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| Photo of the structure looking north from the south end |
I’ve spent a lot of time visiting Holy Island – Lindisfarne over recent years, and every time I come I discover something new. Over the weekend I was up leading a conference fieldtrip, and after the tour was over I went down to the little beach below the parish church on the west side of the island, overlooked by St Cuthbert’s Island. I’d originally planned to pick up some seaglass (top tip – it’s a fantastic place for seaglass!). However, whilst gazing wistfully out to sea, I noticed that one of the ridges of what I assumed was a natural rocky outcrop on the shore looked very straight and relatively coherent. Once I’d got my eye in, it was distinctive enough that I thought it merited a closer exploration. I walked out and had a good look (see pictures) and I’m pretty convinced that this is not a natural feature and has clearly been deliberately constructed.
As you can see from the images – the stones are not part of
a natural outcrop of rock but comprises a series of larger squarish blocks of
stone with a crude infill of a smaller rubble fragments. The coherency of the
structure is not as clear as it appeared from the shoreline, but the larger
blocks appear to form a distinctive feature with the rubble more spread around by
the action of the sea. This side of the island faces onto the mainland so is
not exposed to the full force of the North Sea and I’ve rarely seen large waves
here, which seems to have preserved this structure fairly well. Overall, based
on a quick measurement from Google Earth, the structure seems to b about 70m long,
running roughly parallel to the shore (N-S) from a point about 65m from St
Cuthbert’s Island.
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| Stone structure circled in red- St Cuthbert's Island to the south |
So what is it? My current best guess is that it is the
remains of a stone fish trap. Fish traps and weirs are not unknown from the coast
of Northumberland – there is a nice set, entirely undated and uninvestigated in
Budle Bay a few miles south of Lindisfarne on the other side of Ross Point, one
was identified at Dunstanburgh below the Castle and it has been suggested that
an early stone feature close to the later harbour at Beadnell may be a stone
fish trap ( (2010) ‘Bednelfysch and Iseland Fish; Continuity in the
pre-Industrial Fishery of North Northumberland 1300–1950, The Mariner's Mirror, 96:1, 11-25; Oswald et al., ‘Dunstanburgh
Castle, Northumberland, Archaeological, Architectural and Historical
Investigations’, English Heritage Research Department Report, Series 26
(Portsmouth, 2006), 80.)
The classic shape for
a fish trap is a simple V-shape, which would allow the tide flow to draw fish
into the point of the V where they could be collected. The structure I have
found does not conform to this – it is a simple straight stone bank. In many
ways this is reminiscent of the stone feature known as the ‘Black Dyke’ that
lies in Budle Bay, but other parallels can be found e.g. the stone fishtrap at
Balleghan in Lough Swilley (Co. Donegal, Ireland) (Montgomery, Paul. (2015).
Intertidal Fish Traps from Ireland: Some Recent Discoveries in Lough Swilly,
Co. Donegal. Journal of Maritime Archaeology. 10. 117-139). The publication of
the Balleeghan example suggests that this was originally a V-shaped trap with
only one arm surviving which is a possibility in this case. The examples from Budle Bay show a mix of V-shaped traps and simple banks/barriers.
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| Range of fish traps and similar structures in Budle Bay |
It is not easy to date this structure- some of the work on
Irish fishtraps suggests that generally wooden fish traps might be earlier (prehistoric/early
medieval) with stone fish traps coming in later (medieval/post-medieval),
although it is unclear how firmly this applies to the Irish examples and how
far the Irish chronology can be applied to English material. It is noticeable
though, that as far as I can ascertain there are no documentary references to the
Budle Bay or putative Holy Island fish traps – including in the account rolls
from the medieval Holy Island Priory. There is a place name on Holy Island – “The
Yares” (a local dialect term for fish trap) which belongs to an area of the sea lying between Castle Point and the sandbank known as Long Batt, but this seems
to be too far south to relate to the structure I’ve found; there is also a place
name “The Cages” just to the south of Beal on the mainland, more or less
opposite Holy Island village, but again too far away to be related to the new structure.
Overall, it is clear that fish traps were used in this area –
not surprising given the tidal range and large open sand flats – however, we know precious little about their functioning or their date. I’d hazard a guess that
these Northumberland examples are broadly medieval – the lack of any
documentary trail suggests they are probably not later. However, it is quite
possible that they are of an earlier (early medieval?) date. The key job now is
to (a) record this example properly (b) have a think about how such a stone
structure might be dated.
