Sunk Island

The trip to Sunk Island, near Withernsea in East Yorkshire took us down winding roads so the approach to Sunk Island being a straight road lined by trees resembling a French avenue took us by surprise.

Sunk Island is neither sunken or an island but was formed by sand bars from the Humber Estuary in the 1500s and now is 8000 acres of farmland and marshland. The land is owned by the Crown estate and comprises the red brick Holy Trinity Church with graveyard, now a Heritage centre open to the public just three days a year as the insurance would be too high for more openings, a phone box and the Old School House now B and B selling wild garlic paste and chutneys. It is also the part of the coast-to-coast Way of the Roses Cycling route.

A resident told us that after a war, perhaps the Crimean, Prince Albert arranged for senior members of the military to be sent here and thus the V&A brand can be seen on some buildings designed by Samuel Sanders Teulon, a renown architect of the Gothic Revival style, to which he gave his own idiosyncratic interpretation, characterised by the use polychromatic brickwork. The military personnel did not stay long and now some of the 220 residents are farmers. A radar station was sited there during WW2.

A walk along Stone Creek gives views to Hull and large tankers can be seen on the Humber estuary, as well as parts of boats which have been washed up there. We saw someone collecting something in large bags which turned out to be driftwood.

The marshland and fields are a haven for wildlife with a multitude of resident and visiting birds and seals have been spotted.

It is fascinating to see land reclaimed from the sea when, not so far away up the coast, serious erosion is taking place.