cepted a great deal of the traffic which would otherwise have gone to Grimsby or Hull. Ravensrod was a neighbour and offshoot of Ravenspur. It occupied a low islet, which was accessible from the mainland by a flat ridge of sand and pebbles. Five hundred years back it was a flourishing seaport, eclipsing its progenitor and exciting the jealousy of the “good men of Grimsby” on the opposite bank. In Edward the Second’s time it was of sufficient importance to attract the royal attention, and to bring down upon itself demands for a ship, arms, and provisions. But the sea swept it all away, after an existence of half a century. Ravenspur survived it, but ultimately shared the same fate. The date of its final disappearance is unknown; but it is probable that its inhabitants found reason to abandon it before it was engulfed in the waters.
Hyde appears to have been a well-to-do fishing-village—at least one may suppose so, from the fact that it paid thirty pounds per annum to the monks of Meaux, as its tithe for fish. The whirligig of time, however, brings round its revenges, and the fish at length
And sat nothe burghers dispossessed,
And sat not as a meat, but as a guest.
With the churches on the coast the waves have played especial havoc, and many a parish fane has succumbed to their assaults. Kilnsea church was one of the last washed away. The sea sapped the eminence on which it stood, so that it quivered under the shock of the waters. Service, notwithstanding, was held in it up till 1823, and was then discontinued only because the building showed unmistakable symptoms of dissolution. The walls cracked, the floor subsided, the windows broke, the sea-birds flew in and out, and made their nests inside. Half of the church fell into the sea in 1826, and five years later the other half followed. As the sea is gradually gaining ground in the neighbourhood of the cliff on which the church stood, the houses there are being abandoned year by year. At one point forty-three yards of land were swallowed up in six years. The average annual decrease along the coast is two yards and a half.
At Kilnsea, Owthorne, and elsewhere the sea has played the part of body-snatcher, breaking open churchyards and scattering the splintered coffins and dismembered bones in all directions. Travellers, ignorant of the cause, have been shocked and startled at the sight of the human remains which strewed their path, and have experienced somewhat of the same sensation as M. du Chaillu on observing the piles of skulls and bones in the Fan villages.
The Humber is no less destructive than the ocean, and is responsible for the destruction of several of the hamlets above mentioned. In the neighbourhood of Ferriby, so great has been the diminution of land on Lord Carington’s estate, that a readjustment of his tenants’ rents has twice been necessary to meet the altered nature of the holdings. One field of fourteen acres was reduced, in spite of every precaution, to four acres in twenty years, a long, soft sweep of muddy shore usurping the ground where cattle grazed or farming produce grew.
But there is a brighter side to the picture. The “devouring element” has been compelled to disgorge part of its prey. Adjoining the lordship of Patrington is a broad level known as Sunk Island, although only separated by a moat from the mainland. In the days of Charles the Second it consisted of about 3500 acres of “drowned ground,” of which some seven acres were embanked and let for 7l. a year. A hundred years later 1500 acres were under cultivation, yielding an annual rental of 700l. Additions have gradually been made to this rich warp, which now covers 7000 acres, and is worth more than 12,000l. a year. The success of the experiment has led to efforts at reclaiming the stolen soil at other points, which will probably be attended with equal success.
Big bites from the fat Yorkshire coast are not, however, sufficient to satiate the appetite of hungry Ocean. The soil of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire is equally to its taste, and many a huge meal it makes of it. What Evelyn in his Diary terms the promontory of Norfolk, is fast being transferred into a bay. At Happisburgh, there is a tradition of an older place of the same name, which must now be looked for among the “sunken wrack and sunless treasure” at the bottom of the sea; and it is feared that the church of young Hapsbro’, as the natives call it, will not long remain on dry land. The greater part of Eccles, and the whole of Shipden have disappeared. At Trimingham upwards of fifty acres of land are said to have been carried off within the last sixty years, and on one occasion four acres and a half were swallowed at one tide! Again, in Suffolk, Dunwich, which was once a respectable port and borough town, has been ruined by the sea, which has washed away the greater part of the town, and is still nibbling at the ground on which the existing village rests. On the east coast of Essex the ruins of buildings have been found at a considerable distance from the land, and near Walton-on-the-Naze a whole churchyard has been engulfed within the memory of the present generation. Similar instances of encroachment by the waters, though not in so alarming a degree as in those are to be found in the southern counties.
Are there no skilful and patriotic engineers among us to enter the lists in defence of their native land against that great despoiler, the “German Ocean?”
THE POISONED MIND.
IN TWO PARTS.
PART I.—LAPIS PHILOSOPHORUM.
