Spurn Head

Setting in the Flesh

The heritage coast consists of a long, curving hook of shingle and sand arcing into the mouth of the Humber River. The coast is a stopover point for thousands of migrating birds in the spring and autumn, and a special observatory has been set up to allow bird-lovers to monitor their feathered friends. The area has been recognised as a Nature Reserve by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, and visitors can expect to see seals and butterfly species in addition to the birds. Despite its pleasant appearance, Spurn Head has a history as a treacherous place for shipping; indeed the lifeboat station there is the only one in Britain manned by a permanent crew.

Setting in the Shadow

In the Shadow Spurn Head is empty, bare and desolate. Not a Barren, nor a Shoal, but a place where there are few spirits – gull spirits fly high above the waters, and a few sea spirits or mermaids frolic in the cold water – but they are few and far between.

Lighthouses have been located on Spurn for over five hundred years. The first reference to a lighthouse on Spurn dates back to 1427, when a hermit, William Reedbarrow, was granted dues from passing ships to complete a lighthouse which he had begun to build there, though little further is known about it. In the late seventeenth century a high and a low light were erected on what was then the tip of the spit, probably about two miles north of the present tip. The low light had to be rebuilt several times, but the high light lasted until the late eighteenth century, when John Smeaton, the celebrated engineer who had built the Eddystone lighthouse in 1759, designed and built two new lighthouses, under the direction of the Hull and London Trinity Houses. In 1852 a new low lighthouse was built on the Humber foreshore, and in 1895, because there was evidence that the foundations of Smeaton’s lighthouse were giving way, the present lighthouse was erected. The low lighthouse then became unnecessary because lights shone out at several levels from the new one, and it became a store for explosives, and later was topped by a water storage tank. The high lighthouse shone out over Spurn (apart from during war-time) for 90 years, until in 1985 modern technology made it redundant.

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