Phillack and the Hayle Estuary in the Late Roman and early medieval periods

The existence of early medieval Christian and secular centres in the Hayle Estuary, Cornwall, was mentioned in a previous post. The aim of the following post is simply to share—for the sake of interest—a number of pictures of some of the key sites and finds from this area, not least the important late fourth-/fifth-century chi-rho stone now built into Phillack Church, along with a brief discussion of the Late and post-Roman archaeological evidence from here.

St Ives Bay and the Hayle Estuary on Christopher Saxton's 1576 map of Cornwall, showing Phillack, Lelant, St Ives and Gwithian (image: PD via the BSJW Trust).

A topographic map of the Hayle Estuary overlaid on top of the satellite image of the area. Marked on the map are Phillack church, Carnsew fort, Lelant church, and the early chapel and fourth-/fifth-century burial site just to the north-east of Lelant church, marked here by a simple cross. The coastal zone, estuary and low-lying land is shown in blue, with the surrounding higher land shown in green, yellow, orange and purple, in order of increasing height; note, with regard to the early extent of the East Pool of the estuary before the modern era, the British Geological Survey map of this area accords relatively well with this topographic map, showing Holocene tidal flat (estuarine) deposits extending eastwards beyond the current limit of the estuary across to approximately the A30 Loggans Moor Roundabout. Click here for a larger version of this map (image: C. R. Green, based on a topographic map from topographic-map.com that incorporates satellite imagery © 2018 Google, TerraMetrics, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, and map data © 2018 Google, used in accordance with their attribution guidelines).

The Hayle Estuary is one of the few natural safe landing-ports of any size on the north coast of Cornwall and, as such, it is perhaps unsurprising that there should be evidence for activity here during the Roman and early medieval eras. In this light, the evidence from Phillack (or Egloshayle), which overlooks the East Pool of the Hayle Estuary may be of particular interest. A significant quantity of mainly Late Roman coins have been discovered from a number of sites in Phillack in recent years, with this regionally unusual concentration of Late Roman non-hoarded coinage including coins from eastern Mediterranean mints such as Alexandria and Heraclea that are rarely represented amongst site-finds in Britain.(1) Needless to say, such finds have attracted attention, being both supportive of the idea that the Hayle Estuary might have functioned as a Roman-era landing-port and also of there having potentially been a direct maritime trading link between Cornwall and the Mediterranean in the fourth century AD. Any such trading links between the north coast of Cornwall and Mediterranean would obviously prefigure the well-known post-Roman trading links between these areas, which are primarily evidenced by extensive finds of fifth- to sixth-century eastern Mediterranean imported pottery in the county (as discussed in a number of previous posts), and, as such, are of considerable interest, with the coins found at Phillack thus perhaps reflecting items lost or exchanged by seaborne long-distance traders who landed in the Hayle Estuary after following similar trade-routes to those in use in the following centuries.(2)

Two fourth-century AD Roman coins minted in the eastern Mediterranean and found on two different sites at Phillack. The top coin is a copper alloy nummus of Constantine I, mint of Heraclea, c. AD 330–3; the bottom coin is a copper alloy nummus of Constantius II, mint of Alexandria, c. AD 340. Click here for a larger version of these coins (images: PAS, CORN-367F46 and CORN-6D9753).

Phillack church; the church here was extensively rebuilt in the nineteenth century, but contains an unusual amount of physical evidence for post-Roman/early medieval activity. Click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

Moving into the fifth and sixth centuries, there is good evidence for Phillack and the Hayle Estuary continuing to be a site of some significance. First and foremost, links with the eastern Mediterranean are indicated by the discovery at Phillack of a rim-sherd of late fifth- or early sixth-century Phocaean Red Slip-Ware from what is now western Turkey associated with a number of pre-Norman long-cist graves, some of which were cut into the underlying bedrock, during a limited excavation of the edge of the churchyard due to road-widening work in 1973.(3) Second, an important and very early chi-rho stone was found in the church walls during nineteenth century rebuilding work and was subsequently incorporated into the gable of the south porch. Charles Thomas has argued that this stone almost certainly dates from the early to mid-fifth century AD and the stone has subsequently been compared to early chi-rhos from the continent and eastern Mediterranean, which is intriguing given the above finds from Phillack and the potential Early Byzantine origins of St Ia, the patron saint of nearby St Ives.(4)

Other evidence and finds from Phillack develop this picture further. For example, a probably late sixth- or early seventh-century memorial stone inscribed with the name CLOTUALI MOBRATTI still stands in the churchyard and the church also seems to have been the focus for more than a hundred early cist burials, found both within the current churchyard and in its immediate vicinity, whilst Phillack's original patron saint Felec is named in a tenth-century list of Cornish saints, suggesting an early origin and significance. Taken together, this concentration of early medieval evidence has been considered indicative of Phillack probably being a significant and very early Christian centre and burial site from the fifth century onwards, potentially one that was monastic in character and comparable with early Welsh monasteries such as Llandough, and Charles Thomas moreover raises the possibility that Christianity may have been introduced to here via the sea from Gaul or even further afield.(5)

A probably fifth-century AD small chi-rho stone from the porch gable of the church at Phillack, or Egloshayle, photographed with raking evening light to show up the surface detail. This chi-rho which has been compared to early chi-rhos from the continent and eastern Mediterranean, e.g. S. M. Pearce, South-Western Britain in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester, 2004), p. 244, and C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff 1994), pp. 199–200. Click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

A close-up view of the fifth-century Chi-Rho stone from Phillack; click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

Left: drawing of the Phillack chi-rho stone (photo: C. R. Green, from an original drawing by Charles Thomas in the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro). Right: drawing of the other early chi-rho stone found in Cornwall, from St Helen's Chapel, Cape Cornwall, near St Just; the original was taken to St Just church where it was displayed for a while, until it was apparently thrown down a well in the Rectory garden in the nineteenth century by a Rector who objected to it as being 'Roman Catholic' (image: Langdon 1893, plate I, Internet Archive). Click here for a larger version of this combined image.

A perhaps late sixth- or seventh-century memorial stone inscribed with the name CLOTUALI MOBRATTI in the churchyard at Phillack, and a slightly modified drawing of the lettering from R. A. S. Macalister, Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum (Dublin, 1945), vol. 1 (images: C. R. Green & Macalister 1945).

In addition to the finds from Phillack above the East Pool, there are also a number of interesting features around the Carnsew Pool, to the south of the mouth of the Hayle Estuary. This is the location for Carnsew Hillfort, a small coastal multivallate hillfort that commands the entrance to the Hayle Estuary and sits atop a low cliff around 15 metres high. The hillfort—which has been partially destroyed by ploughing, a deep railway cutting, and the construction of an ornamental park along its ramparts in 1845 ('The Plantation')—dates originally from the Iron Age, but there are indications of potential later activity. One of these is a Late Roman hoard of several thousand coins apparently deposited in the late third century in a bronze container; this was found a little to the west of the hillfort in 1825, when workmen were taking away the upper part of the cliff and the adjoining field during the construction of the Hayle causeway. Even more interesting is a late fifth- or very early sixth-century AD burial and associated inscribed memorial stone that originally stood at the foot of the hillfort on its eastern side. The stone pillar found by the grave in 1843 contains an unusually long Latin inscription running to ten lines which has been read as follows: 'Here in peace lately went to rest Cunaide. Here in the grave she lies. She lived 33 years.'(6) In light of this, it has been suggested that Carnsew Hillfort may well have had a role to play in our period, perhaps as a secondary centre of secular power within the post-Roman kingdom of Dumnonia, complementing an ecclesiastical centre at Phillack, with such a centre potentially being responsible for the distribution of Mediterranean imports within western Cornwall.(7)

Carnsew Hillfort, Hayle; the photo shows the north-east corner of this multivallate coastal hillfort, which was somewhat landscaped in the nineteenth century to become 'The Plantation'. Click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

The view from Carnsew Hillfort, which commands the entrance to the Hayle Estuary and sits atop a low cliff around 15 metres high. Click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

Left: photograph of the late fifth- or very early sixth-century Cunaide Stone; this originally stood at the foot of the hillfort by a grave, but was set into a wall of The Plantation (a Victorian park created from the landscaped ramparts of Carnsew Hillfort) after its rediscovery in 1843 and was subsequently removed to Hayle Heritage Centre in December 2017. Right: drawing of the lettering on the stone from R. A. S. Macalister, Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum (Dublin, 1945), vol. 1; note, Charles Thomas reads the inscription differently to Macalister: HIC PACE NVP(er) REQVIEVIT CVNAIDE HIC (IN) TVMVLO IACIT VIXIT ANNOS XXXIII, 'Here in peace lately went to rest Cunaide. Here in the grave she lies. She lived 33 years.' (Photograph and image: CISP & Macalister 1945).

A number of coins from a Late Roman hoard deposited in the late third century in a bronze container on the edge of the Hayle Estuary; it was found a little to the west of Carnsew Hillfort in 1825, when workmen were taking away the upper part of the cliff and the adjoining field during the construction of the Hayle causeway. Click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

Phillack Church seen from Carnsew Hillfort, Hayle, with the sand dunes of The Towans behind. Click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

If there were arguably Late/post-Roman centres within the Hayle Estuary at Phillack and Carnsew, it is worth noting that they didn't stand alone. For example, on the western side of the entrance to the estuary at Lelant there is a probably fourth- or fifth-century AD burial site and an apparently early chapel located close to the cliff edge that was uncovered during the laying of the railway to St Ives in the late nineteenth century, and it has moreover been suggested that the churchyard within which Lelant parish church now sits may preserve the rectangular platform of a Roman fort that was well placed to control access to the estuary.(8) Likewise of potential interest is the Neolithic tor enclosure and Iron Age multivallate hillfort of Trencrom Hill, which is located 1.5 miles to the west of the Hayle Estuary. This impressive site not only overlooks both the Hayle Estuary and Carnsew Hillfort, but also has good views across St Ives Bay—whose skyline it dominates—to the north and Mount's Bay/St Michael's Mount on the south coast. Although the site is unexcavated, an early medieval inscribed memorial stone has been identified in a stile at the foot of the hill and there are reports of early medieval grass-marked wares having been found on the fort, which might offer a degree of support for Charles Thomas's suggestion of some sort of role for Trencrom Hill in the post-Roman era.(9)

Lelant Church and churchyard as seen from Carnsew Hillfort, Hayle, showing the intervisibility of the two sites; click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

A closer view of Lelant's rectangular churchyard which sits around 1.5 metres above the surrounding ground; it has been suggested that the churchyard may preserve the rectangular platform of a Roman fort that was well placed to control access to the estuary. Click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

View of the entrance to the Hayle Estuary from the north-east corner of Lelant churchyard; click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

Trencrom Hill as seen above the Hayle Estuary near to Carnsew Hillfort; the hillfort dominates the western skyline both from the estuary and from St Ives Bay. Click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

A view of St Ives Bay and the entrance to the Hayle Estuary from Trencrom Hill; click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

St Michael's Mount and Mount's Bay on the south coast of Cornwall as seen from Trencrom Hill; click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

Notes

1.     R. D. Penhallurick, Ancient and Early Medieval Coins from Cornwall & Scilly, Royal Numismatic Society Special Publication 45 (London, 2009), pp. 183–90; M. Allen, P. De Jersey & S. Moorhead, 'Coin Register 2007', British Numismatic Journal, 77 (2007), p. 316; A. Tyacke, 'The work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Cornwall', Cornish Archaeology, 50 (2011), pp. 71–6 at pp. 74–5; Portable Antiquities Scheme database, e.g. CORN-6D9753, a copper alloy nummus of Constantius II, mint of Alexandria, c. AD 340, and CORN-367F46, a copper alloy nummus of Constantine I, mint of Heraclea, c. AD 330–33.
2.     S. Moorhead, 'Early Byzantine copper coins found in Britain – a review in light of new finds recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme', in O. Tekin (ed.), Ancient History, Numismatics and Epigraphy in the Mediterranean World (Istanbul, 2009), pp. 263–74 at pp. 264 (n. 4) & 266; I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 377, 423–4; S. Moorhead, 'A group of fourth-century Roman coins from Phillack Towans, Cornwall', Portable Antiquities Scheme Annual Report 2005/06 (London, 2006), pp. 56–7; S. Moorhead, 'Curator's report: site scatter of 35 Roman coins', Portable Antiquities Scheme entry IOW-85AAB2.
3.     C. Thomas, Phillack Church (Gwithian, 1990), pp. 24–5; C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff, 1994), pp. 197–8; C. Thomas, A Provisional List of Imported Pottery in Post-Roman Western Britain and Ireland, Institute of Cornish Studies Special Report No. 7 (Redruth, 1981), p. 6; C. Thomas, 'The context of Tintagel: a new model for the diffusion of post-Roman Mediterranean imports', Cornish Archaeology, 27 (1988), 7–25 at p. 22.
4.     C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff, 1994), pp. 198–200; S. M. Pearce, South-Western Britain in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester, 2004), pp. 12, 149–51, 244; E. Okasha, Corpus of Early Christian Inscribed Stones of South-west Britain (Leicester, 2003), pp. 205–07.
5.     C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff, 1994), pp. 197–8, 206, 284–6; S. Turner, 'Making a Christian landscape: early medieval Cornwall', in M. Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, 300–1300 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 171–94 at pp. 175–6, 178; S. Turner, Making a Christian Landscape: How Christianity Shaped the Countryside in Early-Medieval Cornwall, Devon and Wessex (Exeter, 2006), pp. 35–6; I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 39, 132–3, 138, 377–81; C. Thomas, Phillack Church (Gwithian, 1990), pp. 9–10, 25.
6.     For Carnsew Hillfort, see Historic England, 'Small multivallate hillfort, early Christian memorial stone and C19 landscaped paths at Carnsew', List entry no. 1006720. Details of the Roman coin hoard found just to the west are in R. D. Penhallurick, Ancient and Early Medieval Coins from Cornwall & Scilly, Royal Numismatic Society Special Publication 45 (London, 2009), pp. 50–1. For the probably fifth-century burial at Carnsew, see the extensive discussion in C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff, 1994), pp. 190–4, translation of the inscription from Carnsew at p. 193.
7.     On Carnsew as a potential important secondary centre of power within the Dumnonian kingdom, see C. Thomas, 'The context of Tintagel. A new model for the diffusion of post-Roman Mediterranean imports', Cornish Archaeology, 27 (1988), 7–25, especially p. 16 and fig. 3 (p. 17); C. Thomas, Tintagel: Arthur and Archaeology (London, 1993), pp. 95–6; C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff, 1994), pp. 193–5.
8.     For the fourth-/fifth-century burial site and early chapel at Lelant, see I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 134 (fig. 45), 375 (fig. 201), and 379–81; C. Noall, 'Nineteenth-Century discoveries at Lelant', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 34–6; Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. 31061; C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff 1994), p. 198, fig. 12.1. For the possible Roman origins of the current Lelant graveyard, see N. Cahill, Hayle Historical Assessment, Cornwall: Main Report (Truro, 2000), p. 21; Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. 140942; P. Herring et al, 'Early medieval Cornwall', Cornish Archaeology, 50 (2011), 263–86 at pp. 269–70.
9.     For the suggestion that Trencrom Hill may have had a significant role in post-Roman western Cornwall, see C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff 1994), p. 194; for the early medieval inscribed stone, see Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. 31051 and Celtic Inscribed Stones Project TCROM/1, online at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database/stone/tcrom_1.html; for the report of early medieval grass-marked pottery from Trencrom Hill, see C. Thomas, 'Evidence for post-Roman occupation of Chun Castle, Cornwall', Antiquaries Journal, 36 (1956), 75–8 at p. 78.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2018, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

The drowned villages and eroding coastline of Lincolnshire, c. 1250–1600

Previous posts on this site have looked at the coastline of Lincolnshire in the palaeolithic and early medieval eras. The following post continues this theme by examining the changing coastline of Lincolnshire in the later medieval period, from around AD 1250 until 1600, with a particular focus on some of the medieval and early modern villages and churches that were lost to the sea and drowned in that era.

The coastline of Lincolnshire in the thirteenth century, drawn by C. R. Green after S. Pawley, Lincolnshire Coastal Villages and the Sea c. 1300–1600: Economy and Society (University of Leicester PhD thesis, 1984), with slight modifications. This map includes one depiction of the possible number and extent of both the offshore barrier islands that are often thought to have protected the coast of Lincolnshire through until the thirteenth century and the calmer, lagoonal conditions that they are suggested to have created to their west, which protected the Lincolnshire coast from the full erosive force of the North Sea.

Up until the thirteenth century, the coast of Lincolnshire is thought to have been protected by a series of offshore coastal barrier islands. These islands extended south-eastwards from Spurn Point—potentially as far as the coast of north-western Norfolk (see map, above)—and are argued to have shielded the Lincolnshire seaboard from the full ferocity of the storms and tides of the North Sea, creating a sheltered tidal lagoon between themselves and the main coastline that was characterised in part by saltmarsh, wide sand and mud flats, and tidal creeks and estuaries.(1) However, this protection appears to have failed during the 1200s, as the offshore islands were finally destroyed by an unprecedented series of storms and floods in that century. The debris that resulted from their destruction is believed to have been cast up along the foreshore of the Lincolnshire Outmarsh as broad 'storm beaches' and sand dunes, and the coastal landscape of Lincolnshire witnessed a sudden and dramatic changes in its nature. No longer did it look out on to a sheltered lagoon, but rather to the open sea. As Simon Pawley puts it,

a coastline, sheltered for four and a half millennia and topographically and geologically unprepared for the experience, was now exposed to whatever forces of tide and weather had formerly operated on the line of the barrier islands. More floods and coastal disasters were an inevitable result, especially since the stormy conditions of the thirteenth century continued into the fourteenth.(2)

It is against this background that the events described in this post took place, as the coast of Lincolnshire started to suffer under the same sort of erosive forces that have led to the loss of significant amounts of land, and a large number of villages, along the unprotected coastline of the East Riding of Yorkshire since the Iron Age/Roman period.(3) With the foreshore no longer protected by a sequence of coastal barrier islands and a sheltered tidal lagoon, the sea began to make significant inroads into the land here, reclaiming a mile or more from the coast between Mablethorpe and Skegness by the end of the sixteenth century and destroying a number of low-lying coastal settlements in the process.

The storm surges of 1287 and 1288 are usually considered to be the events that finally overwhelmed the offshore barrier islands, and those years certainly saw significant damage to the Lincolnshire coast in the area of the two neighbouring medieval parishes of Mablethorpe St Peter and Mablethorpe St Mary. The church of Mablethorpe St Peter lay offshore from the modern dune-top Golf Road/Quebec Road car park, around a mile to the north-east of the current Mablethorpe St Mary's church. According to the Louth Park Abbey Chronicle, the church of Mablethorpe St Peter was 'rent asunder by the waves of the sea' in 1287, an event that seems from other references to have taken place on on the night of New Year's Day 1287. The Hagnaby Abbey Chronicle similarly relates that 'the church of St. Peter of Mablethorpe was wholly destroyed, the chalice and pyx, in which the body of Christ was served, being found crushed under a heap of stones.' Moreover, the next year saw equally dramatic marine flooding in the Mablethorpe area, with the Hagnaby Abbey Chronicle recording that there was, on the 4 February 1288,

a flood of the sea ... [that] reached as far as Maltby field and totally destroyed the church of St. Peter of Mablethorpe, and that day perished many men, uncounted sheep, and an unknown number of cattle ... Also on the eve of the Assumption [14 August 1288] the sea caused very great damage in the territory of Mablethorpe.(4)

Despite its obviously vulnerable coastal position in the aftermath of the loss of the protective barrier islands, the rebuilding of Mablethorpe St Peter's church appears to have been begun a short time after these latter floods and on the same site, with money from the local tithes and offerings assigned to this from May 1290. Whether the church of Mablethorpe St Mary was also damaged in these floods is unrecorded, although it may be significant that it too was being rebuilt in the early 1300s; in this case, however, the rebuilding was taking place on a brand new site. The present church presumably stands on this new site and it has been plausibly suggested that the recorded rebuilding of the church of Mablethorpe St Mary from November 1300 onwards reflected a 'strategic withdrawal' inland by the parish from a dangerously exposed coastal position for its church too, with the aim of avoiding the fate suffered by the church of Mablethorpe St Peter.(5)

The view over Mablethorpe beach from the modern Golf Road/Quebec Road car park; the settlement and church of Mablethorpe St Peter is said to lay offshore from this spot (image: Geograph, copyright Richard Croft and used under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license).

The sea continued to exert a destructive influence on the Mablethorpe area throughout the rest of the medieval period. For example, in August 1335 the waters broke through the medieval sea-banks at Mablethorpe for at least two days, drowning sheep and crops; in 1425, the sea-banks were 'torn apart' by the flood and almost the whole of Mablethorpe was submerged in both January and October; and in 1443, the lord of Mablethorpe manor was exempted from offices and services 'in consideration of his loss of land in Mablerthorp through the irruption of the sea and of his costs in repairing the coasts'. In 1500, the Commissioners of Sewers for the province of Lindsey indicated that both Mablethorpe and Skegness were 'in very great danger of the sea', and the truth of this judgement was demonstrated in the the late 1530s, when the church of St Peter, the village of 'Mawplethrop', and the greater part of its parish were 'overflown with water in the sea' and never recovered. As late as the 1870s, the church ruins could still be seen from the dune-top at Mablethorpe, and it was said in the 1930s that the sea continued to occasionally throw up carved stone from the church onto the foreshore.(6)

A similar calamity befell 'old Skegness' in the early sixteenth century too, this being described by contemporaries as 'a great haven toune' and 'a towne waullid, having also a castelle'. Probably originally a Roman site of some significance, Skegness was located on a creek at the western entrance to the Wash, where it was sheltered by a 'ness' or promontory and network of dunes and beaches running south from the Ingoldmells shore.(7) As was noted above, in 1500 Skegness was thought to be 'in very great danger of the sea', and in 1517 the sea 'rushed at last over the barriers that had been raised on this level shore, and recovered his ancient possession.' This was followed in 1526 by even greater destruction, when the 'church and a great part of the parish was submerged' according to a contemporary ecclesiastical subsidy. By 1540, the town seems to have been entirely swallowed up by the waves, although 'manifest tokens of old buildinges' were said to be visible at low tide, located around half a mile or so out to sea. Some, at least, of the stones from the old, drowned church were apparently carried away to build a new church (St Clement's) well inland, along with a new settlement of Skegness that was considered but 'a pore new thing' in 1540. Much of the fabric of the old church must have been left in situ, however, as sailors in the early seventeenth century reported encountering parts of the old church's steeple at some distance beyond the low water mark, probably at a spot out to sea opposite the end of the modern pier.(8)

The drowned coastline, churches and settlements of the Lincolnshire, c. 1250–1600, drawn by C. R. Green after D. N. Robinson, The Book of the Lincolnshire Seaside (Buckingham, 1981), with minor modifications and the addition of selected modern settlements. The thirteenth-century coastline, in orange-brown, is set against the modern coastline (green), showing the extent of the erosion on the east coast. Also depicted are a number of lost settlements and their modern equivalents.Note, the 'new lands' to the south of Skegness were created via reclamations from c. 1555 onwards.

If Skegness, as a significant walled 'haven town' that traded in Baltic timber—importing the wood and wainscots used for the building of Lord Cromwell's castle at Tattershall in the 1430s, for example—was a major loss in the 1520s, and Mablethorpe St Peter was swept away soon after in the late 1530s, they were not alone nor the last of Lincolnshire's coastal settlements to be destroyed in this manner. Not only were two hamlets within Skegness parish, called East and West Meales, also taken by the sea in the early sixteenth century, but Sutton-in-the-Marsh clearly suffered a parallel fate in the middle of that century too. In the 1630s, the parishioners of Sutton wrote to the Privy Council complaining that the sea-banks that protected their village were in decay and warning that some 80 years previously they had paid dearly for such neglect, as at that time:

our ancient parish church, some houses inhabited, and very much of the best grounds in our said town was destroyed by the sea and is now sea.

This claim was corroborated to a significant degree in 1953–4, when a number of building sites were revealed at low water after the sand of the modern beach was washed away by storms, and it is noteworthy that finds made at low tide from the tidal flats at Sutton include a section of Late Saxon wattle hurdle (fencing) and a sheep bone that are most plausibly seen as coming from an animal pen associated with an earlier phase of the drowned settlement here.(9) Needless to say, within a century little remained to be seen of the destroyed 'ancient parish church' or the 'houses inhabited' of Sutton, and as at Skegness it would seem that a new church was constructed inland of that which had been lost, this forming the core of the present-day Sutton on Sea. The cost of defending the remaining parts of Sutton parish from the sea did, however, mean that the settlement remained significantly impoverished through the Early Modern era—the new Sutton church was, for example, described as 'a most wretched church of stud and clay with a wooden ruinous steeple' in the eighteenth century.(10)

The pier at Skegness as it appeared in the 1890s; 'old Skegness'  is generally thought to have been located at a spot out to sea opposite the end of the pier. Note, Skegness pier is nowadays significantly shorter than it was, due to damage it sustained during the severe storm of January 1978 (image: Wikimedia Commons).

An equivalent tradition from nearby Trusthorpe relating to the destruction of that church by the sea in the sixteenth century is likely to be based in reality too. In particular, it is noteworthy that the first building on the site of the current Trusthorpe church was constructed in 1606—which would fit with it being an inland rebuilding of a lost church, as occurred at Skegness and Sutton on Sea—and traces of medieval activity have been recorded from the clay underlying the modern beach at Trusthorpe after especially severe tides have temporarily stripped away the covering sands.(11) However, perhaps the most dramatic and informative account of a Lincolnshire coastal village being destroyed by the sea comes from the former Mumby Chapel, located halfway between Sutton and Skegness (modern Chapel St Leonards). In 1570, the worst storm of the sixteenth century appears to have almost completely levelled the settlement here, as Holinshed related in his contemporary Chronicles:

This year [1570] the fifth of October chanced a terrible wind and rain both by sea and land ... Mumbie chappell, the whole town was lost, except three houses. A ship was driven upon an house, the sailors thinking they had been upon a rock, committed themselves to God: and three of the mariners leapt out of the ship, and chanced to take hold on the house top, and so saved themselves: and the wife of the same lying in childbed, by climbing up into the top of the house, was also saved by the mariners, her husband and child being both drowned. Likewise, the church was wholly overthrown except the steeple ... Master Pelham lost eleven hundred sheep at Mumbie chappell.(12)

This, then, was the fate of the most-exposed part of the Lincolnshire coast, between Mablethorpe and Skegness, in the period from the probable destruction of the offshore protective barrier islands in the thirteenth century through until the later sixteenth century. A previously sheltered coastline was left vulnerable to the full force of the storms and tides of the North Sea and consequently saw a very significant degree of flooding and erosion, resulting in the loss of a number of settlements, churches and a strip of coastal land perhaps a mile or more wide by the end of the sixteenth century. Subsequently, there was a degree of reclamation of land from the sea, but in the main this took place outside of the area discussed here, most especially to the south of Skegness, where land was deliberately reclaimed from c. 1555 onwards and the old, destroyed 'ness' gradually reformed and extended southwards to create the first Gibraltar Point. In contrast, the best that the Mablethorpe–Skegness region saw was a degree of stablisation in the coast after c. 1600, and the continued vulnerability of the coast here into the modern era was dramatically demonstrated by both the extensive flooding (up to 10km inland) seen in 1953 and the subsequent construction of a 19km-long concrete sea wall to try to defend against similar inundations in the future.(13)


Notes

1    These coastal barrier islands were first suggested by H. H. Swinnerton, 'The post-glacial deposits of the Lincolnshire coast', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 87 (1931), 360–75. See also D. N. Robinson, The Book of the Lincolnshire Seaside (Buckingham, 1981), pp. 13, 17 (map), 20; S. Pawley, Lincolnshire Coastal Villages and the Sea c. 1300–1600: Economy and Society (University of Leicester PhD thesis, 1984), pp. 69–70, 73–5, 80; S. Bennett & N. Bennett (edd.), An Historical Atlas of Lincolnshire (Hull, 1993), p. 8; Institute of Estuarine and Coastal Studies, Humber Estuary & Coast (Hull, 1994), p. 33; H. Fenwick, The Lincolnshire Marsh: Landscape Evolution, Settlement Development and the Salt Industry (University of Hull PhD Thesis, 2007), pp. 54, 160, 174, 181–2, 189, 199, 202, 267, 304; and Natural England, NA 101: Bridlington to Skegness Maritime Natural Area Profile (Sheffield, 2013), pp. 11, 21.
2    Pawley, Lincolnshire Coastal Villages, p. 75.
3    It is estimated that up to six kilometres have been lost from the Holderness coast since the late prehistoric period: T. Sheppard, The Lost Towns of the Yorkshire Coast (London, 1912); R. Van de Noort et al, 'The "Kilnsea-boat", and some implications from the discovery of England’s oldest plank boat remains', Antiquity, 73 (1999), 131–5 at p. 131.
4    A. E. B. Owen, 'Mablethorpe St. Peter's and the Sea', Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 21 (1986), 61–2 at p. 61. On the location of Mablethorpe St Peter church, see T. Allen, History of the County of Lincoln, 2 vols. (Leeds, 1830), vol. 2, p. 153.
5    Owen, 'Mablethorpe St. Peter', p. 61.
6    Robinson, Lincolnshire Seaside, pp. 20–1; Owen, 'Mablethorpe St. Peter', pp. 61–2; W. A. B. Jones, 'Mablethorpe', The Lincolnshire Magazine (Lincoln, 1932–4), vol. 1, pp. 203–06 at p. 204; Pawley, Lincolnshire Coastal Villages, p. 83.
7    B. Whitwell, Roman Lincolnshire, 2nd edn. (Lincoln, 1992), pp. 51–3; A. E. B. Owen & R. Coates, ‘Traiectus/Tric/Skegness: a Domesday name explained’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 38 (2003), 42–4; J. Leland, The Itinerary of John Leland the Antiquary, ed. T. Hearne, 9 vols. (c. 1538–43, Oxford, 1770), vol. 7, p. 152; Pawley, Lincolnshire Coastal Villages, p. 80. Note, a small number of Roman finds have been recovered from the Skegness foreshore and reported to the local Historic Environment Record including, most intriguingly, a 'brothel token' that was found 'near to the pier' (Lincolnshire Historic Environment Record PRN 41709); this is one of only two examples of Roman brothel tokens recorded from Britain, the other being found a few years ago at London.
8    Pawley, Lincolnshire Coastal Villages, pp. 80–3; A. E. B. Owen, 'Coastal Erosion in East Lincolnshire', Lincoinshire Historian, 9 (1952), 330–41, esp. p. 340; Robinson, Lincolnshire Seaside, pp. 18, 20–1; W. Kime, The Book of Skegness (Buckingham, 1986), p. 12.
9    Pawley, Lincolnshire Coastal Villages, p. 83 and fn. 31; Owen, 'Coastal Erosion', p. 334; Lincolnshire Historic Environment Record PRN 43148, and newspaper clippings from the 1990s; Robinson, Lincolnshire Seaside, p. 44. The wattle hurdle was made of oak and was found in 1995; it has been radiocarbon dated to Cal AD 800–975.
10    Quoted in Robinson, Lincolnshire Seaside, p. 22.
11    Robinson, Lincolnshire Seaside, p. 21; Dave Lascelles, personal communication and photographs, 2011.
12    R. Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, 6 vols. (1577, ed. London, 1808), vol. 4, pp. 254–6 (with modernised spelling). Note, the date of the disaster at Mumby Chapel is often given as 1571, but this is a mistake: see A. E. B. Owen, 'Chapel St Leonards and the Flood of 5 October 1570', in C. Sturman (ed.), Lincolnshire People and Places: Essays in Memory of Terence R. Leach (Lincoln, 1996), pp. 87–90.
13    Robinson, Lincolnshire Seaside, pp. 21, 27, 35, 125–37; J. Lyon, Beach Replenishment and Derived Archaeological Material: Mablethorpe to Skegness Beach Replenishment Scheme (London, 2005), especially pp. 38–44.

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