The Wash


The Wash is a shallow natural rectangular bay and multiple estuary on the east coast of England in the United Kingdom. It is an inlet of the North Sea and is the largest multiple estuary system in the UK, as well as being the largest natural bay in England, and is the outflow for the rivers Witham, Welland, Nene and the Great Ouse. It is also one of the most important places of conservation in Europe, with several nature reserves located within this area.
The coastline is partly in Lincolnshire and partly in Norfolk. The Lincolnshire side forms part of the only coastline of the East Midlands region whilst the Norfolk side forms the north-west corner of the East Anglian region. The coastline stretches from Gibraltar Point just south of the seaside town of Skegness to Gore Point near the village of Holme-next-the-Sea, just east of the seaside town of Hunstanton in Norfolk. These two points are over from each other by road, but only by sea.
The bay is made up of multiple estuaries, marshland, deep water channels, shifting shallow water channels which are all surrounded by multiple sandbanks.
There are several large settlements near its coastline, the largest is the town of King's Lynn in Norfolk followed by the two slightly smaller towns of Boston in Lincolnshire and Wisbech in Cambridgeshire. These are the three main inland ports in the Wash area; a fourth smaller port is also available for shipping on the River Nene at Sutton Bridge and a small marina for pleasure craft is also accessible on the tidal River Welland at Fosdyke Bridge. Nearby, on either side of the Wash at almost opposite ends to each other, are the seaside towns of Skegness which is located on the top of the Lincolnshire side just north of Gibraltar Point and Hunstanton on the top of the Norfolk side north of the nearby royal estate of Sandringham.

Geography

The Wash makes a large indentation in the coastline of Eastern England that separates Lincolnshire from the curved coast of East Anglia. It is a large bay with three roughly straight sides meeting at right angles, each about in length.
The western coast, which is roughly parallel to the east coast, runs from Gibraltar Point to the mouth of the River Welland just north east of the village of Fosdyke, and is entirely within Lincolnshire. The southern coast from Fosdyke to King's Lynn runs roughly north-west to south-east, connecting these two river mouths, and is punctuated by the mouth of a third river, the River Nene, which flows into the Wash just north of Sutton Bridge with the county boundary between Lincolnshire and Norfolk meeting just beyond this point before it continues eastwards to Ongar Hill where it meets the mouth of the River Great Ouse.
The eastern coast of the Wash is entirely within Norfolk, and initially extends from the mouth of the River Great Ouse just north of the town of King's Lynn north eastwards towards the small village of Wolferton close to the Sandringham estate before heading northwards from Snettisham to the low lands of Heacham, the town of Hunstanton, and the village of Old Hunstanton, before reaching its northern extremity at Gore Point near Holme-next-the-Sea, where the Norfolk coast turns eastwards.
Inland from the Wash the land is flat, low-lying and often marshy: these are the Fens of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk.
Deposits of sediment and land reclamation have altered the coastline of the Wash markedly in historical times. Several towns once on the coast of the Wash are now some distance inland. Much of the Wash itself is very shallow, with several large sandbanks, such as Breast Sand, Bulldog Sand, Roger Sand and Old South Sand, which are exposed at low tide, especially along the south coast. These form hazards to navigation.
Three commercial shipping lane channels lead inland from the Wash:
both via the large channel known as the Lynn Deeps.
  • The third shipping lane can accessed via the narrower Boston Deeps channel to lead inland, via The Haven to the Port of Boston.
Each of the three shipping lanes has maritime pilot stations to guide and navigate incoming and outgoing cargo ships. Large boats can now only access the River Welland as far as Fosdyke Bridge since the replacement of the old swing bridge which carries the A17 road over the river with a fixed bridge in 1990 following the decline of Spalding as a port during the first part of the 20th century leaving only very small craft being able to use this route.
A re-survey of the coastline of the Wash carried out by the Ordnance Survey in 2011 revealed that an estimated additional on its coastline had been created by accretion since previous surveys between 1960 and 1980.

Water temperature

The Wash varies enormously in water temperature throughout the year. Winter temperatures are brought near freezing by the cold North Sea flows. Summer water temperatures can reach after prolonged high ambient air temperature and sun. This effect, which typically happens in the shallow areas around beaches and often only in pockets of water, is exaggerated by the large sheltered tidal reach.

Wildlife

The Wash is made up of extensive salt marshes, major inter-tidal banks of sand and mud, shallow waters and deep channels. As understanding of the importance of the natural marshes has increased in the 21st century, the seawall at Freiston has been breached in three places to increase the salt-marsh area and provide extra habitat for birds, particularly waders, and as a natural flood-prevention measure. The extensive creeks in the salt marsh and the vegetation that grows there help to dissipate wave energy, so enhancing the protection afforded to land behind the salt marsh. This is an example of the recent exploration of the possibilities of sustainable coastal management by adopting soft engineering techniques, rather than with dykes and drainage. The same scheme includes new brackish lagoon habitat.
On the eastern side of the Wash, low chalk cliffs, with a noted stratum of red chalk, are found at Hunstanton. The gravel pits found at Snettisham RSPB reserve are an important roost for waders at high tide. This Special Protection Area borders onto the North Norfolk Coast Special Protection Area. To the north-west, the Wash extends to Gibraltar Point, another SPA.
The partly confined nature of the Wash habitats, combined with ample tidal flows, allows shellfish to breed, especially shrimp, cockles and mussels. Some water birds such as oystercatchers feed on shellfish. It is also a breeding area for common tern, and a feeding area for marsh harriers. Migrating birds such as geese, duck and wading birds come to the Wash in large numbers to spend the winter, with an average total of around 400,000 birds present at any one time. It has been estimated that some two million birds a year use the Wash for feeding and roosting during their annual migrations.
The Wash is recognised as being internationally important for 17 species of bird. They include pink-footed goose, dark-bellied brent goose, shelduck, pintail, oystercatcher, ringed plover, grey plover, golden plover, lapwing, knot, sanderling, dunlin, black-tailed godwit, bar-tailed godwit, curlew, redshank and turnstone.

History

Wash River

At the end of the latest glaciation, and while the sea level remained lower than it is today, the rivers Witham, Welland, Glen, Nene and Great Ouse joined into a large river.
The deep valley of the Wash was formed, not by an interglacial river, but by ice of the Wolstonian and Devensian stages flowing southwards up the slope represented by the modern coast and forming tunnel valleys, of which the Silver Pit is one of many. This process gave the Silver Pit its depth and narrowness. When the tunnel valley was free of ice and seawater, it was occupied by the river. This kept it free of sediment, unlike most tunnel valleys. Since the sea flooded it, the valley seems to have been kept open by tidal action. During the Ipswichian Stage, the Wash River probably flowed by way of the site of the Silver Pit, but the tunnel valley would not have been formed at this stage, as its alignment seems inconsistent.
In Roman Britain, embankments were built around the Wash's margins to protect agricultural land from flooding. However, they fell into disrepair after the Roman withdrawal in 407 CE.
From 865 to about 1066, the Wash was used by the Vikings as a major route to invade East Anglia and Middle England. Danes established themselves in Cambridge in 875. Before the 12th century, when drainage and embankment efforts led by monks began to separate the land from the estuarine mudflats, the Wash was a tidal part of the Fens that reached as far as Cambridge and Peterborough.
Local people put up fierce resistance against the Normans for some time after the 1066 Conquest.
The name Wash may have been derived from Old English wāse meaning mud, slime or ooze. The word Wasche is mentioned in the popular dictionary Promptorium parvulorum of about 1440 as a water or a ford. A chronicle states that King Edward VI passed the Wasshes as he visited the town of King's Lynn in 1548. By then, documents began to refer to the Waashe or Wysche, but only for the tidal sands and shoals of the rivers Welland and Nene. Sixteenth-century scholars identified the Wash as the Æstuarium Metuonis mentioned by Ptolemy in Roman times. They claimed the word was still in occasional use. William Camden characterized The Washes as "a very large arme" of the "German Ocean", "at every tide and high sea covered all with water, but when the sea ebbeth, and the tide is past, a man may pass over it as on dry land, but yet not without danger", as King John learned not without his loss. Inspired by Camden's account, William Shakespeare mentioned the Lincolne-Washes in his stage play King John. During the 17th and 18th centuries the name Wash came to be used for the estuary itself.
Drainage and reclamation works around the Wash continued until the 1970s. Large areas of salt marsh were progressively enclosed by banks and converted to agricultural land. The Wash is now surrounded by artificial sea defences on all three landward sides. In the 1970s, two large circular banks were built in the Terrington Marsh area of the Wash, as part of an abortive attempt to turn the entire estuary into a fresh water reservoir. The plan failed, not least because the banks were built using mud dredged from the salt marsh, which salinated fresh water stored there.