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.

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.

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'.

[9] 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.

Material is washed down the coast by longshore drift and accumulates to form the long, narrow embankment in the sheltered waters inside the mouth of the Humber Estuary.

As the ice sheets melted, sea level gradually rose and longshore drift caused a spit to form between this and other islands along the moraine.

This protection halted the wash-over process and resulted in the spit being even more exposed due to the rest of the coast moving back 110 yards (100 metres) since the 'protection' was constructed.

The now crumbling defences will not be replaced and the spit will continue to move westwards at a rate of 6 feet 7 inches (2 metres) per year, keeping pace with the coastal erosion further north.

The second of the Six Studies in English Folk Song composed in 1926 by Ralph Vaughan Williams, the Andante sostenuto in E flat "Spurn Point" celebrates this peninsula.

Many uncommon species have been sighted there, including a cliff swallow from North America, a lanceolated warbler from Siberia and a black-browed albatross from the Southern Ocean.

When the wind is in the right direction migrants are funnelled down Spurn Point and are counted at the Narrows Watchpoint, more than 15,000 birds can fly past on a good morning in autumn with 3,000 quite normal.

A series of more-or-less temporary replacements were used in the years that followed, until a more solid lighthouse designed by James Walker[22] was constructed in 1852 under the supervision of engineer Henry Norris.

In 1819 Smeaton's high light was equipped with 24 Argand lamps and reflectors);[22] later, in 1853, it was fitted with a new Fresnel lens: a large (first-order) fixed optic by Henry Lepaute of Paris.

[23] Later, a red sector was added to the high light, which warned ships of hazards to the south ranging from Clee Ness to Sand Haile Flats.

The lantern contained a very large revolving hyper-radiant optic by Chance Brothers & Co.[27] Its white light had a range of 17 nautical miles (31 kilometres) and displayed a flash once every 20 seconds.