Hams and Tips – East Coast Curious

These are the remains of an attempt by Robert Cobbold of Sutton to enclose 150 acres in the late nineteenth century. The 1845 Survey shows a slightly convex foreshore between Methersgate and Stonnor Point. The only mention of Hams or Tips is the adjacent reach being described as Ham Reach and a Ham Point beacon on the right-hand side of the channel (the only obvious point is on the right bank).

Hams and Tips from OpenTopoMap overlaid on the 1845 Survey

Cobbold’s plan was to build out earthworks at the Hams and Tips and continue until they joined up to enclose the bay, thus creating land. The projections that we know as the Hams and Tips must be the remains of these which are slowly being eroded. It might be interesting to establish the material used to construct the remain earthworks.

Cobbold’s men worked for 10d a day, he apparently stopped their pay when they came over to Waldringfield for the annual ploughing match.

Trinity House objected to the enclosure as it would affect the navigability of the river.

‘Trinity House, supported by the judgement of God, halted the Cobbolds’ attempt to reclaim land by constructing the Tips’
W.G.Arnott, W G. Suffolk Estuary : The Story of the River Deben.

They were saved the trouble of enforcement when a storm destroyed, in one tide, the wall Cobbold’s men had built joining the Tips to the Hams, just before its completion. The Tips may have acquired the name from its use in loading barges, the Hams is presumably named after Ham Reach or what was once the Ham River or stream.

The Tips, to the south, were twice as long in the 1930s¹ and comparison with early twentieth-century maps show this to be true for both the Tips and Hams², this is reasonable as one would expect the earthworks to be gradually eroding.