Sully Island

Sully Island ; Ynys Sili
	View of Sully Island from the west end
Waters	Bristol Channel
Geographical location	51 ° 24 ′ N , 3 ° 12 ′ W Coordinates: 51 ° 24 ′ N , 3 ° 12 ′ W
surface	0.058
Residents	uninhabited

Sully Island ( Irish Ynys Sili ) is a small tidal island and a Site of Special Scientific Interest at Hamlet Swanbridge , Vale of Glamorgan , 400 yards (366 m) off the north coast of the Bristol Channel , halfway between Penarth and Barry , and 7 mi (11 km) south of the Welsh capital, Cardiff .

The island can be reached on foot from the Captain's Wife public house parking lot at low tide . The island has an area of 14½ acre (5.8 hectares) and is one of the 43 officially known tidal islands.

In the 13th century, the island was the hideout of the Norman pirate Alfredo De Marisco , who was also known as The Night Hawk . In the Middle Ages, the island was notorious for its role in smuggling .

geography

The island is elongated and runs parallel to the coast. It is only about 300 m long and a maximum of 70 m wide. When the tide is low, a dam connects it to the mainland in the north at Swanbridge. The tidal range at this point is the second highest in the world, only in the Bay of Fundy , Nova Scotia it is larger, and the dam is therefore only accessible for 3 hours at low tide. Since the tides rise extremely quickly, tidal currents often occur at Sully Island and many people have already drowned trying to reach the mainland when the tide rises . The passage must be entered with great care and a clock has now been installed to show visitors the tide levels and the times for a safe passage.

About two kilometers to the east is Lavernock Point and a mile west of the island, on the mainland, is Bendricks Rock , the only known site of dinosaur footprints (Tetrasauropus?) From the Upper Triassic in Great Britain.

geology

The cliffs of Sully Island offer a good insight into the environment in the time of the Triassic, about 200 mio. Years. Red claystones (mudstone), sandstone and breccias suggest that this area was a beach on the border between high, desert-like land and a large shallow lake or sea lagoon. The Triassic rocks were on a much older Carboniferous limestone (Carboniferous limestone deposited), is reached at the base of the cliffs.

history

Surname

The name could go back to the Old English "south lea" (= southern willow), or, as is the case with the nearby village of Sully , refer to the name of the noble family of the Norman barons in the succession of Sir Reginald de Sully.

prehistory

Finds have been made which indicate that the island was frequently visited by Romans and later by Vikings . There is archaeological evidence of Anglo-Saxon Wallenburg or Promontory Fort at the eastern end of the island. At the forefront of this complex is a Bronze Age grave mound (barrow) and there are theories that it was this event was a fortress, but it was likely only a fortified residential area with rural systems.

Port of Swanbridge

Swanbridge and the coastal strip in the lee of Sully Island served as a natural harbor for trade for centuries , even if there are no traces of it today. Goods were delivered on St Mary's Well Bay Road , which is now closed to through traffic. From here they were taken to the market at Canton Cross in Cardiff. Until the early 1970s, the iron fortifications could still be seen in the east of the bay.

Historical records exist as far back as the 16th century that show that the merchants were supposed to pay an import duty to the local authorities and that many tried to evade these duties by smuggling. A court record from 1569 shows that the port official confiscated contraband consisting of 28,000 lb (13,000 kg) of cheese and eighty barrels of butter that had been illegally landed in Swanbridge. In 1658 the port was used to land illegal immigrants, who at that time were known as "undesirables" (undesirables).

A small fleet of fishing boats had their home port in Swanbridge Harbor and it is likely that the cottages that lined up on the beach, which were converted into Captain's Wife pub in 1976 and 1977, were originally the homes of fishermen and their families .

SY Scotia

Due to the dangerous tidal currents and the narrow fairway, many shipwrecks occurred in the area around the island. Several sources indicate that the famous Antarctic - research vessel , SY Scotia , suffered on 18 January 1916 off the island of shipwreck. Elderly residents up to Barry remember how, as children, they would move to Swanbridge with sacks for weeks to collect the coal that washed ashore from the wreck. There is the skeleton of a wreck still lying across from Swanbridge on the island's north coast, but the keel of this ship is too short to be part of the Scotia wreck.

The research ship that the oceanographer Dr. William Speirs Bruce used for the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition 1902-1904, was originally a sealer called "Hekla", which was built in 1872 in Norway . In 1889 it served the Norwegian skipper Ragnvald Knudsen for a research trip on the northeast coast of Greenland between the 74 ° and the 75 ° latitude and 1891-92 the Danish officer, Carl Ryder , to explore the branches of the Scoresby Sund . This was the last time he visited Angmagssalik .

In 1902 the Survey Yacht was renamed Scotia and Tam Robertson of Peterhead became the captain. So she sailed to the Weddell Sea under the direction of William Bruce. The southern winter of 1903 was spent at Laurie Island in the South Orkney Islands . From March to April 1904, the expedition explored a stretch of coast 150 mi (240 km) in length of the previously unknown Antarctic continent and reached 74 ° 01′S, 22 ° 00′W as the southernmost point. An extensive program of marine surveys and biological studies was carried out. After returning to Great Britain Bruce sold the ship and it was used again as a liner with the home port Dundee until she was used as the first international ice patrol ship in the North Atlantic after the tragedy of the RMS Titanic . During World War I she was used again as a cargo ship in the English Channel before catching fire and burning out at Sully Island.

20th century

Between 1900 and the First World War , the son of the Marquess of Bute founded a successful winery near Swanbridge, where wine was pressed for his father's bottling plant at Castell Coch , but after 1919 there is no evidence of the continuation of this business.

From 1890 until the late 1960s Swanbridge was connected to the north with Penarth and Cardiff and to the west with Barry and the South Wales Valleys by a branch line of the Taff Vale Railway . The coastal route fell victim to the Beeching ax program in 1968 . Swanbridge Halt near the main intersection of Lavernock Road has been closed and is now just overgrown property. Most of the route was sold to private owners and built on. The unsold sections have been left to nature and are impassable as far as Fort Road Bridge near Lavernock . Between Lavernock and Penarth, the track bed is a greenway and cycle path.

When the rail link was established at the beginning of the 20th century, the bays of Swanbridge, St Mary's Well and Lavernock became popular destinations for summer visitors and day trippers from Cardiff, Penarth and the South Wales Valleys, especially on weekends and bank holidays . For almost a century there was a popular cafe and ice cream parlor on St Mary's Well Bay by Swanbridge Carpark. This cafe was closed and demolished around 1970 when the thoroughfare was closed to traffic.

Island View Caravan Park

The Island View Caravan Park was opened in the 1950s and today offers ninety mobile homes , several holiday homes (chalet cabins) and several caravan sites. The Captain's Wife pub opened in 1977.

In 1985 an application was made for a zoning plan for a Health & Holiday Hydro Facility (Miss M. Llewellyn). However, the Vale of Glamorgan Council (reference 1985/00788 / OUT) rejected the application on October 15, 1985.

Sale 2011

In July 2011 the island was put up for sale by the real estate company Cooke & Arkwright. The area was given as 14.5 acres (58,679 m²). The original target price of £ 1.25 million. was later reduced to £ 95,000 as there were no interested parties. The grassroots campaign "Save Sully Island" set the goal of reaching the purchase price through donations, but failed. An anonymous buyer, however, came up at the last minute with a bid that far exceeded the target price. The buyer, a sailor, had already campaigned for the Grassroots Campaign and promised to keep the island open to the public.

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Sully Island

Flora and fauna

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360 ° image of Swanbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, 2015.

The biologist Brian J. Ford lived and worked in Swanbridge and frequently examined Sully Island. He carried out extensive ecological studies in which he mapped and described both the island and the surrounding area of the coast in detail. Ford recorded many plants that are unusual for the area, including Bee Orchid (Ophrys apifera, bee orchid), sea spleenwort (Asplenium marinum, marine spleenwort) and ophioglossum (Ophioglossum, adder's tongue fern).

There used to be a large colony of wild rabbits on the island . When myxomatosis reached Britain in 1953, the rabbit population on the main island was rapidly decimated. The population on Sully Island survived unscathed for many years until the disease finally reached the island, possibly through human action. New colonies continued to emerge on Sully Island, but never reached the level of the populations in the early 1950s.

In the waters around Iceland are Sully Cod (Cod), whiting (whiting), Pouting (pouting), spiny dogfish (dogfish), Conger and European seabass (bass) fished.

Trees that once grew on the island have long since been cut down and even small bushes have a hard time gaining a foothold on the sandy, loamy soil, which is why there are mainly undemanding types of grass on the island.