Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Both ‘firmer’ and ‘queachy’: drainage of the lands along the Lincolnshire Wash in the seventeenth century

  • Published:
Water History Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The landscapes of the low-lying terrain of East Lincolnshire (England), facing The Wash have been created largely by human action since Roman times. If freshwater fen is set aside, the key elements in the pre-industrial era were the Low Grounds, produced by medieval intakes from the sea, and the marsh (a feature from early modern times, ca AD 1500 onwards) at the interface of well-drained land and the sea. They were separated by a band of raised silts (up to 8 m above sea-level) called The Tofts which stretched from Wainfleet All Saints to Wrangle and was the result of salt-making that eventually ceased ca AD 1600. The continued utility of the drier lands (‘Firm’) and the conversion of the intertidal salt-marshes and sand-flats (‘Queachy’) depended upon competent drainage technology and social arrangements.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Free access at the National Library of Scotland: https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore

  2. These are references to the UK National Grid. Heights are present surface above Ordnance Datum.

  3. The contemporary term for the people who rented the resource from the local Lord or from the Monarch.

  4. Lincolnshire Archives (LA): Book of copies of verdicts and laws of sewers about the little Lymm (river).1-MM13/65 ff. 2r-v. Partially modernized version by Meryl Foster and Patrick Mussett.

  5. LA: A collection of documents relating to the history & antiquities of the East West & Wildmore Fens in the Parts of Lindsey & County of Lincoln, Ref 18984, vol 1 p 308.

  6. The National Archives (TNA) Decree in a suit between the town of Bolingbroke and the king's farmer of the fishings in Wainfleet harbour, Lincolnshire, concerning the dyking of the drain and haven there,.DL 42/119 [1538].

  7. TNA: The Petitions to Mr Chauncelor of the Duchie. Calendar of State Papers SP12/42 f.187 [1567] The Duchy was a private estate of the sovereign after 1399 and was a lord of much of this area.

  8. LA: The Queen’s Gote, MM6/1/5 ff.59–64 [1565].

  9. LA MM13/65 passim.

  10. LA: Misc Dep 739/1,.‘A true & perfect Copy of a Joyce-Book of the Sewers, Banks, & Bridges with the number of Acres that is charged to maintain them by Acre-Shotts within the Town of Wrangle aforesaid, surveyed by Anthony Harte, & the rest of his Fellow-Jurors by Order of a Court of Sewers held at Boston on Tuesday 20 Decr in the 20th Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, Charles the Second over England &c. Anno Dom: 1676 / And each Person's Lands charged in their own Names as they stand possessed in the Year 1726. ‘.[O]ld drain’ occurs in entries 274 and 281; the river is called ‘Heshie’ throughout.] Lockham Gate runs east–west across the bounds of the former haven and looks like a bank that cut off the upper Haven as part of its reclamation. The river ran along the western edge of the former haven, at TF 414 512.

  11. Ibid: entry 427. The dygrave was the dike-reeve, the elected parishioner who supervised the drains.

  12. Including at least one open field called ‘High Field’ in Wainfleet St Mary in 1623: Indenture between Thomas Dalby … and Sir Edward Barkham, Bethlem Museum of the Mind Archives Box 47 part 5, envelope 1 (i) entry 18.

  13. This is the likely site of the Old Clough where the divide took place; it disappeared in the making of the New Cut in the nineteenth century. The present Firsby Clough is at a different place and is a nineteenth century creation.

  14. LA: Alford Sewers 23/28/1 and 2.

  15. A R Maddison (ed) LW II.LRS II 1891 11–13, to his ‘grandchild Wm. 'my swanne mark togither with all my swannes and signittes yonge and olde with the swan mark belonginge’’.

  16. LA: MM VI/1/5 ff 59-64. It also deals with the maintenance of the Haven upstream.

  17. The beneficiaries of the reclamation are not specified but a map (BL: Cotton MS Aug I.i.82) suggests that Messrs Upton and Calowe were the lessees.

  18. TNA: DL 42/119 f. 259.

  19. LA: Alford Sewers/Dikereeves’ accounts/Candleshoe/10/ Wainfleet All Saints 4.

    Getting oak wood for the tout cost 16/-, with a day labourer being paid 1/- per day. In this region there are also ‘Toot hills’ which were look-outs over salt-marsh where sheep were grazed.

  20. LA: Alford Sewers/Dikereeves’ accounts/Candleshoe/6/Friskney 3. A seventeenth century observer called the fencing system ‘stolps and rails’. C. Merret, 1695–1697..‘An Account of Several Observables in Lincolnshire, Not Taken Notice of in Camden, or Any Other Author’ Philosophical Transactions 19, 343–353.

  21. LA: TYR 2/1/31.

  22. LA: Alford Sewers/ Dikereeves’ accounts/Candleshoe/10/Wainfleet All Saints 4.

  23. Edward Barkham Esq: TNA PROB 11/659. The Barkham estate in Wainfleet St Mary was acquired via buying existing manors, buying back land from freehold tenants, buying existing leases and consolidating the whole with the purchase of small parcels. Reclamation was added to this small empire.

  24. In 1527 a farmer in Huttoft willed that his ‘horse mylne be an harelome at my house in Anderby and it may be sparyd’ (Foster 1918).

Abbreviations

TF:

100 km square of the National Grid within which all the locations fall

LA:

Lincolnshire Archives

OD:

Ordnance Datum (i.e., height above sea-level)

TNA:

The National Archives

References

  • Anchukaitis KJ et al (2017) Last millennium Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures from tree rings: Part II, spatially resolved reconstructions. Quatern Sci Rev 163:1–22

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Ash EH (2017) The draining of the Fens: projectors, popular politics, and state building in early modern England. Johns Hopkins Univ Press, Baltimore

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Brew DS, Evans G (2018) The stratigraphy and origin of the Tofts ridge in north-western Fenland, eastern England. Proc Geol Assoc 129:135–143

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Climate Central (2002) Coastal risk screening tool at https://coastal.climatecentral.org. Accessed June 2023

  • Cook HF, Moorby H (1993) English marshlands reclaimed for grazing: a review of the physical environment. J Environ Manag 38:55–72

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Darby HC (1983) The changing fenland. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Di Palma V (2014) Wasteland. Yale University Press, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • Foster CW ed (1918) Lincoln Wills vol II AD 1505–1530. Lincoln Record Society vol 10. Morton, Horncastle. www.british-history.ac.uk/lincoln-wills/vol2/pp22-35#h3-0006. Accessed Jan 2022

  • Foster MR, Simmons, IG (2016/7) Goates and draynes. Dikereeves’ accounts from the seventeenth century. Lincolnshire Past and Present no 106, 8-9

  • Hills RL (2003) The drainage of the fens. Landmark Publishing, Ashbourne

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirkus AM (ed) (1959) Records of the commissioners of sewers in parts of Holland 1547–1603 v 1. Lincoln Record Society vol 54

  • Li J et al (2014) Evolution of soil properties following reclamation in coastal areas: a review. Geoderma 226–227:130–139

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Loveluck C, Tys D (2006) Coastal societies, exchange and identity along the channel and southern North Sea shores of Europe, AD 600–1000. J Marit Hist 1:140–161

    Google Scholar 

  • Owen AEB (1961) ‘The Levy Book of the Sea’: the organisation of the Lindsey sea defences in 1500. In: Lincoln archaeological and architectural society reports and proceedings, vol 9, pp 35–48

  • Owen AEB (1967) Records of Commissioners of Sewers. History 52(174):35–38

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Owen AEB (1996) The medieval Lindsey Marsh: select documents. Boydell Press, Woodbridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Owen AEB (2004) Land drainage records: a source for name studies in East Lincolnshire. Nomina 17:119–225

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson D (1981) The book of the Lincolnshire coast. Barracuda Books, Buckingham

    Google Scholar 

  • Robson JD (1985) Soils in Lincolnshire IV, Sheet TF45 (Friskney). Soil survey of England and Wales: soil survey records 88, Harpenden

  • Roffe D (2005) The historic context. In: Crowson A et al (eds) Anglo-Saxon settlement on the Siltland of Eastern England. Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire archaeology and heritage reports series; no 7, Heckington, pp 264–288

  • Rotherham ID (2010) Yorkshire’s forgotten fenlands. Wharncliff, Barnsley

    Google Scholar 

  • Rotherham ID (2013) The lost fens: England’s greatest ecological disaster. The History Press, Stroud

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmons IG (2014) Creating dry land in S.E. Lindsey (Lincolnshire, England) before AD 1550. Water Hist 6:211–225

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simmons IG (2017) The Lincolnshire manor of Wolmersty from Domesday to demise. Mediev Settl Res 32:13–20

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmons IG (2018) Monasteries and coastal evolution in South-east Lincolnshire AD 1100–1500. Midl Hist 43:155–173

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simmons IG (2022) Fen and sea. The landscapes of South East Lincolnshire AD 500–1700. Windgather Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Thirsk J (1957) English peasant farming. The agrarian history of Lincolnshire from Tudor to recent times. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Thirsk J (1973) Field systems of the East Midlands. In: Baker ARH, Butlin RA (eds) Studies of field systems in the British Isles. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 232–280

    Google Scholar 

  • Thoen E et al (eds) (2013) Landscapes or seascapes? The history of the coastal environment in the North Sea area reconsidered. Brepols, Turnhout, CORN 13

  • Van de Noort R (2011) North Sea archaeologies. A maritime biography, 10,000 BC - AD 1500. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Waller M, Marlow A, Shennan, I, Alderton, A (1994) The Fenland Project no 9: Flandrian environmental change in fenland. Cambridgeshire County Council, Cambridge, East Anglian Archaeology 70

  • Williams M (1970) The draining of the Somerset Levels. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson R et al (2013) A millennial long March–July precipitation reconstruction for southern-central England. Clim Dyn 40:997–1017

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is part of a project to investigate the landscape history of south-east Lincolnshire and was financed by a grant from the late Arthur Owen FSA. This enabled Patrick Mussett to visit archives and to extract, translate and transcribe relevant material; his involvement was absolutely central to all the publications that have resulted. The project was joined by Meryl Foster, who contributed principally to the Early Modern aspects, especially the history of the Barkham family who were key landlords in Wainfleet St Mary. We all wish to record our gratitude to archivists at Lincolnshire Archives, the National Archives, the Bethlem Museum of the Mind and Magdalen College Oxford for their help and advice in accessing relevant material. We also thank Chris Orton for his skill in map production, especially in COVID-related circumstances. We also appreciate the great help of the journal’s editor in improving the paper, as well as the contribution of the reviewers.

Funding

It was financed by a grant to the University of Durham from a private individual (see Acknowledgements). No Chat GPT or any other AI was used in the preparation of this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emeritus Professor, University of Durham, Durham, UK

    I. G. Simmons

  2. Independent Scholar, London, UK

    M. R. Foster

Authors
  1. I. G. Simmons
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. M. R. Foster
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to I. G. Simmons.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

There are no competing interests in this work.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendix

Appendix

Michael Drayton’s verse topography of England and Wales was published in the seventeenth century and so is contemporary with much of the material in this paper. It consists of. 30 ‘Songs’ each dealing with a county in rhyming couplets. The portion of Lindsey (a third part of the county of Lincolnshire) discussed here comes in Song 25 lines 7–15:

Th’in-bending Ocean holds, from the Norfolcean lands,

To their more Northern poynt, where * Wainfleet drifted stands,

Doe shoulder out those Seas, and Lindsey bids her stay,

Because to that faire part, a challenge she doth lay

From fast and firmer Earth, whereon the Muse of late, [11]

Trod with a steady foot, now with a slower gate,

Through * Quicksands, Beach, and Ouze, The Washes she must wade,

Where Neptune every day doth powerfully invade

The vast and queachy soyle [15]

(The asterisks lead to shoulder-notes)

Much of the rest of the 360 lines on Lincolnshire is concerned with fauna and especially the diverse and teeming bird populations of the Fen and the Sea. It ends with the bustard (Otis tarda), extinct in England 1832–2004. The text can be found most easily at. https://poly-olbion.exeter.ac.uk/the-text/full-text

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Simmons, I.G., Foster, M.R. Both ‘firmer’ and ‘queachy’: drainage of the lands along the Lincolnshire Wash in the seventeenth century. Water Hist 15, 315–335 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-023-00332-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-023-00332-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation