilitate the construction of
the two forts in World War I. Building materials could be landed at the
railway jetty on the Point, and then transported via the line to the fort at
Kilnsea. When the forts were being built three steam engines worked on the
line, and trucks, and a passenger coach were also part of the rolling stock.
After the war a fascinating diversity of rolling stock took their place. One
steam engine, the Kenyon, remained after the war but in 1929 she cracked a
cylinder cover and became unserviceable. A short line of about four miles
was ideal for the use of petrol-powered railcars, and several came to Spurn
after the war. All the railcars were known by the people of Spurn and
Kilnsea as the Drewry cars, though only the earlier railcars were made by
that firm. Two railcars operated on the line by 1920. One was open-topped
with two sets of back-to-back seats. The first actual Drewry car was
ordered by the WD in 1919, and arrived in 1920. It could seat 12 people, and
had open sides which could be covered with a pull-down screen. This vehicle
did not stay long, and was replaced by a smaller type which only carried six
people on two seats, could be driven at either end, and had a full-length
canopy and side curtains. It was destroyed by fire about 1930. Later
railcars were made by Hardy Motors of Slough, and by Hudswell Clarke Co. of
Leeds. Railcars were interesting vehicles, but the sail bogies have always
provided the most interest. Wind has never been lacking at Spurn, and
several different bogies were in use between the wars. Most of them seem to
have been converted plate-layer trucks. They were about five feet by six
feet, and were fitted with a plank which protruded front and back with a
hole at each end into which a mast to carry a sail could be fitted. At
least three different sail bogies have been identified on the line: one
belonged to the War Department and the other two were used by the
lifeboatmen. The one belonging to the army was motorised for a time, but
finally came to a bad end when it smashed into a wagon. When war was
declared the military authorities brought a steam engine back to Spurn, but
by the early 1940s they had recognised that Spurn needed a road, and one was
built by 1942. Many sections of this
My Research on KilnseaI have been researching the history of Kilnsea for many years, and have built up an extensive collection of material. I’m happy to share it with anyone who is interested in this fascinating place. And I am keen to make contacts with people who remember the place. Have you got any connections with Kilnsea? Are you a descendant of any of the local families — Clubleys, Tennysons, Medforths, Hodgsons? Were you, your parents or grandparents stationed at Godwin Battery? Did you have a caravan on Sandy Beaches in its early days? Did you visit the area as a bird-watcher, a naturalist, an angler, or just a visitor to this unusual place several decades ago? Have you any photographs and/or reminiscences that you would be prepared to share with me? Please email me at odinpareen@btinternet.com if you have any material or if you have any questions about the area. |
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| Jan Crowther | |
over the edge. At Owthorne, just north of
Withernsea, the loss of the village happened in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century. In 1786 the church was only 12 yards from the
cliff edge. The congregation and incumbent recognised that its downfall was
inevitable and made plans accordingly. In 1793 the chancel was taken down,
and six years later the rest of the church was demolished (the dressed
stones being utilised for other buildings). The grave-yard was now on the
cliff edge, and some of the bodies were taken out of the churchyard and
removed to Rimswell Church. However, removing the bones of centuries of
parishioners was impracticable, and a description from George Poulson’s
History and Antiquities of the Seigniory of Holderness (1840), is quite
harrowing, describing : ‘whitened bones projecting from the cliff, … and
after a fearful storm, old persons tottering on the verge of life, have been
slowly moving forth and recognising [!] on the shore the remains of those
who in early life they had known and revered’.
Kilnsea’s downfall was
very similar to that of Owthorne. Kilnsea is a small triangular settlement,
at the tip of South Holderness. It is bounded on the east by the North Sea,
on the west by the River Humber, and on the north by the village of
Easington. As the land narrows to the south it merges into the Spurn
further south to commemorate the landing of Henry
IV at Ravenser in 1399, but was removed to Kilnsea in the early sixteenth
century when the peninsula had become eroded. The cross was placed upon the
village green, but by the early nineteenth century it was on the edge of the
cliff and the proximity of the sea enforced its removal to Burton Constable,
the home of the Constable family, in 1818. James Iveson, who was the agent
and attorney of the Constables, had ambitious plans to establish a
high-class housing estate in Hedon, and asked the Constables if he could
incorporate Kilnsea cross as a focal point. Although he never fulfilled his
plans he did move the cross to Hedon, where it remains, much eroded, in the
grounds of Holyrood House.
village of Kilnsea began to appear, mainly built on the
Humber side of the parish, as far away from the sea as possible. The houses
may have been new, but they utilised some of the material from the old
houses, whilst the names of many of the families preserved the continuity of
the old village. Farming and fishing were the main occupations of the people
of Kilnsea, and like Easington to the north certain families have dominated
the area: the Clubley family, the Tennyson (alternatively Tennison) family,
the Medforth family, and the Hodgson family, were the most prominent in the
nineteenth century. It was said that had it not been for sailors getting
marooned in the village when their ships got into trouble the people of
Kilnsea would be very inbred indeed, for they could not be bothered to get
over Long Bank (the parish boundary) to go and look for partners! 
three‑quarters of a mile west of
the former site. Superficially the new church, which cost £500, bore no
resemblance to the old, but Burges, with a proper respect for tradition,
used stones from that church for the foundations, the buttresses, and the
coping. Furnishings and fittings from the old St. Helen’s soon began to find
their way back. The medieval font was rescued from Skeffling, the holy water
stoup from the Crown and Anchor, the church registers were brought
back from Easington, and services resumed on a regular basis. Sadly in the
1990s falling congregations meant that the church had to be closed. It has
now been deconsecrated and is being converted to a dwelling.
In front of
the mirror is a concrete plinth which still carries a pipe upon which would
have been mounted the trumpet-shaped ‘Collector Head’, a microphone which
could pick up the engine sound of an airship coming in over the sea. Wires
passed down the pipe to the ‘Listener’ who was seated in a trench with a
stethoscope headset. Having picked up early warning of an airship he could
note its bearing and phone the information through to the head of his
sector. Like early warning systems later in the century the sound mirror
provided only four minutes warning! 
Observation Posts, barracks, officers’ messes, the hospital, and
the railway terminal were sold, and the site became Sandy Beaches Caravan
Site. Many of the military buildings were used for accommodation, a shop,
and offices, but the Battery Observation Posts which towered over the site
were soon demolished, because they were becoming an attraction for
adventurous children seeking danger. The wall that protected the seaward
side of the camp soon began to succumb to the sea, and now 45 years later,
the two huge gun emplacements and many other military buildings lie on the
sands. The railway platform is about to join them. 
concrete road (especially at the
southern end of the peninsula) still remain to this day. Whilst the army was
at Spurn and Kilnsea they continued to make use of the railway line, which
was not in fact closed until 1951. It is still possible to see sections of
the track embedded in the concrete road, where the road crossed the rails.
From time to time pieces of Spurn
railway surface on the beach even now.