Sunk Island WW I Battery Map reference TA 24903 17560

The first visit to this site on Friday 22 June 2018 saw myself and Gill (The Navigator) and on other dates in 2018 (Jan Perrin) and in 2019 , Jayne and Jo Griffin, heading off to Sunk Island again, this time to find or explore further the WW I gun battery. Looking through the blog I noticed I never reported on our first foray to this area of reclaimed land which seems to generate its own peculiar ambience.

Sunk Island (now a population of about 228) started as a sand/mud bank on the north side of the Humber estuary in the 16th century. Colonel Anthony Gylby, then attached as a Lieutenant to the Hull Fort, first leased a developing sand bank from the Crown in 1668 and started to protect it. He then made further banks and used the land for grazing. By the reign of Charles 1st the reclaimed land was about 7 acres (3 hectares). Over the next 200 years the Gylby family extended the land. Though it was still not connected to the mainland the channels and ponds had started to fill in but as the island approached to what might be termed 'mainland Holderness' it caused claims on it to be made by the mainland farmers. Captain Lovelace Gylby lost the island in a card game though his wife held onto it for another 45 years dying in 1790 but as she had no children she left the island to a bewilderingly large number of beneficiaries. In 1831 the islands area was 11,305 acres and in this year it became a Parish with its own church, St Mary's, designed by Ewan Christian. This is no longer a church but an exhibition centre and is Grade II listed. It has a metal plate benchmark on the left side of the front entrance. Sunk Island remains Crown Property and its past connections to the Sovereign can be seen in the Queen Victoria and Prince Albert relief's on some houses built by Samuel Tenton between 1855 and 1857.

The relief on a house showing the connection of the land to the Crown. (Photo Chris Coulson)

Directions to Sunk Island Battery: Leaving the east side of Hull via Hedon Road you ease right on the A1030 instead of going into Hedon. This road, initially with high bushes winds you through flat countryside, created by the penultimate ice age 18,000 years ago, takes you to Thorngumbald, Keyingham and Ottringham. At Ottringham there are two roads that run south towards Sunk Island but both join a long straight road south to a cross roads (TA26774 18986) with a church and red telephone box, not white. It's red and not white as it is outside the 01482 dialling code! Follow the sign to Stone Creek on a road running east. At Stone Creek (TA 23710 18979) you can park you car easily but don't obstruct other vehicles.

Location of Sunk Island Battery. (Courtesy Google Earth)

Here I must acknowledge the help of Claire of Coast Guard Cottages who directed us to the footpath we needed to get to the Sunk Island Battery. Besides this she was a fund of information on the area including the 'Mud Admiral' who we had heard of but never had details of.

Many of the roads through this area are straight as they were the original embankments built to drain sections of the area behind them. You can drive to within a 20 min walk to the battery or you can walk along the Humber but this considerably further. To find the 'long' path to the Sunk Island Battery park your vehicle near the coast guard cottages walk west and round the end of the locked gate and up a short rise (TA 23670 18904) from where you can see Stone Creek, with plenty of mud but no stones! The way is barred to the Stone Creek Sailing Club by a locked gate but to the left there is a narrow unassuming and slightly overgrown path. Follow this and over a stile. To your left is a dyke with a reasonably steep south side though you would be unlucky to tumble into it. A 'bridge parapet' on your right has some interesting carvings in it. One of a sailing vessel and the other of what could be a north south line within a circle. The line in the circle is a few degrees off north/south but there is a considerable amount of metal work near by which might have affected my compass but also there is evidence that the stones and brick work have been reset at some time.

Carving of a sailing boat on the bridge parapet (Photo Chris Coulson)

An interesting thing about this carving is that although the boat has a long bow-sprit it seems to be Bermudan rigged whereas the local boats that plied these waters were gaff rigged. However, closer examination may indeed suggest it is gaff rigged which would be in keeping with the earlier working boats. It also seems to carry more than one jib. Ahead of the vessel to its port side is what could be a mooring buoy and to the stern a navigation one.

From this point the path follows the Humber south east along the top of a dyke. It's an obvious track but because of the grass not necessarily easy walking. To the left you pass Stone Creek Battery, a WW II construction. This is on private land and can't be accessed by the general public. Sunk Island Battery (WW I) is a little over 1 mile away but I must admit seems further.

The path follows the

dyke top

(Both photos Chris Coulson)

The track turns south east and skirts to the south of the wood in the distance but at this point watch for a short descending track away from the Humber. It has a locked metal gate. Follow this short track down and round the end of the gate and about 50 yards further on the battery is on the right amongst the trees. Allow time for this walk and on a warm day take some water.

Another and quicker way to the battery is on a foot path starting at a point about 100 m south of Humberdale Farm (TA258177). Just before the private road to South Farm there is a gate on the right with a small gate next to it. Beyond this a track runs west and then south into the woods where the battery is. The walk takes about 20/30 mins. This is a much easier and quicker walk than the path from Stone Creek.

The track from near Humberdale Farm. The battery is in the trees in the distance. (Photo Chris Coulson)

Over the millennia rivers and estuaries have given invaders a way into Britain. After all if you can get inland you have a greater land area to disperse your troops in and the indigenous peoples can be attacked from more than one direction rather than just that of the coast. Major towns were also frequently on rivers and estuaries.

The Romans used the Humber and the Roman town Peturaria, where Brough in East Yorkshire is now, was the south end of the Roman road to Newcastle. In the 11th century, the Ouse which feeds into the Humber Estuary, was navigable up to York and the Vikings used it in their invasion. Later Harold Hardrada from Norway invaded Britain with 300 ships and fought Harold Godwinson, King of England, at Stanford Bridge, entering via the Humber estuary. It is said the German Luftwaffe trained young bomber pilots by following the Humber, an easily identifiable estuary, up to Hull. Of course Hull being an important port attracted the Luftwaffe's bombers anyway regardless of training needs.

Zeppelins.

Prior to WW I some concern for 'lighter than air machines' developed as evidenced by cartoons in the Punch magazine of 1909. The first one shows a serpent bemoaning that airships (Zeppelins) will cause a fall in the trade of people looking for him. The second indicates a famous music hall person being afraid of 'foreign' flying machines which includes airships (Zeppelins). .

From Punch magazine 1909 (Chris Coulson collection)

In the first World War (1914-18) the real possibility existed in the populations mind of death raining down from Zeppelins in the sky. These rigid hydrogen filled cigar like objects could travel at about 85 mph and were invented by the German Ferdinand Von Zeppelin for peace time travel. However, they were soon taken over by both the British and German military for their own purposes. Airships did have the disadvantage of being easily affected by the wind, an aspect which altered their position and thus where their bombs fell and also the fact they were filled with flammable hydrogen gas had not gone unnoticed!

British RANS Airship Imbros WW I (Photo Lft FCoulson)

Graf Zeppelin. German pre WW I commercial air ship

(Wiki Commons)

It was this form of warfare that worried the British public who considered aerial bombing quite uncivilised in that ordinary people could be killed rather than just soldiers.. This public fear was heightened by the fact that most Zeppelin raids happened at night when these fairly silent machines would cruise in at about 3,000 feet to drop their assorted bombs (explosive and incendiary) totalling up to about 2 tons and disappear again into the night.

Hull's first raid by a Zeppelin was on the night of Sunday the 6/7th June 1915 and was rather by error when, because of winds, it couldn't make its target of London and ended up over Hull. The damage, though not as great as the bigger bombs of the second world, never the less showed that aerial bombing could work as a weapon of war and to the public this was a very frightening. At the time there were no air raid shelters and the populace variably crawled under tables or into under stair cupboards for protection. Both my parents remember doing this. Children were told to keep quite in case they 'attracted' a bomb and some households went as far as stopping clocks ticking for the same reason. It is very doubtful that the zeppelins aircrew could hear such small noises from 3000 feet and above the noise of their engines.

The fact that the raids usually occurred at night was very debilitating, though more so in WWII. Certainly Hulls population was very frightened and generally it was thought that dropping bombs was not an acceptable way to conduct a war. One of the problems was that because of the zeppelins rudimentary navigation they frequently could not hold their course and added to this the bomb aiming was poor. Not withstanding this it was felt by the population that the targets they aimed at was deliberately civilian rather than military. Warnings of an impending raid were made via the Stentorian Buzzer, a large steam driven whistle also known as 'Big Lizzy'.

Thomas Sheppard, Hull Museum Curator, with Blundell's Steam Whistle, ('Big Lizzie') used as an alert for Zeppelin raids duringWW1 (from Face Book 'Hull. The Good Old Days')

Hull's first Zeppelin raid by Luftschiff No. 9 killed 24 people and injured a further 40. Sixty bombs were dropped from about 3000 ft of which 13 were high explosives and 47 were incendiary. The raid lasted 30 minutes and the airship found Hull by following the railway line from Bridlington! All this brought to mind of the more literate the terrifying and recently written novel of 1897 by H G Wells, 'War of the Worlds' and the attack alerted people as to really how undefended we were against this new form of warfare! The only guns brought to bear on Zeppelin No 9 were those on HMS Adventure which was being repaired at Earle's shipyard in Hull. All in all Hull was bombed 12 times by Zeppelins.

It is quite obvious from WW1 defence maps defences were soon dotted round the Humber. These were: Sunk Island Battery; Spurn Head Defences; Bull Sand Fort; Halle Sand Fort; Starllingborough Battery and Killingholme Battery. In some areas these had been preceeded by defences and of course superseded by others in WWII. Because the building of Bull Sand Fort and Haile Sand Fort were technically difficult they took some time and indeed were only finished after the war ended!

The batteries and forts were meant to protect Hull from enemy warships as well as the Zeppelin attacks. The former they probably did, the latter they didn't as Hull was never attacked by enemy warships! However, it's notable that on one occasion the Sunk Island Battery fired 9,000 shells at a Zeppelin without hitting it. This certainly wasn't due to the evasive action of the airship but to the vagaries of antiaircraft fire at the time. Interested people may wish to refer to the work of Hull born and educated Prof E A Milne (mathematician and astrophysicist and my cousin once removed) as his work during WWI and WWII on antiaircraft gunnery put it on a much sounder, scientific and accurate basis. His work is outlined in the book 'Beating the Odds' by Meg Weston Smith. Imperial College Press 2013). Stone Creek Battery to the west of the Sunk Island Battery was constructed in WWII and lies on private land so is out of bounds to the public. From the track along the Humber's side it looked to us less mysterious than we had imagined though the remains still obviously representing functional military buildings!

The Sunk Island Battery was actually redesigned from the proposed design in 1911 which was a hexagonal fortification surrounded by a ditch. At the outbreak of WW I the design was changed to two towers each surmounted by a six inch breach loading quick firing gun. In 1915 the battery was upgraded with search lights run from a generator taken from Paul Point Battery and it was housed in a brick building with a concrete plinth onto which the generator was held by 8 bolts. The building still remains as does the concrete plinth which held the generator. The wall at the north west end of the building has been opened up, one suspects for the removal of the generator and other equipment when the site was abandoned.

Store was reused as the generator house (Photo Chris Coulson)

Generator plinth (Photo Chris Coulson)

Hole in north/west wall of the generator house through which generator was removed? (Photo Chris Coulson)

Over the years the area had been overgrown with trees which, outside the leafless tree times, has greatly reduced photographic opportunities and appreciation of the battery's purpose. However, much can be surmised by wondering enquiringly through the site. The tree canopy and the reduced filtered light adds to the abandoned feeling of the area, far removed no doubt from the hustle and bustle of WWI when the gunners felt they were defending their kith and kin from the enemies uncivilised aerial bombing action.

At the Humber entrance there is much rubble and concrete suggesting that here stood a reinforced building, perhaps a guard post. The site is generally strewn with such debris and care need to be taken not to 'rick' your ankle as it's quite a long way to walk back to the Coast Guard Cottages.

The two gun towers stand in gloomy retirement amid rubble and trees. Both are constructed from shuttered re-enforced concrete using both mesh and/or rods. They stand on substantial bases and in fact are not parallel to each other, but have an angle of about 20-30° between them. The northern one pointing slightly north of east and the southern one pointing slightly south of east.. It would seem that behind the gun tower was another second story to the building whose function we don't know though it could have been an ammunition store for the gun just above it. Both gun towers have a doorway on the west side leading into a room of unknown function, perhaps an area for those on duty. The room once had barred windows but a curious internal geometry with a 'box in a wall' once having a hinged door.

Both gun towers have this identical room. The hole on the right once had a double (metal?) door. The small top hole on the top left seems to have been a fire place. (Photo Chris Coulson)

What was the purpose of the smaller higher hole which obviously had substantial hinges? If it was some kind of safe it could have contained military information for the gunners. But if this was true why was it open at the back? I suppose in the event of a land attack and penetration into the room the men could retreat into the back of the room closing the two metal (?) doors on the right. They could then still get at documents to destroy them. But what about the lower, bigger hole, which seems to be open? The mystery remained until August 2019 when closer inspection with a torch suggested that it was a small fire place with hinged 'back', air vents and chimney. However, the barred external window do indicate some level of security. After all if the enemy did come up the Humber getting to the battery would be easy.

The barred window of the room shown above. (Photo Chris Coulson)

To the right of the room entrance to this room can be seen the remnants of the external stair to the second level. The stairs reached a small platform from which the second floor could be accessed.

The photo above shows the metal fastenings for the bottom of the external stair case to the second floor. The line of stairs can be seen on the wall. (Photo Chris Coulson)

The photo above shows the top attachment for the stairs. (Photo Chris Coulson)

Initially I thought the 'metal' strands in the wall were re-enforcing rods but closer examination showed them to be lead covered cables. Both gun towers have these in the same place but the southern one only has them exposed at the top but the northern ones have had the channel opened up and they have been cut off at the base. The channel into which the northern ones have been set has been chiselled out of the original wall indicating their installation was after the original towers were built. These lead covered cables are probably the ones that fed a search light(s) for the guns, the electricity coming from the generator in the brick building to the north.

Photo. Four lead covered cables set in a groove exposed high up on the west wall of the southern gun tower. (Photo Chris Coulson)

Photo. Four cables cut off at the base from the channel into which they have been concreted into. (Photo Chris Coulson)

At the base of the wall on the right hand side of the door of both towers is set a substantial ring. We don't know the reason for its presence save for the fact it may have had a block and tackle attached for dragging something large towards or up the tower. Ammunition?

Substantial ring in the base of the tower. (Photo Chris Coulson)

Another external intriguing feature is the concrete shuttering line that can be seen sloping down towards the tower. This can be seen running from the left of the structure in a slope to the right of the photo, ending where the tower become part of it. The large vertical crack that ruins up to it is not part of this. Interesting the sloping crack seem to follow the angle of internal roof line. See the photo above of the internal room.

Photo shows the construction line which slopes towards the tower. (Photo Chris Coulson)

Close up of the sloping joint line. (Photo Chris Coulson)

Is there anything we can deduce form this? Well, it seemed that the gun emplacements were probably built in two sections, that below the sloping joint line and that part above it. One could envisage that the structure below the 'joint line' was poured first incorporating the sloping reinforced ceiling seen in the photo of the internal room. This might have incorporated the bottom part of the gun tower. Very quickly the next section was poured to include the structure above this. In modern concrete building this has been recognised to allow sections to meld together. The fact that there is a crack along this line could indicate that this wasn't done in 1915 or the significance of it was not appreciated.

To me it would seem that there was an engineering reason for constructing it this way. Perhaps it conferred some sort of strength through flexibility when the gun was in action.

What is equally intriguing is the large concrete aprons that both the gun emplacements have on their east sides. This has puzzled me since my first visit as it contains a considerable volume of concrete. A chance observation in August 2019 has lead to the following suggestion.

Around the front of each gun tower can be found the remains of a semi-circle of 12 metal 'I' beams set in the concrete about 4.5 feet apart. These beams rose to an unknown height but have the cross section of an H. For engineering purposes these beams confer a great of strength compared to the metal used to make them. In engineering parlance the vertical parts of the H are called the 'flanges' and these resist bending and the horizontal part is called the 'web' which resists shear forces. So both these two parts, the flange and web, confer different strength features to the H beam and both these are important in what I think was the function of these metal beams.

One of the 12 metal 'I' beams that surround each gun tower on its eastern side. The flange on the right faces eastwards, that to the left faces the gun tower. (Photo Chris Coulson)

Set as they are I think they could have formed part of a blast wall protecting the gun tower from any exploding incoming shells from the east. It is also conceivable that the 'wall' could have been a protection from it's own shells as in WWI anti aircraft shell fuses were unreliable sometimes the shell bursting very close to the gun itself. The orientation of individual beams suggests both bending and shearing (off) would be important properties for this function.

Standing in the gloom among the remains of the Sunk Island Battery is a salutary reminder of the fear that the threat of aerial bombing by Zeppelins must have had on the British population. The inaccuracy of anti-aircraft fire early in the WW I meant that the protection afforded by this and other batteries was rather illusionary. It was not until Hull born and educated mathematician E A Milne (later Professor) and his associates researched the problems of shell trajectory did anti-aircraft fire improve. The tables and devices produced by them served army and naval gunners well not only in WW I but also in WW II.

Chris Coulson

July 2018.

Updated August 2019

Updated July 2020