Spurn’s fascination

Spurn is a wonderful place, unique and fascinating. What makes it so special? It has no hills, and virtually no trees, but what it does have is sky and water in abundance. The sky’s reflections in the waters provides some wonderful vistas. Living at the tip of South Holderness we can see the sun rise over the sea in the morning and set over the Humber in the evening. And the plants of Spurn are quite distinctive — I particularly love the Perennial Wall Rocket which fringes the sandy paths from late summer through to autumn,  the beautiful Sea Rocket which grows on sand all over the peninsula and even on the beach itself, and the Sea Holly which grows on the Narrows in June.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Spurn Head, or Spurn Point, is a three and a half mile peninsula, composed of sand and shingle, stretching out between the North Sea and the River Humber in a south-westerly direction. The first peninsula developed after the retreat of the last Ice Age, and how it came into existence and how it develops and changes cannot be certainly proven. Its course is not fixed, because it is attached to one of the fastest eroding coasts in the world — the Holderness coast. One theory, supported by historical records, postulates a cyclical history of about 250 years for each of the various peninsulas, which have grown gradually as a result of long-shore drift of material washed out of the clay cliffs to the north. The profile of each peninsula, which grows from a stump, is low, allowing a certain amount of washover of sand, which helps to build it up on the western side, whilst most of the material moves further south and forms a spoon-shaped point. With the rapid erosion of the coast to which it is attached, a breach is inevitable eventually, and once the sea gets through, the head becomes isolated and gradually washes away. A new peninsula then forms a little to the west and the cycle starts again. Another theory gives more emphasis to the washover of the neck, and suggests that as the sand and other material is transported from east to west, the neck gradually shifts westward, presumably moving the head with it. It is not possible to test these theories thoroughly because since mid-Victorian times Spurn has been kept in place by artificial coastal defences, begun after a massive breach which took place in 1849, when the peninsula was composed of a string of islets. The groynes and revetments to protect the peninsula were first erected by the Board of Trade, but when military forts were established on the Point (see Military History) the Army took over, with the Royal Engineers, and later civilians, working upon the maintenance of the sea defences, until the late 1950s, when the military left.

 

Because of these man-made sea defences the peninsula is now the longest it has ever been, and since the 1850s has been kept in the same alignment, making it highly vulnerable to attacks from north-westerly tidal surges in the North Sea. In 1960 Spurn was bought by the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Trust (now the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust), which could not afford to maintain the defences, and they are now crumbling away. At the northern end of the peninsula only about three yards (three metres) of land now separate the high tide mark on the Humber from the high tide mark on the sea.