London: Hopes are high that a fabled medieval town known as “Yorkshire’s Atlantis” is about to be located and will begin giving up secrets held for more than 650 years.
Ravenser Odd was a prosperous port town built on sandbanks at the mouth of the Humber estuary before it was abandoned and later destroyed and submerged by a calamitous storm in 1362.
Daniel Parsons, a professor in sedimentology at the University of Hull, was on a family day out to the seaside at Withernsea when he learned about Ravenser Odd, one of the biggest of a number of places on the Holderness coast that have been lost over the centuries due to coastal erosion.
He got chatting to the historian Phil Mathison. “He was telling me that at low tide local lobster vessels have seen disturbances on the surface suggesting there are actual remnants of the town on the seabed.”
He started reading more about the fascinating history of Ravenser Odd and the idea started to form. Parsons is a geoscientist who uses high-resolution sonar systems to better understand how sediments move around. Could, he asked himself, the equipment be used to find this lost Atlantis, and could the story be used to shine a light on the coastal erosion threat faced by communities today?
Money was raised for a research project which resulted in a survey of an area off Spurn Point of about 10 hectares last year. It did not locate Ravenser Odd, but they were close, Parsons believes, and a second survey will take place in two to three weeks’ time.
Once it is located, it is hoped that money can be raised for archaeological exploration – and who knows what may then be found, Parsons said.
Ravenser Odd was founded around 1235 with its name stemming from the Old Norse hrafn’s eyr (raven’s tongue). It became a town of national importance with wharves, warehouses, a court and a prison. It had two members of parliament and collected dues from more than 100 merchant ships a year.
It also had a seawall and a harbour.
Coastal erosion brought about the town’s decline and it was flooded by the middle of the 14th century. In 1362, northern Europe was hit by a terrible storm called the Grote Mandrenke storm, or Saint Marcellus’s flood, which led to the town being completely submerged in the cold waters of the North Sea.