Carved Up!

Thank you to Linda Roberts, Bygones Co-ordinator at the Grimsby Telegraph, for finding the following fascinating snippets about our ancient forest in the paper's archives. We also very much appreciate the Telegraph giving us permission to publish these two fantastic photographs from 1954.1949 - WOOD from a 4,000-year-old forest off Cleethorpes foreshore was soon to be used. It would, if a recommendation by the Cleethorpes Sands Committee was passed by the council, be salvaged and used for presentation caskets and other carved wooden objects to be placed in the Mayor's Parlour. 66-year-old Mr J Robson, the noted Cleethorpes wood carver, had already taken samples of the wood and made a number of experimental carvings. Part of the submerged forest at a point opposite Gayway was accessible at low tide and there were several tree trunks, which had broken off at the roots, embedded in boulder clay.

21 April 1954 -Yesterday the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Sheffield, Coun. and Mrs O. S. Holmes, visited the Mayor and Mayoress of Cleethorpes, Coun. and Mrs A. B. Winters, for the day. Coun. Holmes is interested in archaeology and the civic party donned gum boots and waded out to the submerged forest off the beach at Wonderland where they sawed off part of a tree, one of thousands that flourished at Cleethorpes 4,000 years ago.

When the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited in 1958, they went to Cleethorpes Council House. Before leaving they were presented with two caskets made from oak from the submerged forest.

As we previously reported on our Facebook page, a two foot piece of timber, sawed off the forest by the mayoral woodcutters, hangs in the Weston Park Museum in Sheffield, bearing the Cleethorpes crest.

As our talks on the forest and trackway, organised in conjunction with and presented by CITiZAN, have proved so popular and places have been at a premium, we will shortly be announcing a date for a third run of the talk at a larger venue, so please keep checking for details.