114 NOTES ON THE GEOLOGY OF MALDON AND
the position of the water channels, and the greatness of the changes
in their course which sometimes occur in a few years, where the rocks
around and in the bed of the estuary are uniformly soft, may be
strikingly illustrated by a brief account of the changes that have
taken place in the Solway Firth.
The rocks on the shores of the Solway are quite as soft as those
surrounding the estuary of the Blackwater, and the main channel is
that resulting from the junction of the Esk and Eden. In the time of
King Edward L, Skinburness, about a mile north of Silloth, appears
to have been a port of some importance, and to have been used by
the King as a depot in his Scottish wars. In 1301, Bishop Halton
granted to the abbot and convent of Holme Cultram power to erect
a chapel at Skinburness, but in 1305 the abbot petitioned the King
to allow him to have a market at Newton Arlosh instead of at Skin-
burness, as the latter place had been swept away by the sea. This
sudden and rapid destruction of a rising port was evidently the
result of the erosion of the coast at Skinburness by a change of
direction in the main channel. The approach of the main channel
to the shore there had made it, for the time, the most eligible site for
a port, and the still further progress of the channel in the same
direction had destroyed the rising town. Higher up the estuary, at
the north-eastern corner of the Bowness promontory, is Port Carlisle,
so named because in the first quarter of this century it was intended
to make it the port for Carlisle, and a canal connecting the two
places was dug between the years 1819 and 1823. Ships of con-
siderable size were at that time able to unload close to the site of
Port Carlisle. The new port, however, speedily became useless,
owing to a change in the channels and the silting up of the harbour,
and there has since been no promise of the advent of more favourable
conditions. A still newer port, Silloth, yet maintains a somewhat
precarious existence. In the "Carlisle Journal" of April 1st, 1881,
appeared the following statement:—
" The bed of the channel near Silloth jetty is gradually returning to the position
it occupied when the Silloth Dock was formed.....Very soon after the
dock was formed the channel commenced to recede from the jetty.' It continued
to recede, the sand accumulating at the end of the pier to the height of twenty
feet. There had been a depth of sixteen feet of water at this point, and the
alteration in the bed of the channel created inconvenience to steamboats in land-
ing passengers. A dredger was employed in keeping open the channel. About
two months ago it became evident that another change had set in, the accumula-
tion of the sand at the end of the jetty appearing to be getting less. Since that
the sand has been gradually cleared away, and now there is again sixteen feet of