A market town with two MPs in Parliament and more trade than Hull now lies under the Humber, and nobody has found the exact spot yet.
Stand at Spurn Point on a clear day, and you look out at open water where a working English town once stood. Spurn itself, the narrow curl of sand and shingle at the mouth of the Humber, draws walkers and birdwatchers who know its shifting spit well. Few of them know that a few hundred metres offshore lies the site of Ravenser Odd, a chartered medieval borough with its own MPs, its own gaol, and a market that once handled more shipping than Hull.
The town existed for barely a century. Storms took it apart piece by piece through the 1350s, then a single catastrophic flood in January 1362 finished the job. Records of Ravenser Odd survive in fuller detail than the town itself. Everything else is underwater, and a university research team is still trying to work out exactly where.
Location: Spurn Point, East Riding of Yorkshire, at the mouth of the Humber estuary
Best for: coastal history, birdwatching, a walk with a genuine unsolved mystery attached
Getting there: drive via the B1445 to Kilnsea, or catch the Spurn Explorer bus (route 71) from Hull Interchange on weekends and bank holidays
Open: Spurn National Nature Reserve is open at all times; the Discovery Centre keeps set hours, check before you travel
Admission: free to the reserve; £5 per car for all-day parking if you’re not a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust member or local resident
The Story of Ravenser Odd
Ravenser Odd began as reclaimed land at the mouth of the Humber, built up on a sandbank by the Count of Aumale in the mid-13th century. By 1 April 1299, the town had grown enough that Edward I granted it a borough charter, the same day Kingston upon Hull received its own charter a few miles upstream. For a town that started from nothing on a sandbank, that timing tells you how fast it grew.
The charter gave Ravenser Odd its own court, its own gaol, and exemption from certain taxes for its merchants. The town returned two members to the 1295 Model Parliament and collected dues from more than a hundred merchant ships a year. The National Archives holds records describing a functioning port with wharves and warehouses, one that at times outtraded Hull during the 13th century.
The sea that built Ravenser Odd took it apart just as fast. An inquisition in 1346 found that flood damage had already driven away two-thirds of the town’s population. Storms through the 1350s stripped away more of the sandbank each winter. Then on 15 and 16 January 1362, the Grote Mandrenke, also called St Marcellus’s flood, tore across the North Sea coast of England, the Netherlands, northern Germany and Denmark, killing an estimated 25,000 people. Whatever remained of Ravenser Odd went under with it.
By the time the town vanished, its own chroniclers had already noticed the irony. A monk at nearby Meaux Abbey recorded the port’s rise and fall in the abbey’s chronicle, one of the few surviving accounts written by someone who could have watched it happen from dry land. The National Archives now runs an exhibition on the town’s history, Hull / Ravenser Odd: Twin Cities, Sunken Pasts, co-curated by historian Dr Kathryn Maude, built around exactly that pairing: two ports chartered on the same day, one still trading eight centuries later, the other gone before its first century was out.
What You See When You Visit
There is nothing to see of Ravenser Odd itself. That is the point. Walk out along Spurn Point today, and you’re standing on a landscape shaped by the same coastal processes that swallowed the town: sand and shingle that the Humber and the North Sea are still moving, adding to some parts of the spit and stripping others away.
What you do see is Spurn as it stands now: a three-and-a-half-mile tongue of land with the Humber on one side and the North Sea on the other, narrow enough in places that you can see both at once. The wind rarely drops out here, and on a rough day you can hear the two different waters, the Humber’s flatter chop on one side and the open sea breaking harder on the other, from the same spot on the path. Seals haul out on the sandbanks near the point for most of the year. In spring and autumn, the reserve becomes one of the country’s best-known bird migration stopover points, with rarities turning up often enough that birdwatchers travel from well outside Yorkshire to check the log.
Since 2021, sedimentologist Professor Dan Parsons, formerly of the University of Hull, has led a research team running sonar surveys of the seabed off the point, searching for the town’s foundations, harbour wall and sea defences. Early surveys found rock and stonework closer to shore than expected, but as of the most recent reporting, no one had confirmed the exact site of Ravenser Odd. It’s an active search, not a solved one.
Why It Matters
Britain’s coastline has taken back entire settlements before. Secret Britain has covered other places the sea reclaimed, Lincolnshire’s lost villages among them, and the Norfolk coast’s drowned settlements further south. Yorkshire has its own inland version too, at Wharram Percy, a village whose people gradually left over generations rather than being lost in a single storm.
Ravenser Odd is different from all of them. It wasn’t a fishing hamlet or a farming village. It was a chartered borough that sent representatives to Parliament and briefly outtraded one of England’s most important ports, and then it disappeared so completely that for centuries afterwards nobody knew exactly where it had stood. That combination, real civic weight and total physical loss, is rare. Most places that make it into Parliamentary records leave some trace on the ground. Ravenser Odd left none. Everything historians know about the town comes from documents: charters, court rolls, one account in the chronicle of nearby Meaux Abbey. The place itself is gone.
When to Go
Spurn Point works as a day out in any season, though each brings something different. Spring and autumn are peak migration season for birdwatchers, and the Discovery Centre gets busy with organised walks and events. Winter gives you the clearest sense of how exposed the spit is, with the wind and the Humber often doing exactly what they’ve done to this coastline for centuries. Summer is easiest for a straightforward walk with children, with longer daylight and calmer conditions underfoot.
Check tide times before you go. Parts of the reserve, including the route out to the point itself, can flood at high tide, and storm damage has previously closed the causeway. The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust website posts current access conditions, worth checking on the morning of your visit rather than relying on an old forecast.
Getting There
By car, follow the A1033 from Hull towards Patrington, then the B1445 towards Easington and Kilnsea. Turn right at the T-junction in Easington and continue to Kilnsea, then follow signs to the Spurn Discovery Centre at Spurn Road, Kilnsea, Hull HU12 0UH.
Without a car, the Spurn Explorer bus (route 71) runs from Hull Interchange to Kilnsea and Easington only on weekends and bank holidays; it doesn’t operate midweek, so plan around that if public transport is your only option. Hull is the nearest railway station with regular services; from there, the Spurn Explorer or a taxi covers the final stretch.
Where to Eat and Drink Nearby
The Crown and Anchor in Kilnsea sits a short walk from the Discovery Centre and serves lunch and evening meals with views over the Humber estuary, a natural stop before or after walking the point.
Where to Stay
Westmere Farm, Kilnsea. Bed-and-breakfast accommodation a short drive from the reserve, useful if you want an early start at the point before the day’s visitors arrive.
Spurn Bird Observatory, Kilnsea. Hostel-style accommodation aimed squarely at birdwatchers and walkers who want to be on site at first light.
Worth Knowing
The name Ravenser comes from the Old Norse for “Raven’s Ear,” a reference to the shape of the sandbank on which the town was built.
An inquisition in 1346, sixteen years before the town’s final destruction, already recorded that two-thirds of its population had been lost to flood damage. Ravenser Odd’s ending was a slow one long before it was a sudden one.
The National Archives is hosting an exhibition on the town’s history, co-curated with an academic historian, built entirely from surviving charters and court records rather than from physical artefacts.
Practical Tips
Check the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust website for current tide times and access conditions before you travel; parts of the route can flood at high tide.
Wear proper footwear. The spit is sand and shingle underfoot, not a paved path, and conditions change with the weather.
Bring binoculars if birdwatching interests you at all; Spurn’s reputation among birders is well earned.
Plan your visit around the Spurn Explorer bus times if you’re relying on public transport; it only runs at weekends and bank holidays.
For walking routes around the reserve, the AllTrails app has several logged paths covering Spurn Point and the surrounding coast.
Allow at least half a day if you want to walk out to the point itself and back; it’s further than it looks from the Discovery Centre.
There’s no shelter along most of the route out to the point, so pack for wind and rain even on a forecast that looks clear from Hull; the weather at the tip of the spit runs its own conditions independent of the mainland a few miles behind you.
Reader Q&A
Can you actually see any ruins of Ravenser Odd? No. Nothing of the town survives above the waterline. Everything that’s known comes from documents, charters, court records and one monastic chronicle, rather than from anything you can walk around.
Is Ravenser Odd the same as Ravenspurn? No, though the two are often confused. Ravenspurn was a separate, smaller settlement nearby, also lost to coastal erosion. Ravenser Odd was the larger of the two, a chartered borough with its own MPs and market.
Has the site of Ravenser Odd been found? Not confirmed, as of the most recent reporting. A university-led sonar survey has been searching the seabed off Spurn Point since 2021 and has found rock and stonework closer to shore than expected, but nobody has yet pinpointed the town’s foundations with certainty.
Is Spurn Point free to visit? Yes, the nature reserve itself is free and open at all times. Non-members pay £5 for all-day parking; Yorkshire Wildlife Trust members and local residents park free.
Spurn Point still moves with every tide, the same process that built Ravenser Odd and then erased it, and it belongs among the quieter chapters of Yorkshire’s hidden history that most visitors walk straight past.
