The lost port of Ravenser Odd was once as elusive as the mythical city of Atlantis. Seven hundred years ago, the booming town rivalled Hull and Grimsby as the Humber's most important port. But it didn't last. Built on shifting sands and battered by storm surges, Ravenser Odd slowly slipped into a watery grave. What remnants had managed to cling on amid rising sea levels were swept away in 1362 during a storm ominously titled, the Grote Mandrenke or "Great Drowning". It was thought to be buried deep beneath the North Sea waves and unlikely to ever be found. READ MORE: Remembering the awe-inspiring sight of Concorde flying in to Humberside Airport The Grimsby X-Files - from strange
UFO sightings to an 'alien abduction' But in recent years, experts have made progress in the search for Ravenser Odd, which is thought to be located somewhere off Spurn Point. Over the past few years, Prof Dan Parsons, a geoscientist at the University of Hull, has been leading a search to find what has been dubbed "Yorkshire's lost Atlantis". Using the same echo-sounding equipment that helped to discover the Titanic, he has been guided by local fishing crews who have noticed subtle differences in the water surface around the area the town is thought to lie. "They’ve described underwater disturbances so we’ve been carrying out scans," Dan said in 2022. An old map showing "Ravenspurn" and the nearby sandbanks. Now, as the search continues, a new exhibition at Hull History Centre is telling the story of Ravenser Odd. It includes the original charter for Ravenser Odd, dating back to 1299, which will be on display for the first time outside of
London. Ravenser Odd – 'Serpent's Tongue' in the old Norse language – was founded in 1235. It had a market square, two MPs, a court and served 100 merchant ships – it even held an annual fair. But less than 150 years later it was gone, claimed back by the very sea it had depended upon for its trade. One of many victims of East Yorkshire's crumbling coast, by 1346 a Royal inquisition had declared the town almost vanished, prompting a mass exodus of its inhabitants and looters salvaging what was left. The "Great Drowning" swept away the rest. Phil Mathison is an expert on the topic who wrote a book, 'The Legendary Lost Town Of Ravenser', and has been helping the university experts in their search. He previously explained how the town lived on in the tales of fishermen and the Victorian day trippers who sailed on paddle steamers from Hull and Grimsby. “I became intrigued by the place,” Phil previously told the Hull Daily Mail. “I began devouring every book I could about Spurn and very quickly I came across this lost sea port.” The mystery of Ravenser Odd has fascinated generations of historians. “It was on a site that was thrown up by the sea,” said Phil. “There was an accumulation of stones, sand and eventually soil and they decided to colonise it, because it is a great position. “In those days, it used to take a day to get from Hull to the mouth of the Humber with sail. Suddenly, you’ve got a port at the mouth, so alongside saving a day’s trade you could be in the main fishing grounds within an hour. “In the space of 20 or 30 years, it went from being a place where fishermen hung their nets to being a very important town with fairs and markets. The town’s growing status rattled the cages of Hull, Hedon and Grimsby and led to them complaining to King Edward I about this upstart town. “The people at Ravenser Odd were cowboys, to be honest. They could get to the people on the boats first and say, ‘You don’t want to go to Grimsby, come here instead’. Instead of the Wild West it was the Wild East. “It caused a bit of friction. It’s the same ploy you’d use in the market place: ‘You don’t want to go there, I’m doing you a deal today’. It was the same sharp trading, just on a grand scale.” Local historian Phil Mathison, who has led the search for Ravenser Odd, pictured in 2015. (Image: Hull Daily Mail) The rival ports accused the citizens of Ravenser Odd of engaging in piracy. But the town appears to have been loyal to the Crown and even sent ships to fight in the wars against
Scotland waged by Edward I and Edward II. However, the sea that had thrown up the land for Ravenser Odd was also to cause its destruction. “A thousand people was a big town back then and I would suggest there were a thousand people there,” Phil said. “It was a borough, it had a courthouse, a gallows and two MPs. It was a big name, like King’s Lynn and Scarborough and Whitby.“ Records show that one owner complained he had lost 145 properties as the sea began to wash the town away. “They might have been only little tenements, but that was just one of the landowners there – so you can assume there were several hundred properties,” Phil said. “Think about what happened in 2013 – the tidal surge – I believe I know which surge was to blame for Ravenser Odd’s destruction. On January 16, 1362, there was the great drowning where, on the coast of Holland, 5,000 people lost their lives. That’s what took away the last vestiges of the town.” Phil believes that the town was located around the present day Spurn Point, at areas including The Old Den sandbank. “Within recorded memory, it was an island, which has got gradually eroded by the river,” he said. “We’ve got records of the Old Den having bushes and trees and scrub on it – if you look on the other side, there’s a shallow part, which I believe to be the Old Point, where the harbour was. “There’s evidence from the 19th century that people found Ashlar stone there – meaning stone that has tool marks on it – and as soon as you see chisel marks on stone it is obvious it is man-made. They also found brickwork on there. People tend to think it would have been mud huts on there, I suggest there were brick buildings on there.” The University of Hull experts believe that Ravenser Odd could be located around 500 metres off the coast of Spurn. Earlier, this month Steve Simmons, a lecturer in energy and environment at the university, said scans of the area had failed to identify anything that could be identified as structural remains. "This could be due to the constantly shifting sediment of the seafloor," he said. In an article for The Conversation , Steve added: "We will continue the hunt for Ravenser using instruments called parametric echosounders. These are capable of probing below the layers of seafloor sediment and would be deployed at locations identified as areas of interest from the previous surveys." A diagram showing results from a survey of the sea 500 metres off Spurn Point. Experts from the University of Hull are searching for Ravenser Odd. (Image: Steve Simmonds/University of Hull) Why should we care? Prof Dan Parsons said understanding to Ravenser Odd could help us prepare us for the future. In 2022, he said: "As we think about the impacts of climate change, we have to think about the potential loss of settlements. We’ve been lucky to have a very stable sea level over the past thousand years but we’re moving into a era where the sea level is changing very rapidly." "We're talking a metre's sea level rise by the end of the century," he adds. "Settlements along the coast will be vulnerable, so having those conversations with communities is important. This would help us gather a better understanding of coastal erosion’s impacts over time." The Ravenser Odd exhibition at Hull History Centre marks the 725th anniversary of the exhibition. Called ‘Hull/Ravenser Odd: twin cities, sunken pasts’, it includes the charters, on loan from The National Archives, along with items from the collection at Hull History Centre. It runs until Thursday May 30. Join the FREE Grimsby Live
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