17th June, 2019. Reed’s Island, Ravenser (Odd), Sunk Island 2.

The above photo shows a tanker ship moored to a buoy in the mouth of the Humber Estuary. The picture was taken looking south from above the scrubland at the southern end of Spurn Point. In the distance, and just visible, is the south bank of the Estuary at Humberstone and Cleethorpes.

The odd thing about Ravenser Odd is that in many was it was, well, odd. At first sight it seems like a very unlikely story but we know it did exist from references in the Meaux Abbey Chronicle (s.p.b.s) and from State papers from the early 14th century. In my paragraphs on Ravenser Odd from my article ‘Hull in the Beginning – the History of the lower Hull valley prior to Hull becoming a royal borough’ (see Articles and Publications section of this website) I state ‘Ravenser Odd was the last of the medieval Humberside towns to be created and the first to be lost’.

Ravenser was a settlement and port that was rapidly developed (built) on warpland just above the normal high tide level in the mouth of the Humber. There was a point in about the 1320s that this port could have out-stripped the trade of Hull (having been granted its royal charter in the late 13th century and with its famous town walls just beginning to be built) and Grimsby, indeed Ravenser (Odd) was also granted a royal charter at this time.

Whether Ravenser was built on a mudflat island that had become vegetated or whether it developed on part of a predecessor spit to the current Spurn Point is up for debate. Although the Meaux Abbey Chronicle uses the term ‘island’ when writing of Ravenser Abbot Burton also states that it was connected to the Holderness mainland by a ‘sandy road strewn with rounded yellow pebbles … (and) scarcely a bowshot in width … marvellously withstanding the floodwaters of the sea’ – this sounding much like a spit.

(To be continued).