Ghost of Ravenser Odd

Ravenser Odd was a a medieval pirate town that was swallowed by the North Sea long, long ago…

The settlement was built on the sandbanks at the mouth of the River Humber estuary in the East Riding of Yorkshire . The name Ravenser Odd comes from the Viking Hrafn's Eyr or "Raven's tongue" referring to the lost sandbank promontory. It must have been a wild and exposed place – a biting wind, the mocking call of gulls and a constant tumble and tear of the waves shaping its existence.

From the first wooden shacks in the mid thirteenth century the settlement prospered, grew in size and became a port of national importance. Records tell of bustling wharves, a market, warehouses, tanneries, customs sheds, a windmill, prison, courtroom, annual fairs and many taverns, inns and houses of ill repute. Enforcers known are “forestallers” persuaded ships to land at the port using threats of violence. The ships were unloaded in Ravenser Odd instead of Grimsby or Kingston Upon Hull and lucrative duties paid.

In 1355 great flooding damaged the chapel of St Mary in the town and destroyed scores of dwellings, contemporary accounts thereafter record an almost Armageddon image of looting, devastation, and a mass exodus of the town’s merchants. The chapel itself was ultimately destroyed by the tides and the bones of the dead washed out from their graves.

Ravenser Odd was abandoned soon after and, unsurprisingly, it became something of a pirates’ lair until the final hand was dealt in 1362. In January of that year a fierce south-westerly gale raged across the UK. This storm known as the Great Drowning of Men combined with unusually high tides, produced a storm surge that swept the last stones of Ravenser Odd back into the hungry North Sea. The town and any trace of it vanished without trace.

Many ancient east coast towns and villages now lie beneath the surface of the sea, the forces of nature have turned these once buoyant settlements submerged Ghost towns.

H 5 x D 1.5 x W 1 cm

BATCH OF 70