Migrants Way. Stage 11. Atwick to Skipsea

A mild day, the wind lighter than in previous days, with a threat of showers. I timed the walk so that I'd be at Withow Gap at low tide. I park at the end of Church Lane at Atwick.

The East Coast Museum

You might struggle to find the East Coast Museum. The reason is that the museum was actually in a private cottage at Atwick - I believe the one in the photo above - and no longer exists. Mr William Morfitt, a grocer from Goole, took early retirement and moved to Atwick with his family in 1890, where he lived until his death in 1923. He developed an interest in fossils and archeology and prospected and collected on the beaches, cliffs and fields around their home, helped by his sons, Aaron and Beaumont. Their cottage's cabinet of curiosities attracted much local attention. The Morfitts corresponded with curators and donated their findings to various museums, including the museums at Hull, although later they fell out with the curator Mr Thomas Sheppard. Amongst their findings are a red deer skeleton they excavated from a peat exposure north of Hornsea, bone spear points now at the British Museum (which caused much controversy), an iron age chariot at Hornsea, and a Roman gold coin. The family collection ended at the Yorkshire Museum in York.

It didn't take me long to find the unusual headstone of the Morrit's at the Atwick's St Lorenz churchyard, it's right by the entrance gate. Very fittingly, it is a large glacial erratic. Mr Morrit senior and his son Beaumont are buried here: 'Founders of the East Coast (Atwick) and Hornsea Museums' reads on the plaque.
 Most of the walk today was likely to be a regular walk for the Morrits, as they walked along the lanes and cliffs towards Withow Gap, one of the closest peat exposures to their cottage. I walk along Cliff Road and then turn left onto Long Lane, a straight lane parallel to the coast.

Pond by Cliff Road. 

Marmalade hoverflies, a common insect migrant.

View North from Cliff Road.

 I could see a the rainclouds over Flamborough. I was mostly spared today, with just a few drops as the clouds passed by. The cloud formations and the low tide made for dramatic landscapes.

Bridlington Bay.

Pill Box by Long Lane.

Linnets, Skylarks, Meadow Pipits and Swallows flying over the wheat and barley fields at Long Lane. A Small Tortoiseshell, two Small Whites and a Ringlet flutter by.

Long Lane.

The lane ascends onto Moor Hill. I'm surprised to see a trig point there (OSBM 10637), as I thought it would have gone. On close inspection, it turns that it has been moved back to avoid it falling down the cliff.

Moved trig point

I get to the first caravan park, Low Skirlington, and I follow the cliff top path. I hear Oystercatchers. One after another, sometimes in pairs, thirteen Oystercatchers fly over from the fields to the beach, piping noisily.

Oystercatchers.

 At the end of the caravan park the access is blocked to the clifftop onto the next caravan park, Far Grange Park (apparently because of COVID-19?). This forces me to take a detour across and around it. I can rejoin the clifftop path by the golf course, and it's actually one of the prettiest stretches, with Bridlington Bay and the white cliffs of Flamborough stretching in the distance.

Male Linnet. Surprised that the ash branches are still in bud.

Meadow Brown butterfly and 5 spot burnet.

Meadow Pipit.

After the golf course, it's only a short walk, descending to Withow Gap.

Grassland on the cliffs near Withow Gap.

The dry basin of Skipsea Withow Mere, with a drain in the middle.

Withow Gap.

Ancient Meres
Many small water bodies and larger 'meres' formed at the end of the last Glacial period and lasted for much of the Holocene in Holderness. Evidence for former meres exist at Easington, Withernsea (at Valley Gardens), Roos, Barmston and Skipsea. In fact, the villages ending in 'sea' might indicate the former existence of meres. The only surviving of these meres is Hornsea Mere. Coastal erosion exposes the peaty mere deposits on the coastal cliffs, or on the beach when the sand is removed by tides. These deposits hold a wonderful treasure: a detailed environmental record of times past. The pollen shed by surrounding trees and aquatic plants and other organic remains, including timber, present during their formation and ulterior infilling can not only identified to species level, but also dated using carbon-14. The study of sediments of these ancient meres provides a window into environmental changes. The sediment profiles and pollen records from cores of several meres in the area has been analysed to reconstruct the vegetation changes and the impact of temperature changes, human colonisation and farming during the late glacial and the Holocene, including Withow Gap, and local kettle holes (Gilderson Marr, Roos Bog, Sproatley Bog and Skipsea Bail Mere) we have a detailed record of how the Holderness forest formed.

Withow Gap: the Holocene Holderness Forest

The reason I wanted to be at Withow Gap at low tide, is that I wanted to photograph the whole exposure (above). Looking at it today, it is hard to picture Holderness covered in thick forest, with extensive carrs, meres and other wetlands on the landscape, the coast very far off from where it is today, in the early Holocene, about 10,000 years ago, still connected to northern Europe through Doggerland. At Withow Gap, a drain cuts the low cliffs, providing easy access to the beach. From the beach, a dark, elongated shape of peat deposits extends both sides of the gap (above). Underneath there are grey silts. This is a nationally important geological site where the deposits of an ancient mere are exposed (Withow Mere SSSI). The exposure is about 50 m long and the mere deposits are over 7 m deep, accumulated from the end of the last Ice Age to the Holocene. When the climate started to warm up after the ice age, plant species colonised the UK from warmer areas in the south (what is known as 'Glacial Refugia'). Trees, flowers and bushes colonised at different speeds, depending on their particular tolerance to cold and their dispersal ability.

The northern end of the Withow Gap exposure showing the glacial till at the bottom, the grey silts and the dark peat below the soil.

 The first signs of warming were followed by sparse woods of Birch and Scots Pine. Hazel, alder, elm, and oak followed around 9,000 years ago, the tree canopies closing into dense woodland. Alder started growing in the lower lying areas. By 5000 years ago glacial till soils had a woodland cover of lime, oak, hazel and elm. The wood found in the Withow Mere peat are identifiable as alder, oak, elm, birch, and hazel. 

 The woods and wetlands of Holocene Holderness held populations of wild cattle (aurochs), red deer (with fossils found at Withow Gap, Hornsea), roe deer, elk, wild boar, and beaver, amongst others. One of the best sites providing faunal evidence for this period is Star Carr, a few miles inland from Filey. It is also likely that Holocene Holderness was rich in birds. Star Carr has yielded fossils of a range of waterfowl, some still found today (Great Crested Grebe, Red-breasted Merganser, Red-throated Diver), others that became extinct in the UK like Common Crane, now being reintroduced.

Branches and brushwood in the peaty deposits, remains of a Beaver Dam on the north side of Withow Gap.

Coppicing beavers

What Thomas Sheppard, curator of Hull Museums, initially identified as woodwork and was later assigned to Early Neolithic coppicing, turned up closer inspection to be logs cut by beavers - natural carr managers. Sheppard's description, on hindsight, is quite clearly of a beaver dam, "the end of a stake, which had certainly been pointed artificially, though in a very rude manner, [...] was at an angle of 45", with the point downwards, beneath a dense mass of twigs and 'brushwood' a foot in thickness, containing hazel nuts and acorns.” 

Fossil beaver dam? Criss-crossing thick branches and tree trunks visible in the peat. Beaver hair was recently found at the site.

The largest trunk with my pen for scale. The state of conservation of wood that could be 10,000 years old is amazing.

After lunch at the exposure I walk on the beach to the end of the walk proper, Cliff Road at Skipsea. No easy access to the road, but the locals facilitate scrambling down to the cliff with a handy rope.

 I make my way back on the beach. A local had assured me there were spots near Atwick where you could climb back to the clifftop and I did find one, near a collapsed pillbox that took me to near Long Lane.

Another socially isolated walk today.

Featured bird: Oystercatcher

Oystercatchers are distinctive waders that are not only obvious for their large size and distinctive plumage, but they are noisy, with loud peeping contact calls. It is Amber listed due to recent breeding and wintering population declines, particularly since 2005. It is vulnerable in Europe and Near Threatened in the IUCN list. Oystercatchers might be sensitive to shellfish harvesting (particularly mussels and cockles), and predation. Their numbers increase in winter with the arrival of migrants from Scandinavia. As breeding birds, there have been losses in the Scottish moorlands, but increases in England. In East Yorkshire, they have increased as breeding birds. The lack of saltmarsh or even patches of shingle in the soft cliffs of the Holderness coast appears not to be a problem if there is nesting habitat nearby, and Oystercatchers have proven to be resourceful, even nesting on rooftops, as, unlike other waders, they bring food to their chicks. I wonder if today's Oystercatchers will have chicks waiting for them in the fields.

Walk information
13 km. Start: at Atwick Church Road, TA184507. Finish at Skipsea Cliff Road. Facilities: Mr Moos, car park, cafe and ice cream, toilets. Beach accesses: ramp at Far Grange Park caravan site (unclear access as private caravan park), Withow Gap accessible from Mr Moos.

More information
Mr. William Morfitt. Nature 113, 57 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113057b0

Information on Withow Gap:

David Craven's blog post on Withow Gap:

Coles, B. J. Doggerland: a Speculative Survey. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64, 45–81 (1998)

Tweddle, J. C. A high resolution palynological study of the Holocene vegetational development of central Holderness, eastern Yorkshire, with particular emphasis on the detection of prehistoric human activity. (University of Sheffield, 2000).

Clark, Grahame 1954. Excavations at Star Carr: An Early Mesolithic Site at Seamer Near Scarborough, Yorkshire. CUP Archive, 1954 - Scarborough (England). 200 pp.

A report on Withow Gap by Tracy Masters