Today’s illustration is a diagrammatic map of the Lincolnshire Marsh coastline between Cleethoepes and Donna Nook and is scanned from a chapter called ‘The Lonely Lands’ in the booklet by Larry Malkin ‘Wavelength Wanderings Along the Humber Estuary’ (1992). In fact the boundary between the two-tier unitary authority of North-East Lincolnshire and the three-tier county council of Lincolnshire crosses the ‘Marsh’ immediately south of Humberstone Fitties (see map above ‘Fitties Camp’). I don’t know the origin of the word ‘Fitties’ and Kenneth Cameron in his ‘Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names’ doesn’t provide any explanation, but he does record in his historiography of the name Humberstone that the antiquarian Gervase Holles in 1634 recorded that at this place was ‘a great Boundry blew stone’. This is interesting because back then there was no North-East Lincolnshire and the south Humber bank was the northern edge of the County of Lincolnshire or strictly speaking the north riding/thirding of Lincolnshire Lindsey (the other two being Holland and Kesteven). So what was the stone the boundary of? It could have defined the boundary between the coast of the Estuary and the coast of the North Sea (or then the German Ocean). Indeed where this boundary is is a matter of debate today, although the whole coast is simply a continuation of the ‘Marsh’ (s.p.b.s).
The ‘Marsh’ south of Cleethorpes’ Leisure Centre is a fascinating area. Along the south coast of the Humber to Cleethorpes the ‘Marsh’ is protected from coastal inundation by concrete sea defences, south of the Leisure Centre the natural coastal landforms in the form of successive vegetated sand-dunes are undisturbed, although inland of these a raised concrete path does act as a relief sea defence. Sand-dunes and a gently shelving beach have the effect of absorbing the power of strong flow-tides, thus providing a natural sea defence.
(to be continued, one more on Lincs. Marsh, then Wallingfen).