South England Flood of February 1287

We've been looking lately at catastrophic floods of the Middle Ages, like those that took place on the feast days of St. Marcellus and St. Lucia. These floods not only caused great destruction and loss of life, in some cases they also made topographical/geographical changes that persisted into the future.

St. Lucia's Flood in December 1287, along with an event called the South England Flood of February 1287, radically changed the coastline of part of England.

The map shows dotted lines where the current coastline lies, and how previously there were towns linked to the sea that are now far inland. Unlike in the Netherlands where water forced its way inland and created new coastal towns that were formerly landlocked, the storm surge in February 1287 not only did this in some cases but also caused collapsing cliffs and silting that blocked formerly coastal towns from the sea. A cliff at Hastings collapsed, taking part of Hastings Castle with it and blocking the harbor at Hastings from future trade.

Another town, New Romney, used the River Rother as its trade link to the sea. The storm diverted the river, leaving New Romney a mile away from the water. The river's course ran to Rye, increasing its value as a trading port.

Further north along the coast was the town of Dunwich, an important seaport on the North Sea. A storm surge in 1286, followed by the South England Flood and St. Lucia's, so hammered the East Anglian coast that it declined economically as well as geographically. At its peak it was similar in size to London in the 1300s; the census of 2001 put its population at 84.

The flood of 1287 changed the makeup of the Cinque Ports, a designation that has been technically wrong for a very long time. Next time we'll discuss what the Cinque Ports are, and if there really are cinque.