In the Middle Ages great fortunes were made on the Humber without the accompaniment of dirt and unsightly surroundings. Sir William de la Pole was a merchant of remarkable enterprise, and the most notable of those who traded at Ravenserodd. It was probably owing to his great wealth that his son was made a knight-banneret, and his grandson became Earl of Suffolk. Another of the De la Poles was the first Mayor of Hull, and seems to have been no less opulent than his brother, who lent large sums of money to Edward III., and was in consequence appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer and also presented with the Lordship of Holderness.
The story of Ravenser, and the later town of Ravenserodd, is told in a number of early records, and from them we can see clearly what happened in this corner of Yorkshire. Owing to a natural confusion from the many different spellings of the two places, the fate of the prosperous port of Ravenserodd has been lost in a haze of misconception. And this might have continued if Mr. J. R. Boyle had not gone exhaustively into the matter, bringing together all the references to the Ravensers which have been discovered.
There seems little doubt that the first place called Ravenser was a Danish settlement just within the Spurn Point, the name being a compound of the raven of the Danish standard, and eyr or ore, meaning a narrow strip of land between two waters. In an early Icelandic saga the sailing of the defeated remnant of Harold Hardrada’s army from Ravenser, after the defeat of the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge, is mentioned in the lines:
‘The King the swift ships with the flood
Set out, with the autumn approaching,
And sailed from the port, called
Hrafnseyrr (the raven tongue of land).’
From this event of 1066 Ravenser must have remained a hamlet of small consequence, for it is not heard of again for nearly two centuries, and then only in connexion with the new Ravenser which had grown on a spit of land gradually thrown up by the tide within the spoon-shaped ridge of Spurn Head. On this new ground a vessel was wrecked some time in the early part of the thirteenth century, and a certain man—the earliest recorded Peggotty—converted it into a house, and even made it a tavern, where he sold food and drink to mariners. Then three or four houses were built near the adapted hull, and following this a small port was created, its development being fostered by William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarl, the lord of the manor, with such success that, by the year 1274, the place had grown to be of some importance, and a serious trade rival to Grimsby on the Lincolnshire coast. To distinguish the two Ravensers the new place, which was almost on an island, being only connected with the mainland by a bank composed of large yellow boulders and sand, was called Ravenser Odd, and in the Chronicles of Meaux Abbey and other records the name is generally written Ravenserodd. The original place was about a mile away, and no longer on the shore, and it is distinguished from the prosperous port as Ald Ravenser. Owing, however, to its insignificance in comparison to Ravenserodd, the busy port, it is often merely referred to as Ravenser, spelt with many variations.
The extraordinarily rapid rise of Ravenserodd seems to have been due to a remarkable keenness for business on the part of its citizens, amounting, in the opinion of the Grimsby traders, to sharp practice. For, being just within Spurn Head, the men of Ravenserodd would go out to incoming vessels bound for Grimsby, and induce them to sell their cargoes in Ravenserodd by all sorts of specious arguments, misquoting the prices paid in the rival town. If their arguments failed, they would force the ships to enter their harbour and trade with them, whether they liked it or not. All this came out in the hearing of an action brought by the town of Grimsby against Ravenserodd. Although the plaintiffs seem to have made a very good case, the decision of the Court was given in favour of the defendants, as it had not been shown that any of their proceedings had broken the King’s peace.
Between 1310 and 1340 there are many references to the ships and armed men Ravenserodd was required to furnish for the wars in Scotland, Flanders, and elsewhere. The period of the town’s greatest prosperity was no doubt from a few years before 1298, the year when a royal charter was granted making it a free borough, and about 1340.
It is extremely interesting that one of the earliest names connected with the new port is Peter-atte-see. In the Middle Ages, just such a distinction is what we would expect to be added to the baptismal name of a man who had taken up his abode on a lonely patch of land produced by the action of the sea. It is therefore more than probable that this Peter was either the founder or the son of the founder of Ravenserodd. Later generations altered the name to De la Mare, and it was Martin de la Mare who at first opposed, but afterwards assisted, Edward IV. when he landed at Ravenser Spurn, 1471.
But long before that historic event, earlier even than Henry IV.’s landing on the same spot in 1399, the sea had reclaimed its own. In a short time not only Ravenserodd, but also Ald Ravenser and Sunthorp had been washed away.
The story of this disaster, which appears to have happened between 1340 and 1350, is told by the monkish compiler of the Chronicles of Meaux. Translated from the original Latin the account is headed: