Flixborough
| Flixborough | |
| Lincolnshire | |
|---|---|
 Flixborough Wharf on the Trent | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SE871150 |
| Location: | 53°37’27"N, -0°41’0"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 1,386 |
| Post town: | Scunthorpe |
| Postcode: | DN15 |
| Dialling code: | 01724 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | North Lincolnshire |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Brigg and Goole |
Flixborough is a village in Lincolnshire, standing near the River Trent, about three miles north-west of Scunthorpe.
This is a commercial port village: Flixborough Wharf handles approximately 600,000 tons a year.[1] Less happily, the village is noted for the 1974 Flixborough disaster.
The parish church is All Saints’ Church (which is Grade II listed).
The village public house is The Flixborough Inn on High Street.
Flixborough is one of the Thankful Villages; those which lost none of their men in the Great War (1914-1918). It is indeed Twice-Thankful, for all its men returned alive also after the Second World War too. Consequently, it is one of the few villages in the land with no war memorial.
Name
Flixborough has had many different spellings through the centuries, from ‘’Flichesburg’’ in the Domesday Book to ‘’Flikesburg’’, ‘’Flyxburgh’’ and ‘’Flixburrow’’.
Eminson suggests that the first part of the name is an early form of the word cliff, and as the original settlement stood on a sloping cliff overlooking the River Trent, the village's name can be translated as "fortified dwelling on the cliff slope".[2]
History
A famous son of Flixborough is Sir Edmund Anderson, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and tried Mary, Queen of Scots.
Anglo-Saxon Flixborough
The remains of an Anglo-Saxon settlement in the parish of Flixborough were excavated by Humberside Archaeology Unit between 1989 and 1991.[3] The village was located 5 miles south of the Humber, overlooking the floodplain of the River Trent. During the two-year programme, an unprecedented Middle to Late Saxon rural settlement sequence was uncovered, dating between the early 7th and early 11th centuries AD. It is particularly exceptional because of the association of 40 buildings, floor surfaces and massive refuse dumps.[4][5]
1900 - Entry from Kelly's Trade Directory
Kelly's Directory in 1900 gives a lively account of Flixborough:
| “ | Flixborough is a parish and pleasant village, 3½ miles northwest from Frodingham station on the Penistone and Cleethorpes branch of the Great Central (late M. S. and L.) railway, 7 miles east from Crowle and 21 miles north from Gainsborough, in the North Lindsey division of the county, parts of Lindsey, north division of Manley wapentake, Winterton petty sessional division, Glanford Brigg union, Brigg County Court district, rural deanery of Manlake, archdeaconry of Stow and diocese of Lincoln. Here is a ferry over the Trent to Amcotts, and the Gainsborough and Hull steam packets call here on Tuesdays and Fridays. The old church of All Saints, a very plain edifice of stone, erected in the year 1789, was taken down and rebuilt in 1886, at a cost of £1,710; and is now an edifice in the Late Decorated style, consisting of chancel, nave, south porch and a western belfry of wood, with spire, containing one bell: the church retains a Norman font and a handsome carved oak chancel screen: there are 150 sittings. The register dates from the year 1573. The living is a rectory united with the vicarage of Burton-upon-Stather, joint net yearly value £429, including 163 acres of glebe and two houses, in the gift of Sir B. D. G. Sheffield Bart. and held since 1882 by the Rev. Francis Amcotts Jarvis M.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge, rural dean of Manlake and J.P. Lincs. who resides at Burton. A new rectory house was built in 1884 by the rector, and is occupied by the Rev. Peter Tivy Tomkins of St Aidan's, who is curate. About half a mile (800 m) from the village traces of an old church and the moat belonging to a mansion, formerly, it is believed, the seat of the Anderson family, are still visible: this place is supposed to have been the birthplace of Sir Edmund Anderson, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who died August 1, 1605, and was interred in the church of Epworth, Bedfordshire, where there is a monument with effigies to himself and his wife. Here was formerly a Roman settlement. Sir Berkeley D. G. Sheffield bart of Normanby Park, is Lord of the Manor and principal landowner. The soil is loam, clay, sand and warp; subsoil, various. The chief crops are wheat, barley, turnips, potatoes and beans, and some land is pasture. The area of the township is 2,651 acres of land, 72 of tidal water and 17 of foreshore; rateable value, £2,417; the population in 1891 was 242. Parish Clerk, G. Gillatt. Post Office - Samuel Tate, sub-postmaster. Letters arrive through Doncaster 8.15 am and are dispatched 6 p.m. Postal orders are issued here, but not paid. The nearest money order and telegraph office is at Burton-upon-Stather, 3 miles distant. Parish School (mixed) built in 1877, for 80 children; average attendance, 34; Miss Mary E. Ives, mistress. | ” |
Flixborough explosion
On Saturday 1 June 1974 at 16:53 Flixborough was at the centre of the UK's worst industrial accident, when the Nypro Works[6] chemical plant was devastated by an explosion, known as the Flixborough Disaster.
The plant manufactured Caprolactam. Escaping cyclohexane formed a flammable vapour cloud and ignited. Twenty eight people died and more than 100 were injured. Around 100 homes in the village itself were destroyed or badly damaged. There is a memorial to the disaster in the village.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Flixborough) |
References
- ↑ UK Ports: Flixborough
- ↑ Eminson, T.B.F. Place and River Names of the West Riding of Lindsey, Lincolnshire. and Mills, A.D. A Dictionary of English Place Names.
- ↑ Hull City Council: Humber field archaeology
- ↑ Loveluck, C.P. and Dobney, K.M., 1998: "Flixborough", in S. Ellis and R. Van De Noort, eds., 'Wetland Heritage of the Ancholme and Lower Trent valleys – An Archaeological Survey', pp. 159 - 163, Humber Wetlands Project Research Report No. 3, Hull: English Heritage/University of Hull.
- ↑ Loveluck, C and Dobney, K. 2001. "A match made in heaven or a marriage of convenience?" pp 149-175. In Albarella, U (ed) Environmental Archaeology: Meaning and Purpose. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- ↑ Nypro, Retrieved 30 July 2011
Books
- The Early Mediæval Settlement Remains From Flixborough, Lincolnshire. The Occupation Sequence, c. AD 600-1000. Excavations at Flixborough. Vol. 1. Ed. by Christopher Loveluck and David Atkinson. Oxford, Oxbow, 2007.
- Life and Economy at Early Mediæval Flixborough, c. AD 600-1000: The Artefact Evidence. Excavations at Flixborough, Volume 2. Ed. by D. H. Evans and Christopher Loveluck. Oxford, Oxbow, 2009.
- Farmers, Monks and Aristocrats: The Environmental Archaeology of an Anglo-Saxon Flixborough. Excavations at Flixborough. Vol. 3. Edited by James Barrett, Keith Dobney, Deborah Jacques and Cluny Johnstone. Oxford, Oxbow, 2007.
- Rural Settlement, Lifestyles and Social Change in the Late First Millennium AD. Anglo-Saxon Flixborough in its Wider Context. Excavations at Flixborough. Vol. 4. Edited by Christopher Loveluck. Oxford, Oxbow, 2007.