Although in the north east of England we've had a great deal of bad weather in the past few years, not to mention Storm Arwen, it probably pales in comparison with what the townspeople, farmers and fishermen 659 years ago, to this day, had to suffer, in a cataclysmic event called the Flood of St Marcellus. A freak extra-tropical hurricane, coinciding with a new moon, was wreaking a path of destruction across the North Sea coast.
This was not the first time a storm of this nature had formed in the North Sea; in 1219 on the very same day (known as the First St Marcellus's flood), a cyclone had laid waste to coastal Holland and Frisia, but it was the first that had affected the English coastline, sending storm tides far inland and wiping out whole settlements from memory, such as Ravensrodd in east Yorkshire, founded in the Viking period as Hrafn's Eyr or Raven's Tongue. Written records of the event are scarce, but it is likely that more than 25,000 people died that day.
One of the biggest casualties of the hurricane was town of Dunwich ('hill town') in Suffolk, once the royal centre of the early medieval Suth Folk, where a number of important churches and pontoons, as well as a priory were submerged. The retreat of the coastline was nothing new to the town's residents, but this storm in particular must have been nearly biblical in scale, with probably close to a kilometre sunk in a matter of hours. Acoustic surveys, conducted by Southampton University archaeologists, have determined that much of this sunken part of town still exists, albeit in a very degraded and current-worn condition.
The storm also had ramifications outside of the coastline; several church buildings and high-built structures were blown down or damaged, encouraging the emergent shift from Romanesque to Gothic architecture. The destruction of north Atlantic harbours certainty had dire consequences to the prosperity of the Hanseatic League and other merchant guilds, as well as the kingdom of Norway, already suffering from the never-ending string of disasters and plagues that characterized the 14th century. The trading nexus of Rungholt on the island of Strand in northern Frisia was completely cast underwater, and several parts of the town, including the tide gates that would have facilitatedincoming vessels. have been identified in various geophysical surveys carried out by the Rungholt Project.
The flooding of coastal Holland, however, contributed to the formation of the inland lake known as the Zuiderzee, which allowed the Dutch to develop a maritime tradition that would later enable them to establish colonal possessions as far afield as Oceania.
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