Spurn is a narrow sand tidal island located off the tip of the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England that reaches into the North Sea and forms the north bank of the mouth of the Humber Estuary. It was a spit with a semi-permanent connection to the mainland, but a storm in 2013 made the road down to the end of Spurn impassable to vehicles at high tide.
The island is over long, almost half the width of the estuary at that point, and as little as wide in places. The southernmost tip is known as Spurn Head or Spurn Point and was, until early 2023, the home to an RNLI lifeboat station and two disused lighthouses. It forms part of the civil parish of Easington.
Spurn Head covers above high water and of foreshore. It has been owned since 1960 by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and is a designated national nature reserve, heritage coast and is part of the Humber Flats, Marshes and Coast Special Protection Area.
History
Spurn Head was known to classical authors, such as Ptolemy as Ocelum Promontorium (). In the Middle Ages, Spurn Head was home to the port of Ravenspurn (a.k.a. Ravenspur or Ravensburgh), where Henry of Bolingbroke landed in 1399 on his return to dethrone Richard II. It was also where Sir Martin de la See led the local resistance against Edward IV's landing on 14 March 1471, as he was returning from his six months' exile in the Netherlands. An earlier village, closer to the point of Spurn Head, was Ravenser Odd. Along with many other villages on the Holderness coast, Ravenspurn and Ravenser Odd were lost to the encroachments of the sea, as Spurn Head, due to erosion and deposition of its sand, migrated westward.
The lifeboat station at Spurn Head was built in 1810. Owing to the remote location, houses for the lifeboat crew and their families were added a few years later. By the 1870s a room in the high lighthouse was being used as a chapel for the small residential community on Spurn Head, serving 'the keepers, coast-guardsmen and fishermen who live at the Point'.
During the First World War two coastal artillery batteries were added at either end of Spurn Head, with quick-firing guns in between. The emplacements can be clearly seen, and the northern ones are particularly interesting as coastal erosion has partly toppled them onto the beach, revealing the size of the concrete foundations very well.
As well as a road, the peninsula also used to have a railway, parts of which can still be seen. Unusual 'sail bogies' were used as well as more conventional light railway equipment.
Following a tidal surge in December 2013 the roadway became unsafe, and access to Spurn Point is on foot only, with a warning not to attempt this when exceptionally high tides are due. Spurn has now become a tidal island, as the narrowest part of the sandbank connection to the mainland is flooded with each high tide.
Plans to build a new visitor centre for the reserve were unveiled in September 2014 by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (YWT). Planning consent for the initial plans was refused by East Riding of Yorkshire Council in July 2016 but revised plans were approved in January 2017. These plans face local opposition because of the perceived feeling of commercialisation of the reserve by YWT, with plans to build extensive car park facilities, no longer free. The new visitor centre was officially opened by Simon King on 20 March 2018.
A February 2023 inspection of the RNLI launch jetty revealed structural issues, as a result the station was moved to Grimsby.