HomeUnited KingdomWhy didn’t any MAJOR cities ever develop in Lincolnshire? It’s a very large, relatively flat county with a long coastline and a central position within the country. Why did it stay so rural and cut-off?
Why didn’t any MAJOR cities ever develop in Lincolnshire? It’s a very large, relatively flat county with a long coastline and a central position within the country. Why did it stay so rural and cut-off?
September 26, 2024
Why didn’t any MAJOR cities ever develop in Lincolnshire? It’s a very large, relatively flat county with a long coastline and a central position within the country. Why did it stay so rural and cut-off?
by LiquidLuck18
8 comments
It was back in it’s time, grimsby was a major hub.
It was never cut off and had direct train lines from London.
Perhaps because you couldn’t get over the humber via rail? I don’t really get what your getting at?
It hasn’t always been like that. As a Roman colony for retired soldiers Lincoln was very much not a backwater, and on the main north South Road called Ermine Street. During the early medieval period Lincoln and Stamford were significant centers counted alongside Derby Nottingham and Leicester. In the medieval period Boston was a massive trading Port, and neither Boston Stump nor the cathedral are being built by poor people. Only in the early modern period does Lincolnshire start to fall behind. Even then state of the art technology was used to drain the fens and the battle tank is no minor invention, even if the cause of it being designed in Lincoln is it similarity to agricultural machinery.
My guess would be that the coastline doesn’t offer many particularly good harbours, and once the North Road moved from going through the county to mostly going through Nottinghamshire a bit of a decline was inevitable.
how dare you say lincoln isn’t major.
I guess its just always been a rural area, it would need industry, mines or trade either rail or sea connections to something big for that to happen. London has been the capital forever and had great trade at least.
Forgetting for a moment that Lincoln exists, which, whilst not major, is comparable to most county capitals.
Lincolnshire’s economic heyday was several hundred years before major modern urbanisation and industrialisation. Boston, for instance, was at one time a burgeoning hub of commerce and the 2nd largest port in England – all thanks to the trade in wool and connections to the Hanseatic League. If that persisted, then it very well could have (purely theoretically) become a much larger settlement than it is today.
Also, alot of Lincolnshire might be flat, but it’s naturally boggy fenland that is really only good for agriculture and lovestock rearing. Moreover, it has plenty of coastline, but outside of the Humber and the wash, all of it is shallow coastline without suitable inlets for docking of all but the smallest vessels. Therefore, It’s always been an agricultural economy, and so beyond the age of agriculture, it was always going to end up less well integrated into the wider economy as it advanced.
It has a long coastline but no major river apart from the North West- the period of time Lincoln was comparatively wealthiest/largest in the UK was in 12th century when it was booming because of the Wool/Cloth trade. Sheep farming being dominant would suggest the area wasn’t suitable for grain crop, low lying marsh pasture is likely what the flat landscape looked like- very profitable but not going to support a massive population and not – it was the third largest city in England when the English population was at close to its lowest point. With the sea on its East, unfordable river to its north, and fens to its south and the peak district blocking routes to its West its not really easily connected to anywhere at this point.
Later on when rail replaced boats and rivers as major transport it just didn’t have anything special- the major north south routes went further west so its only a branch line for the direct train to London and most of all the trains that stop there terminate there rather than passing through. It’s not close to any major population centre and more importantly its still not between anything important.
Basically Lincoln never gave anyone a reason to do anything there because anything you could do could be done better elsewhere.
Lincoln, Stamford, and Boston *were* major settlements in the Middle Ages. Stamford was important in part because it *was* on the way to somewhere, lying on the Great North Road, and Lincoln and Boston were key players in the wool trade; Lincoln was also the seat of a bishop and lay on the “Old North Road”, or Ermine Street. The collapse of the foreign wool trade toward the end of the Middle Ages hit Lincoln and Boston hard, and by the 1662 hearth tax neither they nor Stamford are among the estimated thirty largest settlements.
Big river to the north, sea to the east. The only reason to be there is if you specifically want to be there. You don’t just pass through the area.
Places like East Anglia and Cornwall have the same problems.
There’s also no one really worth trading with on that coastline.
Grimsby use to have a big fishing trade but that got crippled a long time ago
As others have pointed out, it’s partly geography, partly economics, but what I would like to argue is religion – more specifically, the Reformation.
Lincoln was an incredibly popular pilgrimage site for hundreds of years – it was once said to be “the most Marian city in the most Marian county in all of England”. The cathedral was the tallest building in the world from 1311 to 1548. Thousands of pilgrims would visit the city and the cathedral for feast days, which would boost the local economy along with the regular trade. A lot of settlements which now are ranked quite low in size would have been hubs in the Middle Ages, with monasteries or other religious sites forming the backbone of the community with the town built around the church – think places like Walsingham, Glastonbury, Winchester, St Albans, etc.
When the Reformation began in England, the monasteries were disbanded, and cultural changes within the Church of England also meant that it became more Puritan and anything that was associated with Catholicism was stopped, including pilgrimages. This would have quite drastically changed the local economy around these religious sites as people stopped visiting. If they were still places of pilgrimage they would probably be much larger than they are today.
8 comments
It was back in it’s time, grimsby was a major hub.
It was never cut off and had direct train lines from London.
Perhaps because you couldn’t get over the humber via rail? I don’t really get what your getting at?
It hasn’t always been like that. As a Roman colony for retired soldiers Lincoln was very much not a backwater, and on the main north South Road called Ermine Street. During the early medieval period Lincoln and Stamford were significant centers counted alongside Derby Nottingham and Leicester. In the medieval period Boston was a massive trading Port, and neither Boston Stump nor the cathedral are being built by poor people. Only in the early modern period does Lincolnshire start to fall behind. Even then state of the art technology was used to drain the fens and the battle tank is no minor invention, even if the cause of it being designed in Lincoln is it similarity to agricultural machinery.
My guess would be that the coastline doesn’t offer many particularly good harbours, and once the North Road moved from going through the county to mostly going through Nottinghamshire a bit of a decline was inevitable.
how dare you say lincoln isn’t major.
I guess its just always been a rural area, it would need industry, mines or trade either rail or sea connections to something big for that to happen. London has been the capital forever and had great trade at least.
Forgetting for a moment that Lincoln exists, which, whilst not major, is comparable to most county capitals.
Lincolnshire’s economic heyday was several hundred years before major modern urbanisation and industrialisation. Boston, for instance, was at one time a burgeoning hub of commerce and the 2nd largest port in England – all thanks to the trade in wool and connections to the Hanseatic League. If that persisted, then it very well could have (purely theoretically) become a much larger settlement than it is today.
Also, alot of Lincolnshire might be flat, but it’s naturally boggy fenland that is really only good for agriculture and lovestock rearing. Moreover, it has plenty of coastline, but outside of the Humber and the wash, all of it is shallow coastline without suitable inlets for docking of all but the smallest vessels. Therefore, It’s always been an agricultural economy, and so beyond the age of agriculture, it was always going to end up less well integrated into the wider economy as it advanced.
It has a long coastline but no major river apart from the North West- the period of time Lincoln was comparatively wealthiest/largest in the UK was in 12th century when it was booming because of the Wool/Cloth trade. Sheep farming being dominant would suggest the area wasn’t suitable for grain crop, low lying marsh pasture is likely what the flat landscape looked like- very profitable but not going to support a massive population and not – it was the third largest city in England when the English population was at close to its lowest point. With the sea on its East, unfordable river to its north, and fens to its south and the peak district blocking routes to its West its not really easily connected to anywhere at this point.
Later on when rail replaced boats and rivers as major transport it just didn’t have anything special- the major north south routes went further west so its only a branch line for the direct train to London and most of all the trains that stop there terminate there rather than passing through. It’s not close to any major population centre and more importantly its still not between anything important.
Basically Lincoln never gave anyone a reason to do anything there because anything you could do could be done better elsewhere.
It isn’t on the way to anywhere nowadays, [a lot of it was historically marshland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Britain_peoples_circa_600.svg), and doesn’t have the natural resources which spurred the development of other places during the Industrial Revolution.
Lincoln, Stamford, and Boston *were* major settlements in the Middle Ages. Stamford was important in part because it *was* on the way to somewhere, lying on the Great North Road, and Lincoln and Boston were key players in the wool trade; Lincoln was also the seat of a bishop and lay on the “Old North Road”, or Ermine Street. The collapse of the foreign wool trade toward the end of the Middle Ages hit Lincoln and Boston hard, and by the 1662 hearth tax neither they nor Stamford are among the estimated thirty largest settlements.
Big river to the north, sea to the east. The only reason to be there is if you specifically want to be there. You don’t just pass through the area.
Places like East Anglia and Cornwall have the same problems.
There’s also no one really worth trading with on that coastline.
Grimsby use to have a big fishing trade but that got crippled a long time ago
As others have pointed out, it’s partly geography, partly economics, but what I would like to argue is religion – more specifically, the Reformation.
Lincoln was an incredibly popular pilgrimage site for hundreds of years – it was once said to be “the most Marian city in the most Marian county in all of England”. The cathedral was the tallest building in the world from 1311 to 1548. Thousands of pilgrims would visit the city and the cathedral for feast days, which would boost the local economy along with the regular trade. A lot of settlements which now are ranked quite low in size would have been hubs in the Middle Ages, with monasteries or other religious sites forming the backbone of the community with the town built around the church – think places like Walsingham, Glastonbury, Winchester, St Albans, etc.
When the Reformation began in England, the monasteries were disbanded, and cultural changes within the Church of England also meant that it became more Puritan and anything that was associated with Catholicism was stopped, including pilgrimages. This would have quite drastically changed the local economy around these religious sites as people stopped visiting. If they were still places of pilgrimage they would probably be much larger than they are today.