"To explore the constant battle between the North Sea and the mainland"
April 11, 2013 3:40 AM Subscribe
Photographer Neil A. White's 'Lost Villages' project chronicles the effects of coastal erosion on the Holderness coast, in the north-east of England. It's inspired by the disappearance of Ravenser Odd in the 14th century. (Via BBC News.)
Looks like a pretty one-sided "battle" to me. I can't get worked up about homes and roads and stuff built on the coast that get consumed by nature. It is not as if when you buy a house 200m from a cliff facing the North Sea the thought doesn't occur to you to make a quick calculation of the beach front value.
posted by three blind mice at 5:00 AM on April 11, 2013
posted by three blind mice at 5:00 AM on April 11, 2013
I can't get worked up about homes and roads and stuff built on the coast that get consumed by nature. It is not as if when you buy a house 200m from a cliff facing the North Sea the thought doesn't occur to you to make a quick calculation of the beach front value.
I don't really get this attitude. It seems to presume that getting "worked up" is the goal, when I don't think it is. I don't get "worked up," but I do see beauty in people struggling to survive in a place that doesn't want them there.* I might feel differently if these were giant vacation homes, but they're not, they're (whatever they call a single-wide in England).
Should we "do something" about coastal erosion? Generally no for the very obvious reasons, but to document the communities that are being lost? That's not really the same thing.
*N.B.: I also love pictures of shipwrecks and abandoned barns, so maybe I'm weird.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:19 AM on April 11, 2013 [3 favorites]
I don't really get this attitude. It seems to presume that getting "worked up" is the goal, when I don't think it is. I don't get "worked up," but I do see beauty in people struggling to survive in a place that doesn't want them there.* I might feel differently if these were giant vacation homes, but they're not, they're (whatever they call a single-wide in England).
Should we "do something" about coastal erosion? Generally no for the very obvious reasons, but to document the communities that are being lost? That's not really the same thing.
*N.B.: I also love pictures of shipwrecks and abandoned barns, so maybe I'm weird.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:19 AM on April 11, 2013 [3 favorites]
Dunwich, "Britain's Atlantis", a bit further down the North Sea coast.
posted by Segundus at 5:28 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Segundus at 5:28 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
The villages on the coast were founded a long time ago. Many of them were, at the time, very far from the coast, far enough that erosion wasn't even a consideration. I seems to me that building a new home along that coast today wouldn't be a good idea, but I don't think we can fault the town planners of some 500+ years ago for their lack of foresight.
posted by disclaimer at 5:37 AM on April 11, 2013 [5 favorites]
posted by disclaimer at 5:37 AM on April 11, 2013 [5 favorites]
The washed-out look of those images goes along with the theme quite literally.
Thanks for sharing.
posted by photojlisa at 6:01 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Thanks for sharing.
posted by photojlisa at 6:01 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Looks like we killed it.
posted by echo target at 6:41 AM on April 11, 2013
posted by echo target at 6:41 AM on April 11, 2013
The site, I mean. I get a "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded" error.
posted by echo target at 6:42 AM on April 11, 2013
posted by echo target at 6:42 AM on April 11, 2013
I don't think we can fault the town planners of some 500+ years ago for their lack of foresight.
St Mary's Church (of Dracula fame) in Whitby (which is about 45 miles north of these pictures), which has lost part of its graveyard to land slips in the last six months is about 900 years old. Given that it took 900 years for it to rain enough to lose part of the church yard, that's not doing too badly. (Apparently, the church itself is on rock and should be fine.) There's been an abbey where Whitby Abbey is (on a cliff above St Mary's) since the 7th century. You can easily stand there and not be thinking 'This is clearly going to fall into the sea',* but then you could stand in that churchyard 15 years ago and not think that either.
*There's actually a road below St Mary's, so I assume there's a road below the abbey. So it's not actually falling into the sea.
posted by hoyland at 6:48 AM on April 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
St Mary's Church (of Dracula fame) in Whitby (which is about 45 miles north of these pictures), which has lost part of its graveyard to land slips in the last six months is about 900 years old. Given that it took 900 years for it to rain enough to lose part of the church yard, that's not doing too badly. (Apparently, the church itself is on rock and should be fine.) There's been an abbey where Whitby Abbey is (on a cliff above St Mary's) since the 7th century. You can easily stand there and not be thinking 'This is clearly going to fall into the sea',* but then you could stand in that churchyard 15 years ago and not think that either.
*There's actually a road below St Mary's, so I assume there's a road below the abbey. So it's not actually falling into the sea.
posted by hoyland at 6:48 AM on April 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
I see their hosting is by QiQ. I'm guessing he's on their 10 GB per year plan. Seriously, 10 GB a year?
I didn't see much content on that site proper, aside from a few small photos and a little text, but there's vastly more on his blog here, which is still running since it's on Blogspot.
posted by crapmatic at 8:03 AM on April 11, 2013
I didn't see much content on that site proper, aside from a few small photos and a little text, but there's vastly more on his blog here, which is still running since it's on Blogspot.
posted by crapmatic at 8:03 AM on April 11, 2013
I went to Spurn Head a couple of times as a child and everything there is about the sea. The approach is by a long narrow spit on which the road here and there swerves to a new route where the sea has eaten away the old road. At the end is a small "island" head, or almost so, for in heavy seas the link road is shut or even washed away. There are three things on the head: coastal defences jumbled up and toppled down by the sea, half filled with sand; a lighthouse and a pilot station. The old coastal defences were most fun for us as children as we would poke about in them in the empty hope that we might find something interesting.
But maybe the most fun thing on Spurn Head were the two "seas". On the east there was the North Sea, dark blue and white and so cold. On the west there was the Humber, a wide river, dirt brown but calm and warm. We would wade into one body of water up to our bellies--warm first or cold, it was fun both ways--and then at once run out of the water and dash over the head to the other side and plunge into the water there. The water from the former not having had chance to dry off, the warm or cold of the latter came as a wonderful shock. Yet another shock on making it to the North Sea were the ships--maybe dozens of them at the busiest--that bided offshore from Spurn Head, waiting for a pilot to guide them into the Humber.
In the time when Ravenser Odd was a place Spurn Head wasn't. Or rather Spurn Head's forebear stood some way out into the North Sea and the current head was nothing more than a sandbank. Ravenser Odd stood on the old head, a charmed and cursed position. For ships could land easily there on the sea itself. Many would venture behind the head and seek a port in the estuary of the Humber. But ports in the river, such as Hedon with its little haven, couldn't match up to Ravenser. Until that is, the "switch" came in the 1300s.
The Holderness coast, Spurn Head, and the Humber are tightly linked. The sea wears away at Holderness to the north, spews some of the earth out at the head and bears some of the rest into the Humber. Yet at the same time the waves also wear away at Spurn Head, narrowing its already perilously narrow landlink. In time the sea bursts through the spit and then proceeds to wash the whole head away before rebuilding it a little further inward from the sea. It has done this many times at intervals of a few hundred years. Ravenser Odd was lost was lost in just such a switch in the mid 1300s. A whole bustling port pulled below the waves. You might think that Humber ports such as Hedon would have been immensely pleased. But the sea had something for them too.
Immediately behind the head in the Humber was a wide expanse of shallow sandbank where some of the Holderness coast came to rest. It was called Sunk Island--and still is today though it has been drained--and the port of Hedon sat at the far western end of it. Its haven was already small but sand and silt from the sea made it even smaller. Though the sea killed off some of its competition, the sea gave a hand in killing off Hedon too. One port it washed away, the other it washed up. The winner was the town of Hull, which had been a small port for some time called Wyke, but was refounded by the king in 1299. Barely a lifetime later its chance came when Ravenser Odd was destroyed and Hedon was irretrievably silted up. Hull stood further inland and away from where much of the sea's silt was dropped. Thanks to the Holderness coast, which wore away so compliantly, Hull would become one of the most important ports in England, and even for a time in the world.
And so back to the ships waiting offshore. They were waiting to go to Hull, some of them at least, though others to Immingham and Goole. There is no convenient Ravenser Odd they can wharf at, and so must come into the sandy Humber where the sea conspires to shift the navigable channel from one year to the next. No foreign captain can be trusted--or can trust themselves--with navigating it, so they wait until a Humber pilot comes aboard and steers them the last 20 or so miles. Dozens of them, big ships all. I'm sure as they bide til a pilot comes they look out at the crumbling Holderness coast and wonder.
posted by Jehan at 8:32 AM on April 11, 2013 [13 favorites]
But maybe the most fun thing on Spurn Head were the two "seas". On the east there was the North Sea, dark blue and white and so cold. On the west there was the Humber, a wide river, dirt brown but calm and warm. We would wade into one body of water up to our bellies--warm first or cold, it was fun both ways--and then at once run out of the water and dash over the head to the other side and plunge into the water there. The water from the former not having had chance to dry off, the warm or cold of the latter came as a wonderful shock. Yet another shock on making it to the North Sea were the ships--maybe dozens of them at the busiest--that bided offshore from Spurn Head, waiting for a pilot to guide them into the Humber.
In the time when Ravenser Odd was a place Spurn Head wasn't. Or rather Spurn Head's forebear stood some way out into the North Sea and the current head was nothing more than a sandbank. Ravenser Odd stood on the old head, a charmed and cursed position. For ships could land easily there on the sea itself. Many would venture behind the head and seek a port in the estuary of the Humber. But ports in the river, such as Hedon with its little haven, couldn't match up to Ravenser. Until that is, the "switch" came in the 1300s.
The Holderness coast, Spurn Head, and the Humber are tightly linked. The sea wears away at Holderness to the north, spews some of the earth out at the head and bears some of the rest into the Humber. Yet at the same time the waves also wear away at Spurn Head, narrowing its already perilously narrow landlink. In time the sea bursts through the spit and then proceeds to wash the whole head away before rebuilding it a little further inward from the sea. It has done this many times at intervals of a few hundred years. Ravenser Odd was lost was lost in just such a switch in the mid 1300s. A whole bustling port pulled below the waves. You might think that Humber ports such as Hedon would have been immensely pleased. But the sea had something for them too.
Immediately behind the head in the Humber was a wide expanse of shallow sandbank where some of the Holderness coast came to rest. It was called Sunk Island--and still is today though it has been drained--and the port of Hedon sat at the far western end of it. Its haven was already small but sand and silt from the sea made it even smaller. Though the sea killed off some of its competition, the sea gave a hand in killing off Hedon too. One port it washed away, the other it washed up. The winner was the town of Hull, which had been a small port for some time called Wyke, but was refounded by the king in 1299. Barely a lifetime later its chance came when Ravenser Odd was destroyed and Hedon was irretrievably silted up. Hull stood further inland and away from where much of the sea's silt was dropped. Thanks to the Holderness coast, which wore away so compliantly, Hull would become one of the most important ports in England, and even for a time in the world.
And so back to the ships waiting offshore. They were waiting to go to Hull, some of them at least, though others to Immingham and Goole. There is no convenient Ravenser Odd they can wharf at, and so must come into the sandy Humber where the sea conspires to shift the navigable channel from one year to the next. No foreign captain can be trusted--or can trust themselves--with navigating it, so they wait until a Humber pilot comes aboard and steers them the last 20 or so miles. Dozens of them, big ships all. I'm sure as they bide til a pilot comes they look out at the crumbling Holderness coast and wonder.
posted by Jehan at 8:32 AM on April 11, 2013 [13 favorites]
There's also some fascinating stuff around about the villages from 8,000 years ago that are now way out in the North Sea in "Doggerland" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland)
posted by mdoar at 10:38 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by mdoar at 10:38 AM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Should we "do something" about coastal erosion?
It's really only incidentally erosion. The land is actually sinking.
On the up side (so to speak), Scotland is rising.
As the Scots have always said it would.
posted by IndigoJones at 11:34 AM on April 11, 2013
It's really only incidentally erosion. The land is actually sinking.
On the up side (so to speak), Scotland is rising.
As the Scots have always said it would.
posted by IndigoJones at 11:34 AM on April 11, 2013
There's also some fascinating stuff around about the villages from 8,000 years ago that are now way out in the North Sea in "Doggerland" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland)
Previously.
posted by homunculus at 6:37 PM on April 11, 2013
Previously.
posted by homunculus at 6:37 PM on April 11, 2013
Meanwhile, in Egypt: Heracleion Photos: Lost Egyptian City Revealed After 1,200 Years Under Sea
posted by homunculus at 2:43 PM on April 29, 2013
posted by homunculus at 2:43 PM on April 29, 2013
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Still doesn't quell my desire to live on the English coast, though.
posted by Kitteh at 4:53 AM on April 11, 2013