Last Wednesday I joined a meeting of the ‘Lincolnshire Blow Wells Group’ held at the Wilderspin School site in Barton. Having been invited by Alan Jones of the Humber Nature Partnership to join the meeting I found it very informative and was able to make a modest contribution. One item on the agenda was a presentation by John French on the works being currently undertaken at Beck Hill in Barton to enhance the local ‘blow well’.
Fortunately for me early in the meeting the distinction between a ‘blow well’ and a spring was made clear. The latter emerges at the junction between a dipping strata of porous rock and a horizontal over-burden of impermeable rock and soil. Many settlements in Humberside are spring-line settlements as early colonists found in these locations a supply of clean fresh water, one of their most basic needs. Spring-line settlements occur along the base of both the scarp and dip slopes of the Lincolnshire Wolds and Lincoln Edge south of the Humber. On the north bank settlements li along the base of the scarp slope of the limestone escarpment and, to an extent, along the base of the dip slope of the Yorkshire Wolds.
Blow wells, however, are artesian springs found in the low-lying coastal margins of North and North-East Lincolnshire. They are thought to be unique to this area of the U.K. In places ground water rom the porous bedrock (chalk) under pressure finds a way through the overlying post-glacial clays to emerge as a pool (sometimes ‘bubbling’) on the surface of the coastal lowlands (often referred to as the ‘Marsh’). There are three surviving blow wells in Barton parish at Far Ings, Beck Hill and on land just north of the large Wren Kitchens factory. Barrow Blow Wells complex is a fascinating series of pools amongst natural wetland woodland, it being a nature reserve administered by the Lincolnshire Trust (visitor centre off Far Ings Lane). Further south are other blow wells at Stallingborough, Tetney and elsewhere.