A little bit of local history

Finally went to see Ravenser cross which now stands hidden away in the grounds of Holyrood House, Hedon.

This ancient medieval cross is believed to have been originally erected in 1399 in one of the now-lost towns of Ravenspurn or Ravenser at the Spurn peninsula.


Its purpose could have been to commemorate the landing of Henry Bolingbroke on the Holderness coast, and the start of his millitary campaign which led to him being crowned King Henry IV in October 1399.

" Perched on a sandbank on the mouth of the River Humber, Ravenser Odd (or Ravensrodd) was Medieval Yorkshire’s own wretched hive of scum and villainy where merchants of flexible morals and ruthless ingenuity acted as little more than pirates. Appropriately enough, it was born with the Vikings.

First noted in the 7th century under the evocative name Hrafn’s Eyr (Old Norse for “raven’s tongue” from where we get Ravenser), the wider headland of Spurn Point was long a staging point for Norse fleets coming and going from Northern England in the Viking Age, ending, symbolically with the departure of Harold Hardrada’s defeated army from this same stretch of blasted coastline in 1066.

Before the stones of Ravenser Odd hit dirt, a smaller Danish community of Ravenser (known, confusingly, as Ravenser Old or Ravenser Alt ) was recorded around the same headland, but nothing compared to the town that sprung up in the 1230s from the scanty foundations of a few fishermen’s huts on a recently surfaced bank of sand and pebbles. A strange and exposed place – possibly a tidal island linked to the mainland by a causeway – it brings to mind lopsided shacks and uneven boards, a biting wind, the mocking bray of gulls and a constant, inescapable damp."

Always wondered way this area is known as the “Bad Lands”

3 Likes