Tag: Churches

Rain, rain, rain. It feels like that’s all the sky has done for sixth months, although Spring finally seems to be on its way. The countryside has been awash: trackways calf-deep in mud and whole fields underwater, reminding us that humans’ clever drainage projects will never quite vanquish the prehistoric meres of Holderness.

This has always been an area particularly at the mercy of Mother Nature. All that mud is boulder clay, deposited here by Ice Age glaciers. It’s sticky, soggy and soft — clarty, as Holdernessians would say — and gives us the dubious honour of having the fastest-eroding coastline in Europe. The cliffs here have the colour and texture of a dark chocolate Digestive dunked in a cup of very strong tea (the only type of tea worth drinking). And again, for all our Cnut-like efforts, we are fighting a losing battle.

In February, the Cold War monitoring post at Tunstall was finally claimed by the waves and this is just the latest addition to Poseidon’s property portfolio. Approximately three miles of land have been lost since the Roman era, land that once held over twenty towns and villages which now lie at the bottom of the North Sea.

Ravenser Odd, which was founded in the 13th century to the east of modern Spurn Point, is the most famous. This bustling port was once more prosperous than Hull, but its importance was no defence against the tides. In 1362, it was completely flooded by a fearsome storm wonderfully-titled the Grote Mandrenke, an ancient Scandinavian name meaning ‘the Great Drowning of Men’.

After previous inundations, the town had already been abandoned by the living. The dead could not escape so easily. Numerous bodies, whose owners had no doubt expected an undisturbed eternal rest in Ravenser’s graveyards, began to wash up on the Holderness shores. In July, 1355, the Abbot at Meaux Abbey ordered the corpses to be gathered up and re-buried in the churchyard at Easington. Not a pleasant task in the summer heat, one suspects…

Meaux Abbey was far from the sea but Burstall Priory, near Skeffling, eventually suffered the same fate as Ravenser. Established in 1219 and dissolved during Henry VIII’s Reformation, it crumbled into the sea in the early 1800s. Relics from Burstall were found occasionally on the beaches, including a large lead button imprinted with the seal of an Abott, and “other vestigia of early days”². This period saw the loss of several more Holderness churches that both made the news and were the origin of eerie local legends.

Old Withernsea and Old Owthorne churches were the most celebrated. These were known as ‘the Two Sisters’, or ‘the Sister Kirkes’ (Kirke meaning ‘church’ is another word displaying our Scandinavian or Old Germanic heritage). The story went that two sisters — whose identity is a mystery — resolved to build a church for the villages, but argued over whether it should have a spire or a tower. To resolve the dispute, a diplomatic monk suggested they should build one each.

The Withernsea Sister Kirke was swept away in 1444, and another church was built. However, this was ruined by a dreadful storm in 1609 and was left abandoned and unloved, fit only for dogs to play in. A letter-writer told his correspondent that:

‘The church is deserted of the parishioners, and its roof all ruinous and uncovered, for my spaniels had sport here with a rabbit.’³

Perhaps it was the very dog depicted in this Regency engraving!

This second church also succumbed to the sea in the early 19th century, along with its Owthorne neighbour.

Owthorne, too, had been undermined by the billowing ocean for many years. The slumbering inhabitants of its churchyard were frequently disturbed, their whitened bones projecting from the cliff and falling to the sand. It was said that:

‘After a fearful storm, old persons tottering on the verge of life, have been seen slowly moving forth and recognising on the shore the remains of those whom in early life they had known and revered.’⁴

In 1796, part of the Owthorne Sister Kirk was dismantled by villagers who could see that its end was nigh and in September 1799, a meeting was held by John Snaith, the Vicar of Owthorne, at the Dog and Duck pub on Scale Lane in Hull to discuss pulling down the rest of the church and using the stones to build a new one⁵. This didn’t happen soon enough, and Owthorne’s final, fatal demise was reported in the London Chronicle on the 28th February 1816:

‘The ancient land-mark on the coast of Holderness, Owthorn Church Old Spire, better known by the name of the Sister Church, was destroyed by the tide on Friday week, and fell to the ground with a tremendous crash, to the great alarm of the inhabitants of the village.’

Once again, the dead made their way back to land. Many coffins and bodies in various states of preservation were strewn upon the shore. This ghoulish spectacle drew a morbidly curious audience, including Dr Raines, a surgeon-apothecary who lived in Graysgarth House at Burton Pidsea. 

One body in particular caught the surgeon’s attention. It was wrapped in cloth bandages, then in a thin sheet of lead with remains of gilding and painting, and had been interred in a thick leaden coffin, no doubt before being placed in a stone sarcophagus (although this could not be found); this was most unusual for a rural burial, leading Dr Raines to suggest that the body was that of an early, high-status founder of Owthorne. The unwrapped corpse gave off a strange and not unpleasant smell, which Raines described as the fragrance of spices and aromatics, leading him to believe that it had been carefully embalmed.

The head had also been wrapped but in a flimsier material than the body, causing it to become detached at the cervical vertebra. Although the rest of the venerable man’s remains were re-interred at Rimswell church, Dr Raines took the skull home with him for closer examination and was excited to see that it still had greying black hair on it. He was no doubt disappointed when, on the day following the discovery, the hair fell off after exposure to the air⁶. Apparently, Raines kept the skull and hair in his possession — perhaps they are still hidden somewhere in Graysgarth House…

It’s no surprise to find that such grim sights on the Holderness beaches inspired legends of ghostly underwater congregations. The sighing and sobbing of the waves was known in local dialect as “suthering”. (I nearly called this piece Suthering Heights, but I thought everyone would assume it was a typo!) This mournful sound was also named “Aubro Dol”, which I suspect is a bastardised form of Latin from averro, meaning sweeping or waving away, and dol, meaning grief or sorrow. Thus, in my translation, the Grieving Tide.

John Nicholson, the great Victorian folklorist of East Yorkshire, wrote of the belief that beneath the waves, Owthorne’s long-dead inhabitants still gathered:

“Previous to a storm, as the sea comes suthering up to the beach, there comes also another sound, the mournful dirge of the ghostly choir, who still chant their low-voiced psalms from their usual seats in the engulfed channel; and anon may be heard the slow tolling of the bells, calling the hearer to join in their services.”⁷

Phantom bells also ring from beneath the waves at Withernsea and Aldbrough, so listen out for them next time you’re having a stroll along the Holderness coast. But do not be tempted to paddle through the waves to find the source of that eerie noise, lest Poseidon claim another member of his spectral congregation.

1. Sheppard, Thomas, The Lost Towns of the Yorkshire Coast, London, 1912 ↩︎
2. Poulson, George, The History and Antiquities of the Seignory of Holderness Vol. II, London & Hull, 1840 ↩︎
3. Poulson, ibid. ↩︎
4. Poulson, ibid. ↩︎
5. Hull Advertiser, 14th September, 1799 ↩︎
6. Hull Packet, 31st May, 1844 ↩︎
7. Nicholson, John, The Folklore of East Yorkshire, London & Hull, 1890 ↩︎