Scolt Head Island

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Scolt Head Island

Norfolk


Scolt Head Island from Gun Hill
Location
Location: 52°58’56"N, 0°42’24"E
Grid reference: TF824461
Area: 1,820 acres
Highest point: Seal level
Data
Population: 0

Scolt Head Island is an offshore barrier island of the marshland between Brancaster and Wells-next-the-Sea on Norfolk's north coast, separated from the mainland by a narrow tidal channel known as Norton Creek.

The island is in the parish of Burnham Norton and is accessed by a seasonal ferry from Overy Staithe.

The shingle and sand island appears to have originated from a former spit extending from the coast, and longshore drift means that it is slowly moving to the west and inshore.

The island comprises sand dunes, salt marsh, intertidal sand and mud flats, and shingle. It supports internationally important numbers of breeding Sandwich and little terns, and nationally significant populations of common and Arctic terns, as well as wintering waders and wildfowl. It has a number of uncommon plants adapted to its harsh environments. It was bought by the National Trust in 1923, and became a national nature reserve. It was subsumed into the North Norfolk Coast SSSI in 1986. The larger area is now additionally protected through Natura 2000, Special Protection Area (SPA) and Ramsar listings, and is part of the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The first resident first "watcher" (warden) on Scolt Head was pioneering ornithologist and photographer Emma Turner.

This isolated island has been largely undisturbed by human activity apart from service as an artillery range in Second World War, and it is of international importance because of the extensive research into its geomorphology over nearly a century.

Description

Scolt Head Island is a roughly four-mile long shingle and sand island on the Norfolk coast opposite Burnham Norton. Though it is an island, it is possible to walk across the mudflats and Norton Creek to the island at low tide. However this route is potentially dangerous due to shifting and deep mud and rapid tidal changes, and is not recommended by the landowner. Its main beach and ridge of sand dunes run approximately east to west, and it has a series of curved shingle "hooks" running south and east on its landward side.[1] The 1,820 acres[2] island is composed almost entirely of flint pebbles, mostly rounded by wave action, and sand; other minerals make up less than one per cent of the material. It is gradually extending westwards due to wave action and longshore drift. The curved shingle ridges were formed when each in turn was formerly the western end of the island, and salt marshes have developed between each ridge.[1] Some of the shorter side ridges meet the main ridge at a steep angle due to the southward movement of the latter.[3]

The shingle spits here and at Blakeney Point are considered to be of special importance for the study of geophysical processes,[4] and are the best studied and documented in the world.[2] The salt marsh and shingle structures together are of the highest national importance for investigating the recent geological history of this coast.[4] The salt marshes here develop rapidly due to the inflow of silt and increasing plant growth, increasing in height by about 0.4 inches annually,[5] and developing a well-defined creek system as they age.[6]

The island is served by a ferry from Burnham Overy Staithe which runs from April to September, and there is a 1,100-yard nature trail with information boards.[2]

History

Signs of human use of the island range from early mediæval Grimston ware pottery to post-Second World War building foundations, and wooden structures in the marshes include posts set for mussel farming, and a wooden structure that was probably a fish trap.

The wreck of the SS Vina at sunset

It was originally thought that the island, believed to be 2–3 thousand years old, developed from an offshore shingle ridge, and had thus always been an island, but current thinking is that the island was originally a spit extending west from Holkham dunes. Support for this theory comes from boreholes and from radiocarbon dating of a shell to 837AD, that appeared to indicate the existence of saltmarshes behind the shingle barrier at that time. A 1585 map also appears to show a spit at this location,[7] and a 1630 inventory of the lands of Robert of Brancaster, the local Lord of the Manor, did not list the island as a separate entity.[8]

On the death of Simms Reeve, Lord of Brancaster, in 1922, earlier disputes over the ownership of the island were resolved with his executors retaining the southern part, and the Earl of Orford the northern section. The island was bought by Thomas Coke, 3rd Earl of Leicester in 1922.[8] He sold most of the island to the National Trust in 1923 for £500 to manage as a nature reserve, retaining only a small area at the eastern end.[9] The first resident first "watcher" (warden) on Scolt Head was Emma Turner, who served for eighteen months in 1923–1924.[10][11] In 1944, Lord Leicester was asked if he would remove five huts on his part of the island, together with others on the coast opposite. He agreed to do so if the Norfolk Naturalists' Trust would take over his part of the island. The island was used as an artillery range during Second World War: the Norfolk Naturalists' Trust purchase took place in 1945.[12]

The SS Vina, an 1894 cargo steamer, was anchored near the west end of the island in 1944 for use as an RAF target where the wreck can still be seen at low tide.[13] The remains of a Blenheim bomber were found at the north of the island in 2004. A steel wreck or hulk measuring around 235 feet long and 50 feet wide was also brought to the island during Second World War for military target practice.[14]

The Nature Conservancy Council took over responsibility for Scolt Head Island's management in 1953 on a 99-year lease,[8][12] and it became a national nature reserve in 1967,[15] It was subsumed into the newly created 7,700-hectare (19,000-acre) North Norfolk Coast SSSI in 1986. The larger area is now additionally protected through Natura 2000, Special Protection Area and Ramsar listings, and is part of the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.[4]

Fauna and flora

Birds

Internationally important numbers of Sandwich and little terns breed on the island, together with common and Arctic terns The marshes also support wintering wildfowl and waders, including shelduck, wigeon, teal and curlew.[2] brent geese feed on sea lettuce and eelgrass, preferring the former when both are available.[16] The average number of pink-footed geese in the five winters to 2009/10 was 22,764, far exceeding the international importance level of 2,700 birds.[17]

The island's location means that migrants may be found, sometimes in huge numbers when the weather conditions are right.[18][19][20] These may include vagrant rarities,[21] such as an isabelline shrike in 2003,[22] a white-billed diver in 2002,[23] and a dusky warbler in 2000.[24]

Other animals and plants

Dunes clad in marram grass

Resident mammals include rabbits, stoats, common shrews, pygmy shrews, wood mice and short-tailed voles. Three species of deer have travelled over the marshes to reach the island.[25]

Insects include the intertidal ground beetle Dicheirotrichus gustavii which emerges from cracks or holes to feed on the salt marshes after dusk. Despite living in a coastal environment, it has no cycle of behaviour linked to the tides, simply scurrying for dry land when caught by the approaching sea. Another foreshore beetle, Bledius spectabilis, shows very unusual behaviour for an insect in that it actively protects its larvae from the parasitic wasp Barycnemis blediator and from the predatory Dicheirotrichus gustavi.[26]

The saltmarsh and the dunes both hold a notably wide range of plants, including a number of uncommon species. The saltmarsh contains glassworts and common cord grass in the most exposed regions, with a succession of plants following on as the marsh becomes more established: first sea aster, then mainly sea lavender, with sea purslane in the creeks and smaller areas of sea plantain and other common marsh plants. The shingle ridges attract biting stonecrop, sea campion, yellow horned poppy, sea thrift, bird's foot trefoil and sea beet. sea wormwood, sea lavender and scrubby sea-blite also thrive,[4] matted sea lavender and sea heath are international important species found in this habitat.[2]

The sand dunes are initially stabilised by marram grass and sea couch grass, enabling colonisation by sea poa grass, sand couch-grass, lyme-grass and grey hair-grass, which also help to bind the sand. Sea holly, sand sedge, bird’s-foot trefoil and pyramidal orchid are other specialists of this arid habitat.[4]

Threats

Storms in 1931–33 swept away 250 yards of the island,[1] and the island was breached in a large storm in 1938 and by the North Sea flood of January 1953, in each case washing the shingle through to the marshes beyond. A wire and brushwood fence erected in the spring of 1953 trapped sand and allowed the breach to heal by August of the same year.[27]

("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Scolt Head Island)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 James Alfred Steers (1934). "Scolt Head Island". Geographical Journal 83 (6): 479–494. doi:10.2307/1785498. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Scolt Head Island NNR". Our work. Natural England. http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/designations/nnr/1006129.aspx. 
  3. ↑ Steers, J A in Allison & Morley (1986) p. 19.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 SSSI listing and designation for North Norfolk Coas
  5. ↑ Chorley et al (1984) p. 407.
  6. ↑ Allen & Pye (1992) p. 158.
  7. ↑ Shennan (2000) p. 245.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Rodgers et al (2010 ) p.167–168
  9. ↑ Thomas Southwell (naturalist) (1924). "Scolt Head Island: a new Norfolk nature reserve". Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society 11: 327. 
  10. ↑ B.B.R. (1940). "Obituary: Miss E. L. Turner". British Birds 34 (4): 85. 
  11. ↑ Haines (2001) p. 310.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Steers (1971) p. 1.
  13. ↑ Dowse, Julian. "SS Vina (+1944)". Wreck Site. http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?69922. 
  14. ↑ Robertson et al (2005) p 69.
  15. ↑ Allen & Pye (1992) p. 148.
  16. ↑ Ranwell, D S; Downing, E M (1959). "Brent goose (Branta bernicla (L.)) winter feeding pattern and zostera resources at Scolt Head Island, Norfolk". Animal Behaviour 7 (1–2): 42–48. doi:10.1016/0003-3472(59)90029-6. 
  17. ↑ Holt et al (2011) p. 31–32.
  18. ↑ Elkins (1988) pp. 136–137.
  19. ↑ Newton (2010) pp. 97–98.
  20. ↑ Garnett, Ronald M (1936). "Unusual "hold-up" of spring migrants on the Norfolk coast". British Birds 30 (3): 58–59. 
  21. ↑ Newton (2010) p. 50.
  22. ↑ Rogers, M J and the Rarities Committee (2004). "Report on rare birds in Great Britain in 2003". British Birds 97 (11): 558–625. 
  23. ↑ Rogers, M J and the Rarities Committee (2003). "Report on rare birds in Great Britain in 2002". British Birds 96 (11): 542–609. 
  24. ↑ Rogers, M J and the Rarities Committee (2001). "Report on rare birds in Great Britain in 2000". British Birds 94 (10): 452–504. 
  25. ↑ Foster, W A in Allison & Morley (1986) pp. 85–86.
  26. ↑ Wyatt, T D; Foster, W A (1989). "Parental Care in the Subsocial Intertidal Beetle, Bledius spectabilis, in Relation to Parasitism by the Ichneumonid Wasp, Barycnemis blediator". Behaviour 110 (1–4): 76–92. doi:10.1163/156853989x00394. 
  27. ↑ Packham & Willis (1997) p. 241
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