MEDIEVAL GRAFFITI FOUND BENEATH SAND DUNES AT CRANE GODREVY 

 

This picture of a boat was scratched onto a piece of slate at a settlement at Crane Godrevy, near Hayle, about 700 years ago. The original graffiti is slightly more detailed. There is a clump of reeds on the left of the boat to which it is anchored, and another smaller boat is tethered to its stern. This was quite a large vessel. What was it carrying? Where had it come from?  

The Crane Godrevy settlement was abandoned in the 14th century and slowly covered with drifting sand.  The reason for leaving is thought to have been the encroaching sand, but the date coincides with the arrival of the bubonic plague
that spread across Cornwall in 1349, bought here, almost certainly, by boat.