Gordon Home

CHAPTER II
FROM FILEY TO SPURN HEAD

‘As the shore winds itself back from hence,’ says Camden, after describing Flamborough Head, ‘a thin slip of land (like a small tongue thrust out) shoots into the sea.’ This is the long natural breakwater known as Filey Brig, the distinctive feature of a pleasant watering-place. In its wide, open, and gently curving bay, Filey is singularly lucky; for it avoids the monotony of a featureless shore, and yet is not sufficiently embraced between headlands to lose the broad horizon and sense of airiness and space so essential for a healthy seaside haunt.

The Brig has plainly been formed by the erosion of Carr Naze, the headland of dark, reddish-brown boulder clay, leaving its hard bed of sandstone (of the Middle Calcareous Grit formation) exposed to the particular and ceaseless attention of the waves. It is one of the joys of Filey to go along the northward curve of the bay at low tide, and then walk along the uneven tabular masses of rock with hungry waves heaving and foaming within a few yards on either hand. No wonder that there has been sufficient sense among those who spend their lives in promoting schemes for ugly piers and senseless promenades, to realize that Nature has supplied Filey with a more permanent and infinitely more attractive pier than their fatuous ingenuity could produce. There is a spice of danger associated with the Brig, adding much to its interest; for no one should venture along the spit of rocks unless the tide is in a proper state to allow him a safe return. A melancholy warning of the dangers of the Brig is fixed to the rocky wall of the headland, describing how an unfortunate visitor was swept into the sea by the sudden arrival of an abnormally large wave, but this need not frighten away from the fascinating ridge of rock those who use ordinary care in watching the sea. At high tide the waves come over the seaweedy rocks at the foot of the headland, making it necessary to climb to the grassy top in order to get back to Filey.

I can remember being caught in this manner, and attempting to climb up the rather awkwardly

FILEY BRIG

The long projection of rock is left bare at low tide, and in rough weather, when huge waves are breaking on it, the scene is remarkably grand.

steep slope of sticky boulder-clay. No doubt, had I been empty-handed I should have had no difficulty at all, but being impeded with a portfolio and painting apparatus, I reached a point half-way up, where I could make no further progress without the gravest risk of letting myself or my drawings go. I was alone; there was no one to shout to, and the slight grip I had seemed going, and if I could not hold on it meant a slide over the smooth clay, followed by a perpendicular drop into the sea. It was only by gently and patiently kicking a place for my boot to get a grip in the greasy clay that I succeeded in saving myself and my drawings, one of which is reproduced here.

This incident may be taken as another warning in connexion with the chances of the Brig. Its real fascination comes, however, at times when it can only be viewed from the top of the Naze above, when a gale is blowing from the north or north-east, and driving enormous waves upon the line of projecting rocks. You watch far out until the dark green line of a higher wave than any of the others that are creating a continuous thunder down below comes steadily onward, and reaching the foam-streaked area, becomes still more sinister. As it approaches within striking distance, a spent wave, sweeping backwards, seems as though it may weaken the onrush of the towering wall of water; but its power is swallowed up and dissipated in the general advance, and with only a smooth hollow of creamy-white water in front, the giant raises itself to its fullest height, its thin crest being at once caught by the wind, and blown off in long white beards.

The moment has come; the mass of water feels the resistance of the rocks, and, curling over into a long green cylinder, brings its head down with terrific force on the immovable side of the Brig. Columns of water shoot up perpendicularly into the air as though a dozen 12-inch shells had exploded in the water simultaneously. With a roar the imprisoned air escapes, and for a moment the whole Brig is invisible in a vast cloud of spray; then dark ledges of rock can be seen running with creamy water, and the scene of the impact is a cauldron of seething foam, backed by a smooth surface of pale green marble, veined with white. Then the waters gather themselves together again, and the pounding of lesser waves keeps up a thrilling spectacle until the moment for another great coup arrives.

It is under these conditions that the Brig has gained its reputation rather than as a place for finding that purple-tipped species of echinoidea, called by the fishermen, for some obscure reason, ‘buzzes’ or ‘buzzers.’ At low tide the opportunity for marine zoologists is excellent, and the tight grip of the molluscs to the surfaces they have chosen seems only just sufficient when we remember the cannonading they periodically suffer.

Years ago Filey obtained a reputation for being ‘quiet,’ and the sense conveyed by those who disliked the place was that of dullness and primness. This fortunate chance has protected the little town from the vulgarizing influences of the unlettered hordes let loose upon the coast in summer-time, and we find a sea-front without the flimsy and meretricious buildings of the popular resorts. Instead of imitating Blackpool and Margate, this sensible place has retained a quiet and semi-rural front to the sea, and, as already stated, has not marred its appearance with a jetty.

From the smooth sweep of golden sand rises a steep slope grown over with trees and bushes which shade the paths in many places. Without claiming any architectural charm, the town is small and quietly unobtrusive, and has not the untidy, half-built character of so many watering-places.

Above a steep and narrow hollow, running straight down to the sea, and densely wooded on both sides, stands the church. It has a very sturdy tower rising from its centre, and, with its simple battlemented outline and slit windows, has a semi-fortified appearance. The high-pitched roofs of Early English times have been flattened without cutting away the projecting drip-stones on the tower, which remain a conspicuous feature. The interior is quite impressive. Round columns alternated with octagonal ones support pointed arches, and a clerestory above pierced with roundheaded slits, indicating very decisively that the nave was built in the Transitional Norman period. It appears that a western tower was projected, but never carried out, and an unusual feature is the descent by two steps into the chancel.

A beautiful view from the churchyard includes the whole sweep of the bay, cut off sharply by the Brig on the left hand, and ending about eight miles away in the lofty range of white cliffs extending from Speeton to Flamborough Head.

The headland itself is lower by more than a 100 feet than the cliffs in the neighbourhood of Bempton and Speeton, which for a distance of over two miles exceed 300 feet. A road from Bempton village stops short a few fields from the margin of the cliffs, and a path keeps close to the precipitous wall of gleaming white chalk.

We come over the dry, sweet-smelling grass to the cliff edge on a fresh morning, with a deep blue sky overhead and a sea below of ultramarine broken up with an infinitude of surfaces reflecting scraps of the cliffs and the few white clouds. Falling on our knees, we look straight downwards into a cove full of blue shade; but so bright is the surrounding light that every detail is microscopically clear. The crumpling and distortion of the successive layers of chalk can be seen with such ease that we might be looking at a geological textbook. On the ledges, too, can be seen rows of little white-breasted puffins; razor-bills are perched here and there, as well as countless guillemots. The ringed or bridled guillemot also breeds on the cliffs, and a number of other types of northern sea-birds are periodically noticed along these inaccessible Bempton Cliffs. The guillemot makes no nest, merely laying a single egg on a ledge. If it is taken away by those who plunder the cliffs at the risk of their lives, the bird lays another egg, and if that disappears, perhaps even a third. The innumerable varieties in the eggs make the gathering of them for collectors very profitable. Unwelcome as this annual robbing of the eggs may be, yet to watch a man being lowered over the cliff by what appears to be a mere thread, and to see him suspended over the restless waves, is a thrilling sight.

The great promontory of Flamborough, though in many ways claiming a high position in the list of England’s places of natural beauty, suffers much from being popular. In the season, I am told—for I have always visited Flamborough in spring or autumn—the road from the station to the lighthouse is often crowded, and I have not the smallest doubt that this is true from the appearance of the roads, the village, and even the North Landing, for on the occasion of my first visit, in the early spring, I was painfully impressed with the feeling that everything bore the tired, unsatisfactory appearance of a place infested with excursionists. The edges of the paths had a look of being overworn and overtrodden; fences, gates, and the like were too much carved with foolish initials, and everywhere I glanced I found the distressing scraps of old newspaper, the grocer’s paper-bag long rifled of its contents, and the coloured cardboard box that once enclosed tablets of chocolate. It is quite as much a desecration to litter with scraps of dirty paper a noble cape, whose whole aspect is otherwise just as the hand of Time has left it, as to drop sandwich-papers on the floor of some venerable minster, and hope that the result will not be painful to the next who enters the building.

The desecrated area of Flamborough Head lies between the village and the North Landing, and if we are deliberately unobservant between those points, we may be able to give the headland the appreciation it deserves, provided always that we do not go there in the popular time. Coming from the station, the first noticeable feature is at the point where the road, until a few months ago, made a sharp turn into a deep wooded hollow. It is here that we cross the line of the remarkable entrenchment known as the Danes’ Dyke. At this point it appears to follow the bed of a stream, but northwards, right across the promontory—that is, for two-thirds of its length—the huge trench is purely artificial. No doubt the vallum on the seaward side has been worn down very considerably, and the fosse would have been deeper, making in its youth, a barrier which must have given the dwellers on the headland a very complete security.

Like most popular names, the association of the Danes with the digging of this enormous trench has been proved to be inaccurate, and it would have been less misleading and far more popular if the work had been attributed to the devil. In the autumn of 1879 General Pitt Rivers dug several trenches in the rampart just north of the point where the road from Bempton passes through the Dyke. The position was chosen in order that the excavations might be close to the small stream which runs inside the Dyke at this point, the likelihood of utensils or weapons being dropped close to the water-supply of the defenders being considered important. The results of the excavations proved conclusively that the people who dug the ditch and threw up the rampart were users of flint. The one piece of pottery discovered was pierced with a hole, and seemed to be the ear of a jar, and the worked flint implements included a perfectly formed leaf-shaped arrow-head, a flint formed into a small hatchet, and others chiefly coming under the head of scrapers. The most remarkable discovery was that the ground on the inner slope of the rampart, at a short distance below the surface, contained innumerable artificial flint flakes, all tying in a horizontal position, but none were found on the outer slope. From this fact General Pitt Rivers concluded that within the stockade running along the top of the vallum the defenders were in the habit of chipping their weapons, the flakes falling on the inside. The great entrenchment of Flamborough is consequently the work of flint-using people, and ‘is not later than the Bronze Period.’ And the strangest fact concerning the promontory is the isolation of its inhabitants from the rest of the county, a traditional hatred for strangers having kept the fisher-folk of the peninsula aloof from outside influences. They have married among themselves for so long, that it is quite possible that their ancestral characteristics have been reproduced, with only a very slight intermixture of other stocks, for an exceptionally long period. On taking minute particulars of ninety Flamborough men and women, General Pitt Rivers discovered that they were above the average stature of the neighbourhood, and were, with only one or two exceptions, dark haired. They showed little or no trace of the fair-haired element usually found in the people of this part of Yorkshire. It is also stated that almost within living memory, when the headland was still further isolated by a belt of uncultivated wolds, the village could not be approached by a stranger without some danger. Those are years to look back upon with regret, because they are past, for in the place of a jealous isolation has come the vulgarizing of the mob. How much more interesting would have been an exploration of the headland, if it were necessary to approach the great Dyke with caution, looking anxiously round for one of the natives with whom to parley for permission to go on, and then how sweet would have been the enjoyment of the special privilege obtained to wander in a patch of a really primitive England!

We find no one to object to our intrusion, and go on towards the village. It is a straggling collection of low, red houses, lacking, unfortunately, anything which can honestly be termed picturesque; for the church stands alone, a little to the south, and the small ruin of what is called ‘The Danish Tower’ is too insignificant to add to the attractiveness of the place. In painfully conspicuous isolation stands a tall and unsightly chapel, built of red brick in a style suitable for the temple of an eccentric brotherhood. The inns are quaint in appearance, but they have evidently never cultivated the patronage of anyone outside the village; and a few rows of new cottages are so woefully similar to those packed together in the slums of a great city, that it is hard to realize the depths of depravity that could have tolerated their construction.

All the males of Flamborough are fishermen, or dependent on fishing for their livelihood; and in spite of the summer visitors, there is a total indifference to their incursions in the way of catering for their entertainment, the aim of the trippers being the lighthouse and the cliffs nearly two miles away.

Formerly, the church had only a belfry of timber, the existing stone tower being only ten years old. Under the Norman chancel arch there is a delicately-carved Perpendicular screen, having thirteen canopied niches richly carved above and below, and still showing in places the red, blue, and gold of its old paint-work. Another screen south of the chancel is patched and roughly finished. The altar-tomb of Sir Marmaduke Constable, of Flamborough, on the north side of the chancel, is remarkable for its long inscription, detailing the chief events in the life of this great man, who was considered one of the most eminent and potent persons in the county in the reign of Henry VIII. The greatness of the man is borne out first in a recital of his doughty deeds: of his passing over to France ‘with Kyng Edwarde the fouriht, y? noble knyght.’

The inscription goes on in this way to tell how he fought at Flodden Field when he was seventy, ‘nothyng hedyng his age.’ Then follow reflections on the passing of the valorous old knight:

Sir Marmaduke’s daughter Catherine was married to Sir Roger Cholmley, called ‘the Great Black Knight of the North,’ who was the first of his family to settle in Yorkshire, and also fought at Flodden, receiving his knighthood after that signal victory over the Scots.

The castle, or fortified house of the Constables, is reduced to the insignificant ‘Danish Tower’ we have seen. It stands in a meadow, and sheep crop the grass which covers but does not hide the outline of the foundations. Yorkshire being a county rich in superstitions, it is not surprising to find that a fisherman will turn back from going to his boat, if he happens on his way to meet a parson, a woman, or a hare, as any one of these brings bad luck. It is also extremely unwise to mention to a man who is baiting lines a hare, a rabbit, a fox, a pig, or an egg. This sounds foolish, but a fisherman will abandon his work till the next day if these animals are mentioned in his presence.[B]

On the north and south sides of the headland there are precarious beaches for the fishermen to bring in their boats. They have no protection at all from the weather, no attempt at forming even such miniature harbours as may be seen on the Berwickshire coast having ever been made. When the wind blows hard from the north, the landing on that side is useless, and the boats, having no shelter, are hauled up the steep slope with the help of a steam windlass. Under these circumstances the South Landing is used. It is similar in most respects to the northern one, but, owing to the cliffs being lower, the cove is less picturesque. At low tide a beach of very rough shingle is exposed between the ragged chalk cliffs, curiously eaten away by the sea. Seaweed paints much of the shore and the base of the cliffs a blackish green, and above the perpendicular whiteness the ruddy brown clay slopes back to the grass above.

When the boats have just come in and added their gaudy vermilions, blues, and emerald greens to the picture, the North Landing is worth seeing. The men in their blue jerseys and sea-boots, coming almost to their hips, land their hauls of silvery cod and load the baskets pannier-wise on the backs of sturdy donkeys, whose work is to trudge up the steep slope to the road, nearly 200 feet above the boats, where carts take the fish to the station four miles away.

In following the margin of the cliffs to the outermost point of the peninsula, we get a series of splendid stretches of cliff scenery. The chalk is deeply indented in many places, and is honeycombed with caves. Great white pillars and stacks of chalk stand in picturesque groups in some of the

small bays, and everywhere there is the interest of watching the heaving waters far below, with white gulls floating unconcernedly on the surface, or flapping their great stretch of wing as they circle just above the waves.

The greatest of the caves is associated with the name of Robin Lythe, a legendary smuggler, who assumes vitality in the pages of the late Mr. Blackmore’s ‘Mary Anerley’—a story associated with Flamborough in the same manner as ‘Lorna Doone’ is connected with Exmoor.

Near the modern lighthouse stands a tall, hexagonal tower, built of chalk in four stories, with a string course between each. The signs of age it bears and the remarkable obscurity surrounding its origin and purpose would suggest great antiquity, and yet there seems little doubt that the tower is at the very earliest Elizabethan. The chalk, being extremely soft, has weathered away to such an extent that the harder stone of the windows and doors now projects several inches.

In a record dated June 21, 1588, the month before the Spanish Armada was sighted in the English Channel, a list is given of the beacons in the East Riding, and instructions as to when they should be lighted, and what action should be taken when the warning was seen. It says briefly:

There is no reference to any tower, and the beacons everywhere seem merely to have been bonfires ready for lighting, watched every day by two, and every night by three ‘honest house-holders ... above the age of thirty years.’ The old tower would appear, therefore, to have been put up as a lighthouse. If this is a correct supposition, however, the dangers of the headland to shipping must have been recognized as exceedingly great several centuries ago. A light could not have failed to have been a boon to mariners, and its maintenance would have been a matter of importance to all who owned ships; and yet, if this old tower ever held a lantern, the hiatus between the last night when it glowed on the headland, and the erection of the present lighthouse is so great that no one seems to be able to state definitely for what purpose the early structure came into existence.

Year after year when night fell the cliffs were shrouded in blackness, with the direful result that between 1770 and 1806 one hundred and seventy-four ships were wrecked or lost on or near the promontory. It remained for a benevolent-minded customs officer of Bridlington—a Mr. Milne—to suggest the building of a lighthouse to the Elder Brethren of Trinity House, with the result that since December 6, 1806, a powerful light has every night flashed on Flamborough Head. The immediate result was that in the first seven years of its beneficent work no vessel was ‘lost on that station when the lights could be seen.’ The strangest fact concerning the affair is that no one appears to have taken advantage of the old tower—at least, as a temporary expedient—although it stood there manifestly for that purpose, stoutly resisting all the gales, as it continues to do, although more than a century has elapsed.

One night, a good many years ago, when the glass of the lantern was thinner than now, the light was extinguished for a few minutes during a gale. A teal duck, which has a very rapid flight, came right through a pane of glass, being nearly cut in two, and leaving a hole for the wind to bluster through at the same moment.

The derivation of the name Flamborough has been conclusively shown to have nothing at all to do with the English word ‘flame,’ being possibly a corruption of Fleinn, a Norse surname, and borg or burgh, meaning a castle. In Domesday it is spelt ‘Flaneburg,’ and flane is the Norse for an arrow or sword.

At the point where the chalk cliffs disappear and the low coast of Holderness begins, we come to the exceedingly popular watering-place of Bridlington. At one time the town was quite separate from the quay, and even now there are two towns—the solemn and serious, almost Quakerish, place inland, and the eminently pleasure-loving and frivolous holiday resort on the sea; but they are now joined up by modern houses and the railway-station, and in time they will be as united as the ‘Three Towns’ of Plymouth. Along the sea-front are spread out by the wide parades, all those ‘attractions’ which exercise their potential energies on certain types of mankind as each summer comes round. There are seats, concert-rooms, hotels, lodging-houses, bands, kiosks, refreshment-bars, boats, bathing-machines, a switch-back railway, and even a spa, by which means the migratory folk are housed, fed, amused, and given every excuse for loitering within a few yards of the long curving line of waves that advances and retreats over the much-trodden sand.

The two stone piers enclosing the harbour make an interesting feature in the centre of the sea-front, where the few houses of old Bridlington Quay that have survived, are not entirely unpicturesque. In northerly gales the harbour is the only place of refuge between Harwich and Leith for ships going northwards, owing to the shelter of Flamborough Head and the good anchorage of the sandy bay. It is due to its favoured position under these circumstances that Bridlington has enjoyed a well-protected harbour for sixty years.

In 1642 Queen Henrietta Maria landed on whatever quay then existed. She had just returned from Holland with ships laden with arms and ammunition for the Royalist army. Adverse winds had brought the Dutch ships to Bridlington instead of Newcastle, where the Queen had intended to land, and a delay was caused while messengers were sent to the Earl of Newcastle in order that her landing might be effected in proper security. News of the Dutch ships lying off Bridlington was, however, conveyed to four Parliamentary vessels stationed by the bar at Tynemouth, and no time was lost in sailing southwards. What happened is told in a letter published in the same year, and dated February 25, 1642. It describes how, after two days’ riding at anchor, the cavalry arrived, upon which the Queen disembarked, and the next morning the rest of the loyal army came to wait on her.

This bombardment only ceased when the Dutch Admiral sent to the Parliamentary ships to tell them that if they did not cease firing, he would consider them as enemies, and give order for his own vessels to open fire upon them. The tardiness of this action was explained by the Admiral as being due to the mist.

A Parliamentary tract of the same time says that when Charles I., who was at Oxford, heard of his consort’s escape, he is said to have remarked that ‘the shipmen did not shoote at her, but onely tryed how neere they could goe and misse, as good marksmen use to do.’ This would have been poor comfort, even if such knowledge had reached the Queen, as she crouched in the ditch showered with earth from the flying cannon-balls.

In old Bridlington there stands the fine church of the Augustinian Priory we have already seen from a distance, and an ancient structure known as the Bayle Gate, a remnant of the defences of the monastery. They stand at no great distance apart, but do not arrange themselves to form a picture, which is unfortunate, and so also is the lack of any real charm in the domestic architecture of the streets. Everywhere you look the houses are commonplace and without individuality. This example of early work is therefore isolated in its medievalism, in contrast to the bars of York, which are surrounded by early types of houses in keeping with their antiquity. The Bayle Gate has a large pointed arch and a postern, and the date of its erection appears to be the end of the fourteenth century, when permission was given to the prior to fortify the monastery. Unhappily for Bridlington, an order to destroy the buildings was given soon after the Dissolution, and the nave of the church seems to have been spared only because it was used as the parish church. Quite probably, too, the gatehouse was saved from destruction on account of the room it contains having been utilized for holding courts. The upper portions of the church towers are modern restorations, and their different heights and styles give the building a remarkable, but not a beautiful, outline. At the west end, between the towers, is a large Perpendicular window occupying the whole width of the nave, and on the north side the vaulted porch is a very beautiful feature.

The interior reveals an inspiring perspective of clustered columns built in the Early English Period with a fine Decorated triforium on the north side. Both transepts and the chancel appear to have been destroyed with the conventual buildings, and the present chancel is merely a portion of the nave separated with screens. One of the most interesting of the monuments is the grave slab of Prior Robert Burstwick, who died in 1493, and whose coffin was found in 1821 in the ground where the south transept formerly stood. The prior’s beard and the cloth his body had been wrapped in were found to be undecayed.

Southwards in one huge curve of nearly forty miles stretches the low coast of Holderness, seemingly continued into infinitude. There is nothing comparable to it on the coasts of the British Isles for its featureless monotony and for the unbroken front it presents to the sea. The low brown cliffs of hard clay seem to have no more resisting power to the capacious appetite of the waves than if they were of gingerbread. The progress of the sea has been continued for centuries, and stories of lost villages and of overwhelmed churches are met with all the way to Spurn Head. Four or five miles south of Bridlington we come to a point on the shore where, looking out among the lines of breaking waves, we are including the sides of the two demolished villages of Auburn and Hartburn. There is no good road close to the sea, for it would scarcely be a wise policy to spend money on a highway that would year by year be brought nearer to the edge of the low cliffs, and another significant fact is the shyness the railways show to this vanishing coast. Two lines from Hull venture down to the sea, but neither has been continued to the north or south along the coast, although the joining of Hornsea with Bridlington would be eminently convenient.

From a casual glance at Skipsea no one would attribute any importance to it in the past. It was, nevertheless, the chief place in the lordship of Holderness in Norman times, and from that we may also infer that it was the most well-defended stronghold. On a level plain having practically no defensible sites, great earthworks would be necessary, and these we find at Skipsea Brough. There is a high mound surrounded by a ditch, and a segment of the great outer circle of defences exists on the south-west side. No masonry of any description can be seen on the grass-covered embankment, but on the artificial hillock, once crowned, it is surmised, by a Norman keep, there is one small piece of stonework. These earthworks have been considered Saxon, but later opinion labels them post-Conquest.[C] In the time of the Domesday Survey the Seigniory of Holderness was held by Drogo de Bevere, a Flemish adventurer who joined in the Norman invasion of England and received this extensive fief from the Conqueror. He also was given the King’s niece in marriage as a mark of special favour; but having for some reason seen fit to poison her, he fled from England, it is said, during the last few months of William’s reign. The Barony of Holderness was forfeited, but Drogo was never captured.

Poulson, the historian of Holderness, states that Henry III. gave orders for the destruction of Skipsea Castle about 1220, the Earl of Albemarle, its owner at that time, having been in rebellion. When Edward II. ascended the throne, he recalled his profligate companion Piers Gaveston, and besides creating him Baron of Wallingford and Earl of Cornwall, he presented this ill-chosen favourite with the great Seigniory of Holderness. Owing to the distractions in England caused by Edward’s stubborn refusal to give up his favourite, Robert Bruce successfully drove the English out of Scotland. The need of men to resist the victorious Scots is shown by the levies raised in Holderness at this time, on all men between the ages of twenty and sixty, who were, according to their means, to act either as men-at-arms, on heavy horses, fully armed cap-À-pie, or as light cavalry for skirmishing and for harassing the enemy’s flanks.

Going southwards from Skipsea, we pass through Atwick, with a cross on a large base in the centre of the village, and two miles further on come to Hornsea, an old-fashioned little town standing between the sea and the Mere. This beautiful sheet of fresh water comes as a surprise to the stranger, for no one but a geologist expects to discover a lake in a perfectly level country where only tidal creeks are usually to be found. Hornsea Mere may eventually be reached by the sea, and yet that day is likely to be put further off year by year on account of the growth of a new town on the shore, and the increased rateable value of the place when large sums of money are required for sea-defence. A verse, according to Poulson, inscribed on the old steeple of the church, which collapsed in 1733, gives a sensational impression of the encroachments of the ocean in the past:

But when we find that Hornsea Church is thirteen miles from Bridlington and twelve from Beverley as the crow flies, inductive reasoning would suggest that a similar freedom may have been taken with the third measurement, this time expanding the result liberally to round off the last line impressively. It may be remarked that ten miles out to sea from Hornsea Church is more than a mile outside the ten-fathoms line, and far beyond the outermost point of Flamborough Head. It has been calculated from the present rate of erosion that, since the Norman Conquest, a strip of land a mile in width has been washed away.

The scenery of the Mere is quietly beautiful. Where the road to Beverley skirts its margin there are glimpses of the shimmering surface seen through gaps in the trees that grow almost in the water, many of them having lost their balance and subsided into the lake, being supported in a horizontal position by their branches. The picture given here was drawn on a wintry day when the sun was struggling through mist and making a golden path across the rippling waters. The islands and the swampy margins form secure breeding-places for the countless water-fowl, and the lake abounds with pike, perch, eel, and roach.

It was the excellent supply of fish yielded by Hornsea Mere that led to a hot discussion between the neighbouring Abbey of Meaux and St. Mary’s Abbey at York. In the year 1260 William, eleventh Abbot of Meaux, laid claim to fishing rights in the southern half of the lake, only to find his brother Abbot of York determined to resist the claim. The cloisters of the two abbeys must have buzzed with excitement over the impasse, and relations became so strained that the only method of determining the issue was by each side agreeing to submit to the result of a judicial combat between champions selected by the two monasteries. Where the fight took place I do not know, and the number of champions is not mentioned in the record. It is stated that a horse was first swum across the lake,

and stakes fixed to mark the limits of the claim. On the day appointed the combatants chosen by each abbot appeared properly accoutred, and they fought from morning until evening, when, at last, the men representing Meaux were beaten to the ground, and the York abbot retained the whole fishing rights of the Mere.

Hornsea has a pretty church with a picturesque tower built in between the western ends of the aisles. It chiefly dates from Decorated times, with Perpendicular windows inserted. A fine alabaster altar-tomb under one of the arches of the south arcade has been terribly maltreated, and only a few words of the inscription running round the top slab are legible. We have no difficulty in reading the words ‘Hic jacet Magister Antonius de,’ and, with the help of Poulson, discover that this is the tomb of Anthony St. Quintin, who died in 1430, and was the last rector. It is the only tomb I have seen defaced with the outlines of shoes cut upon its surface. A wooden trap-door in the chancel opens into a small crypt consisting of two barrel vaults of brick with stone below. A recess on the north side appears to be a fireplace. An eighteenth-century parish clerk utilized this crypt for storing smuggled goods, and was busily at work there on a stormy night in 1732, when a terrific blast of wind tore the roof off the church. The shock, we are told, brought on a paralytic seizure of which he died.

By the churchyard gate stands the old market-cross, recently set up in this new position and supplied with a modern head.

As we go towards Spurn Head we are more and more impressed with the desolate character of the shore. The tide may be out, and only puny waves tumbling on the wet sand, and yet it is impossible to refrain from feeling that the very peacefulness of the scene is sinister, and the waters are merely digesting their last meal of boulder-clay before satisfying a fresh appetite.

The busy town of Hornsea Beck, the port of Hornsea, with its harbour and pier, its houses, and all pertaining to it, has entirely disappeared since the time of James I., and so also has the place called Hornsea Burton, where in 1334 Meaux Abbey held twenty-seven acres of arable land. At the end of that century not one of those acres remained. The fate of Owthorne, a village once existing not far from Withernsea, is pathetic. For a number of years the church remained on the verge of the cliff, in the same way as the ruins of the last church of Dunwich, in Suffolk, stand to-day. The graveyard was steadily destroyed, until 1816, when in a great storm the waves undermined the foundations of the eastern end of the church, so that the walls collapsed with a roar and a cloud of dust. When the sea went down, the shore was found littered with debris, and among the coffins there was one believed to be that of the founder. The body had been embalmed with fragrant spices and aromatics, which, even after exposure to the air, had not lost their original odour.

Twenty-two years later there was scarcely a fragment of even the churchyard left, and in 1844 the Vicarage and the remaining houses were absorbed, and Owthorne was wiped off the map.

The old village of Withernsea, no doubt, disappeared in a similar fashion. For the modern town we feel pity more than indignation. It consists of a haphazard collection of ugly lodging-houses, a modern church and a conspicuous lighthouse, whose revolving light glares into the windows of half the houses in the town, making sleep impossible. The place seems consciously at war with the ocean, and gazes ruefully at the remains of its iron pier, a limb that was savagely handled by the sea some years ago. No doubt the frail sea-wall will crumble away before long, and the depressing houses will then follow rapidly.

The peninsula formed by the Humber is becoming more and more attenuated, and the pretty village of Easington is being brought nearer to the sea winter by winter. This fact makes the restoration of the church no easy matter, for who would subscribe to a fund for spending money on a building that may follow the fate of Owthorne and a dozen other places? Close to the church, Easington has been fortunate in preserving its fourteenth-century tithe-barn covered with a thatched roof. The interior has that wonderfully imposing effect given by huge posts and beams suggesting a wooden cathedral.

At Kilnsea the weak bank of earth forming the only resistance to the waves has been repeatedly swept away and hundreds of acres flooded with salt water, and where there are any cliffs at all, they are often not more than fifteen feet high. Unfortunately, too, they slope downwards inland, so that each yard destroyed by the sea makes the front lower and less effective. The road comes to an end a short distance beyond Kilnsea, and the rest of the way to Spurn Head, marked by its conspicuous lighthouse, visible a long way to the north, is over the rough grass of the spit of hummocky sand which forms the extremity of this corner of Yorkshire.