Following the petition to the king in 1344 Edward III appointed an ‘inquisition’ to investigate the matter the result being that those given the task confirmed the Frismersk residents petition. Consequently king Edward ordered the ‘Barons of his Exchequer’ to reduce the level of taxation imposed on the parishioners of Patrington living in the township of Frismersk. These residents had petitioned on the basis that they had incurred great cost in trying to shore-up the clay-bank flood defences (my term, not their’s).
The residents of Frismersk and Tharlesthorp (s.p.b.s) were also responsible for the part maintenance of ‘Potterbrigg’. The term ‘brigg’ always referred to a bridge, as bridges were so important to the free-movement of goods and persons their maintenance could be a heavy imposition on local communities (the town of Brigg in North Lincs. is so called because it was a bridging point across the River Ancholme from Roman times onwards). Potterbrigg spanned Potterfleet, the channel that in the 14th century still separated the early Sunk Island from the earlier north bank of the Humber Estuary near the villages of Keyingham, Ottringham and Patrington. Almost certainly this channel was being widened and eroded by tidal action in the 14th century so maintaining the bridge would have been all but impossible. The term ‘fleet’ meant a channel and, it seems to me, was usually used to define tidal channels, the Fleet area of Kings Lynn, for example, identified an area around a tidal channel flowing into the River Great Ouse, it also referred to the area of ‘Bishop Lynn’s’ early medieval port. As a child about once a month my mother would take me to Kings Lynn on the bus, the bus station then being on the Fleet, we had a fish-and-chip tea in a café with Sport Report playing on the Light Programme of the cafe’s wireless. It smelled really damp in there, but we were used to that.