23 December 1732: The Hornsea hurricane of today, and the miraculous escape of the Gales, as recalled for the Rev. William Whytehead by his parishioners 55 years later
George Poulson. 1840. The History and Antiquities of the Seigniory of Holderness, in the East-Riding of the County of York, Vol. 1. Hull: Robert Brown. Get it:
.Unedited excerpt
The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.
On December 23, 1732, a violent hurricane arose here at night, which, from its short duration and singular effects is deserving of notice. The Rev. Wm. Whytehead, when many of his parishioners were in existence, who were eye witnesses of its devastations, thus describes it; his account is dated in 1787. “There are some remarkable circumstances related of this hurricane by many old people in this place. It arose from the Mere in a direction towards the sea, destroying and unroofing 24 houses, 14 barns and other outhouses standing near the market cross, or within 150 yards on each side of it, besides the damage which the church sustained; it blew down the east end of the vicarage house, and took off its roof, and though Mr. Gale, the curate, and his numerous small family were then in their beds, not one received the least injury; one of my neighbours tells me that, immediately after the storm, he, the curate, went running over to their house with a young child in his shirt lap, saying, this is all I have left, supposing the others to have been killed. The hurricane, in its progress towards the sea, overturned the windmill, in the field called the Dales, not far from the footpath leading from the church to the beck, and what was very extraordinary, the mill stones were carried 150 yards from the mill by the strength of the wind. Sheets of lead were blown from the church, and wrapped round two sycamore trees, now standing in hall garth. A woman and child, who were in bed together, in a chamber of one of the unroofed houses, were blown into the street with the bed under them, and received little, if any, bodily harm; a beam was blown from a house on the west side of the street, into the garret window of a house on the other side of the street. Mrs. Moore, (the then child) is now living here; the old woman, her aunt, she says, did not live many weeks, but whether her death was accelerated by the fright she could not say. I was then here with my grandfather Ogle, (in my fourth year) who lived in East Gate, he did not perceive there was any violent wind, nor was there any damage done in all that street.” A memorial, dated in 1732, seems to have been presented to the magistrates, assembled in quarter sessions at Beverley, setting forth that the damage done by the hurricane, to those alone who wanted assistance, amounted to £264 10s. 8d. and their distress was such as to require immediate relief.
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- East Riding of Yorkshire (67) W/G ·
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- 📌Hornsea Mere (1), largest freshwater lake in Yorkshire, lies to the west of Hornsea, Royal Naval Air Service and then Royal Air Force base in WWI W/G ·
- 📌Hornsea (3), seaside town and civil parish in the East Riding W/G ·
- Hurricane (2) W/G ·
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- North Sea (20) W/G ·
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1 July 1840: The opening of the Hull and Selby Railway terminates the threat to Hull’s port from Goole, Scarborough and Bridlington
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The fiscal fatigue caused by the Hundred Years’ War was a cause of the 1343-45 Truce of Malestroit.
Thomas Sheppard is a good starting point for respectively Ravenser and Ravenser Odd:
William Shelford … points out that Spurn Point, even in Roman times, must have been 2,250 yards at least beyond the present coastline ; and that at or near this spot the Danes landed in 867, planted their standard “The Raven,” and practically originated the town of Ravensburg, or Ravenser, or Ravenseret, within Spurn Head. The town developed into “one of the most wealthy and flourishing ports of the kingdom. It returned two Members to Parliament, assisted in equipping the navy, had an annual fair of thirty days, two markets a week, is mentioned twice by Shakespeare,[King Henry VI, part iii, Act iv, Scene 7; and Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1] and considered itself honoured by the embarkation of Baliol with his army for the invasion of Scotland in 1332; by the landing of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV, in 1399; and by the landing of Edward IV in 1471, not long after which it was entirely swept away.” Today, we cannot even be certain where the place was. […] In 1296 “Kaiage” [right to tax wharf occupation] was granted to the inhabitants by Edward I. Two years later Ravenser petitioned the king for certain privileges, and offered 300 marks in payment. In 1300 the magistrates of Ravensere were enjoined to stop the export of bullion; in 1305 it sent Members to Parliament. In 1310 Ravensere remonstrated against the depredations of the Earl of Holland, and in the same year Ravenness sent ships for Edward II.’s expedition to Scotland. Two years later the inhabitants were empowered to levy a tax to defend their walls. In 1323 commissions were issued for the “Wapentak of Ravensere.” In 1335-6 warships of Ravensere are referred to, and in 1341 Ravensere sent one Member to “a sort of” naval Parliament of Edward III. In 1346 one ship only was sent by Ravenser to the siege of Calais; (Hull sent 16). In 1355 bodies were washed out of their graves in the chapelyard at Ravenser. In 1361 [i.e. 1362 – the Second St. Marcellus flood] the floods drove the merchants to Hull and Grimsby; and by 1390 nearly all trace of the town, as such, was gone.* In 1413 a grant was made for the erection of a hermitage at Ravenscrosbourne, and in 1428 Richard Reedbarowe, the hermit of the chapel of Ravensersporne obtained a grant to take tolls of ships for the completion of his light-tower. In 1538 Leland refers to Ravenspur in his ” Itinerary,” which seems to be the last reference to the place. As pointed out elsewhere, the place is not included in Holinshed’s ” List of Ports and Creeks,” which was issued before 1580.
[…]
Ravenser-odd (also referred to as Odd near Ravenser, Ravenserot, Ravensrood, Ravensrodd, Ravensrode, etc.), probably originated in the early part of the thirteenth century, soon after Ravenser, the adjoining port, came to be of importance. Ravenser-odd was apparently built on an island.
In 1251 some monks obtained half an acre of ground on which to erect buildings for the preservation of fish, in the burg of Od near Ravenser. The chronicler of Meaux wrote that “Od was in the parish of Esington, about a mile distant from the mainland. The access to it was from Ravenser by a sandy road covered with round yellow stones, scarcely elevated above the sea. By the flowing of the ocean it was little affected on the east, and on the west it resisted in a wonderful manner the flux of the Humber.”
In 1273 there was a dispute about a chapel at Od, and this was carried on for some time.
In 1300 Edward I. gave some lands in Ravenserodde to the convent of Thornton in Lincolnshire, and others to St. Leonard’s Hospital, York.
In 1315 the burgesses of Ravenserod agreed to pay the king £50 for the confirmation of their charters, and “Kaiage” for seven years. In 1326 the king granted dues and customs in the port of Ravenserod, and about 1336 William De-la-Pole left Ravenserod for Hull. Ravenserode sent a representative to Edward III.’s “naval Parliament” in 1344, as well as a man well versed in naval affairs.
In 1346 Ravensrodde was one of the places mentioned by the Abbot of Meaux as suffering by the sea. In the following year it was frequently inundated, and in 1360 [presumably 1362] “Ravenser Odd was totally annihilated by the floods of the Humber and inundations of the great sea.”
In 1355 the bodies in the chapel yard, which, “by reason of inundations were then washed up and uncovered,” were removed and buried in the churchyard at Easington.
About this time we read the following curious note in the Meaux Chronicle : — ” When the inundations of the sea and of the Humber had destroyed to the foundations the chapel of Ravenserre Odd, built in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that the corpses and bones of the dead there buried horribly appeared, and the same inundations daily threatened the destruction of the said town, sacrilegious persons carried off and alienated certain ornaments of the said chapel, without our due consent, and disposed of them for their own pleasure ; except a few ornaments, images, books, and a bell which we sold to the mother church of Esyngton, and two smaller bells to the church of Aldeburghe. But that town of Ravenserre Odd, in the parish of the said church of Esyngton, was an exceedingly famous borough, devoted to merchandise, as well as many fisheries, most abundantly furnished with ships and burgesses amongst the boroughs of that sea-coast. But yet, with all inferior places, and chiefly by wrong-doing on the sea, by its wicked works and piracies, it provoketh the wrath of God against itself beyond measure. Wherefore, within the few following years, the said town, by those inundations of the sea and of the Humber, was destroyed to the foundations, so that nothing of value was left.”
Notwithstanding this, “In the Hedon inquisition of January 1401, the chapel of Ravenserodde, with the town itself, was declared to be worth, in spiritualities, more than £30 per annum.”
William Wheater treads a similar path, perhaps better – haven’t read it (Wheater 1889).
The rise and fall of a tsunami are among the 15 signs of doom in a Middle English poem, The Pricke of Conscience, and are illustrated in a medieval (ca. 1410) window in All Saints’ Church, North Street, York:
Þe first day of þas fiften days,
Þe se sal ryse, als þe bukes says,
Abowen þe heght of ilka mountayne,
Fully fourty cubyttes certayne,
And in his stede even upstande,
Als an heghe hille dus on þe lande.
Þe secunde day, þe se sal be swa law
Þat unnethes men sal it knaw.
Þe thred day, þe se sal seme playn
And stand even in his cours agay[n],
Als it stode first at þe bygynnyng,
With-outen mare rysyng or fallyng
(Anon 1863)
Britta Sweers, “Trutz, Blanke Hans” – Musical and Sound Recollections of North Sea Storm Tides in Northern Germany
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