Looking south across the Humber Estuary from the new seating on Nelson St. (see previous blog) in the distance, and just rising above the reclaimed lowlands of the south Humber foreshore, is an indistinct outline of the dip slope of the Lincolnshire Wolds. Such a view sets in motion thoughts as to the width of the Estuary five-to-six thousand years ago when the sea level was approaching its current level after the last Ice-Age (Devensian) and before there was any human intervention in the landscape. Basically the base of the dip-slope formed the coastline although the wide foreshore lowlands would have not all been inundated each day, even at the time of Spring tides. Such a vast saline marsh would have been complex and dangerous to cross with complex networks of gullies between small islands of saltmarsh vegetation, these gullies emptying and filling as the tides ebbed and flowed. It must have been a pristine coastal wetland ecosystem, unparalleled today.
The same contemplation may be made of the south coast of Holderness where the later villages of Keyingham, Ottringham and Patrington evolved besically along the coast with foreshore mudflats beyond except for the open-water channel that led from Kilnsea Bight to Patrington Haven. This being so the distance across the lower Estuary at that time must have been double the width of the Estuary proper today, not normally visible from the opposite bank except in very clear weather.
Of course, where the Wolds met the Estuary waters on both banks the landscape here and width of the Estuary would have been much as seen today.