Grimsby

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Grimsby (disambiguation).

Grimsby

Coordinates: 53.5595° N 0.0680° E
Population	87,574
OS grid reference	TA279087
Unitary authority	North East Lincolnshire
Ceremonial county	Lincolnshire
Region	Yorkshire and the Humber
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	GRIMSBY
Postcode district	DN31 to DN34,
Postcode district	part of DN35, DN37
Dial code	01472
Police	Humberside
Fire	Humberside
Ambulance	East Midlands
UK Parliament	Great Grimsby
European Parliament	Yorkshire and the Humber
List of places: UK • England • Lincolnshire

Grimsby (also known as Great Grimsby after its Parliamentary constituency title ^[1]) is a seaport on the Humber Estuary in Lincolnshire, England. It has been the administrative centre of the unitary authority of North East Lincolnshire since 1996. According to legend, Grimsby was first founded by Grim, a Danish fisherman. 'By' means 'village' in Old Norse and 'city' or 'town' in the modern Danish language.

The town itself has a population of around 87,574. It is physically linked to the adjoining town of Cleethorpes, and 11,000 of its inhabitants live in the village of Scartho which was absorbed into Grimsby before laws on the Green Belt were put in place. This combined conurbation has a population of 138,842 making it the largest in Lincolnshire as a whole. It is close to the terminus of the A180, which ends in Cleethorpes.

Historically administered with the rest of Lincolnshire, Grimsby was given county borough status in 1891. Grimsby borough expanded to absorb the adjacent hamlet of Wellow (1889), also the neighbouring parishes of Clee-with-Weelsby (1889), Little Coates (1928), Scartho (1928), Weelsby (1928) and Great Coates (1968). Grimsby had its own police force until the Police Act of 1964, when it merged with the Lincolnshire force.^{[citation needed]}

County borough status lasted until 1974, when it became the borough of Great Grimsby in the new non-metropolitan county of Humberside, with the same boundaries. Since the abolition of Humberside in 1996 Grimsby has been administered as part of the unitary authority of North East Lincolnshire. Grimsby does not have its own town council within the North East Lincolnshire authority.

It is called "Great Grimsby" to distinguish it from Little Grimsby, a village about 14 miles (22 km) to the south, near Louth.

Austin Mitchell is the Member of Parliament for Great Grimsby.

1 History
2 Economy
3 Places of interest and landmarks
4 Shopping facilities
5 Transport
6 Redevelopment and regeneration
7 Media
- 7.1 Grimsby in the media
8 Accent
9 Notable connections
10 Trivia
11 Sport
12 Twin cities
13 See also
14 External links
15 Notes and references
- 15.1 Notes

[edit] History

Grimsby was founded by the Danes in the 9th century AD, although there is some evidence of a small town of Roman workers sited in the area some seven centuries earlier. Located on The Haven, which flowed into the Humber, Grimsby would have provided an ideal location for ships to shelter from approaching storms. It was also well situated for the rich fishing grounds in the North Sea.

The name Grimsby probably originated from the Grim's by, or "Grim's Village". This is based on Grim the Danish Viking, supposedly the founder of the town, with the suffix -by being the Norse word for village. For more on the legendary founding of Grimsby see the Lay of Havelock the Dane.

Grimsby is listed in the Domesday Book, having a population of around 200, a priest, a mill and a ferry. It also appears in the Orkneyinga Saga in the phrase í grims bæ mithivm ‘in the middle of Grimsby’. During the 12th century it developed into a fishing and trading port, at one point ranking twelfth in importance to the Crown in terms of tax revenue. The town was granted its charter by King John in 1201. The first mayor was installed in 1218.

Coat of Arms of the former Great Grimsby Borough Council and present town of Great Grimsby

Grimsby does not have town walls. It was too small and was protected by the marshy land around it. However, the town did have a ditch. In medieval times Grimsby had two parish churches, St Mary's and St James'. Only St James' now remains.

In the 15th century, The Haven began to silt up, preventing ships in the Humber from docking. As a result, Grimsby entered a long period of decline which lasted until the late 18th century. In 1801, the population of Grimsby numbered 1,524, around the same size that it had been in the Middle Ages.

In the early 19th century the town grew rapidly. The Great Grimsby Haven Company was formed by Act of Parliament in May 1796 (the Grimsby Haven Act) for the purpose of "widening, deepening, enlarging, altering and improving the Haven of the Town and Port of Great Grimsby". Grimsby's port boomed, importing iron, timber, wheat, hemp and flax. New docks were necessary to cope with the expansion. The Grimsby Docks Act of 1845 allowed the necessary building works.

Grimsby Dock Tower.

Alexandra Docks and National Fishing Heritage Museum

The Dock Tower was completed in 1851, followed by the The Royal Dock in 1852. No.1 Fish Dock was completed in 1856, followed by No.2 Fish Dock in 1877. Alexandra Dock and Union Dock followed in 1879. During this period the fishing fleet was greatly expanded.

The arrival of the railway in 1848 made it far easier to transport goods to and from the port. Coal mined in the South Yorkshire coal fields was brought by rail and exported through Grimsby.

The population of Grimsby grew from 75,000 in 1901 to 92,000 by 1931 but then remained fairly static for the rest of the 20th century.^{[citation needed]}

During World War II, Grimsby's status as a major port made it a focus of the German Luftwaffe. They used the Dock Tower as a landmark and refused to bomb it. It was later revealed that had the German invasion been successful Grimsby would have been one of the first landing points in the north of England due to the combination of its location and its infrastructure.^{[citation needed]} This was probably one reason why the town suffered significantly less bombing raids than neighbouring fishing port Hull whose geographical location would have made it harder to reach. However Grimsby was still hit by numerous air raids during the war and 197 people were killed.

[edit] Economy

Grimsby is indelibly linked with the sea fishing industry - it was what gave the town its wealth. At its peak in the 1950s it was the largest and busiest fishing port in the world. However as a result of the Cod Wars with Iceland this industry has been in decline for many years. It is still home to the largest fish market in the UK although most of what is sold is now brought overland from other ports or even overseas via containerisation.

In recent years the frozen food industry has become a large part of Grimsby's economy and new industries such as light engineering, chemicals and plastics have grown. Grimsby held the record at one time for the largest 'Cold Store' in the UK and it was in Grimsby that the UK's first 'fish finger' food was produced in 1955. Birds Eye closed their fish finger factory in 2005, ending a link with the town that stretched back 50 years.

Some of the largest employers in the area are pharmaceutical giant Novartis, textile manufacturer Acordis, chemical producer Huntsman Tioxide and food processor Young's Bluecrest Seafood.

The port partnership of Grimsby & Immingham is the largest port in the UK in terms of tonnage, with a total traffic of 57 million tonnes, 10% of the total, in 2006.

[edit] Places of interest and landmarks

Grimsby Docks
Grimsby Dock Tower
National Fishing Heritage Centre
Grimsby Town Hall
Freshney Place Shopping Centre
The Corporation Bridge
Weelsby Woods
Humber Forts
Waltham Windmill
People's Park and Floral Hall
St James' Church (the parish church)

[edit] Shopping facilities

The award-winning Freshney Place Shopping Centre^[2] in the heart of the town boasts over 70 stores including Marks and Spencer, BINNS (House of Fraser) and Bhs. It was originally constructed between 1967 and 1971 in a joint venture between the old Grimsby Borough Council and developers Hammerson's and was known as the Riverhead Centre (so named as the development was adjacent to where the two local rivers, the Freshney and the Haven, meet).

The Riverhead Centre development caused some controversy at the time as it followed the 1960s trend of replacing old architecture with new: In this case it involved the wholesale demolition of much of the old town centre including the historic Bull Ring (which is now where Wilkinson's, the Halifax Bank and the St James Hotel are based) and streets going back many centuries including Flottergate, Brewery Street and East St Mary's Gate.

In 1990 the council agreed to sell the area used for surface car parking to Hammerson's UK Ltd. The development owner and Humberside County Council, the Highway Authority at that time, agreed to the sale of the area of Baxtergate, the road which ran to the rear of the shopping centre. Baxtergate was relocated alongside the River Freshney and became Phase 1 of the Peaks Parkway. Hammerson's UK Ltd. began a £100m redevelopment of the site which saw it double in size. The centre was also covered in a glass roof and (where the new extension was built) two multi-storey car parks were constructed at either end of the centre, effectively privatising, roofing and enclosing the old Top Town area of Grimsby. In recognition of the design of the new facilities, the Royal Town Planning Institute awarded the scheme a commendation in 1992.

Other developments in the town centre include a new Tesco Extra (the second in the area), the Victoria Mills Retail Park which is home to several chain stores including Next and a B&Q Depot off the Peaks Parkway A180~A16 link road.

Unlike many other towns who have shopping facilities on their outskirts, these (and other similar developments) can be found in and around Grimsby's town centre, making shopping far easier for pedestrians and public transport users, reflecting Grimsby's relatively cheap central commercial land. Other major retailers include the supermarket chains Sainsbury's, ASDA and Morrison's. The last store is located just outside the town boundary, in the parish of Laceby, and is peculiarly known as Morrison's Cleethorpes. This is an anomaly arising from when the area was part of the now defunct Cleethorpes borough.

There are also a number of local, independent specialist stores and the Abbeygate Centre (off Bethlehem Street) is where many are located. Once the head office of local brewers Hewitt Brothers it was renovated in the mid-1980s and is home to a number of restaurants and designer clothing stores. The town also has two markets, one next to Freshney Place and the other in Freeman Street, itself once the dominant shopping area in the town but one that has sadly struggled since the late 1970s.

In March 2007, Henry Boot properties announced a new £30m shopping development adjacent to the existing Freshney Place site. The project will create 150,000 square feet of retail space and 290 car parking places on land between the the River Freshney and Sainsbury's, presently occupied by the former Travis Perkins builders' merchants. Included in the plans are 25 residential apartments.

A new retail and leisure complex is also to be built on the West Marsh by landowners P&O Estates. Covering 85 acres and costing £35 million it is planned to be open by 2009; a smaller retail development is planned alongside the proposed new stadium for Grimsby Town FC at Great Coates, scheduled for completion in mid-2008.

Such is the quality of shopping in the area that special bus services are run to bring in shoppers from across the county of Lincolnshire, especially from smaller towns such as Louth, Brigg, Market Rasen, Skegness and Scunthorpe.^{[citation needed]}

The area is also famed for its nightlife.^{[citation needed]} Aside from the nightclubs in nearby Cleethorpes, the town centre has undergone a renaissance in the last decade. A number of pub chains have redeveloped or opened new outlets, including a specially-built complex at the Riverhead which is home to four such operations. It too attracts large numbers of people with areas with less-developed nightlife, such as Immingham.

[edit] Transport

Grimsby's bus service is provided by Stagecoach which took over the original Grimsby-Cleethorpes Transport in 1993. Grimsby-Cleethorpes Transport had been formed in 1957, with the merger of the previously separate Grimsby and Cleethorpes transport (GCT) undertakings. Stagecoach had all the buses resprayed to their standard livery to replace the buses previous colour-scheme of orange and white. Prior to this, the buses were painted blue and white until 1981, when the colours were changed to caramel and cream. The orange and white livery was introduced in 1987. Until 1982 GCT ran a mixture of crewed and one-person operated services. However, in that year the job of conductor was abolished and the company changed entirely to driver-only services.

In 2005 Stagecoach bought out Lincolnshire Road Car, who provided buses to Killingholme, Louth, Barton-upon-Humber and the Willows Estate. The company is now known as Stagecoach in Lincolnshire. Joint ticketing was allowed with Stagecoach Grimsby-Cleethorpes from May 2006.

From September 2006 a new fleet of low-floor single-decker was introduced, making the fleet an unprecedented 85% low-floor.

Grimsby also has rail links via Grimsby Town railway station and Grimsby Docks railway station. TransPennine Express provide direct trains to Manchester Airport via Doncaster and Sheffield whilst Northern Rail operate services to Barton-upon-Humber (for buses to Hull) and Lincoln and Central Trains services to Nottingham.

Grimsby was home to two tramway networks: the Grimsby District Light Railway and the Grimsby & Immingham Electric Railway. The Grimsby Electric was a normal gauge tramway opened in 1912 between Corporation Bridge at Grimsby and Immingham. There was no physical connection with the railway system. The tramway served the town with a passenger service between Grimsby and Immingham until closure in 1961. It is claimed that once this was controlled by the Corporation, they were more interested in supporting the motorbus service, now number 45.

The Grimsby Light Railway opened in 1881 using horse drawn trams. In 1901, these were replaced with electric tramways. In 1925 the Grimsby Transport Company bought the tramway company and in 1927 moved the depot to the Victoria Street Depot, an old sea plane hangar. This system closed in 1937. The depot continues to be used by Stagecoach, though the old Grimsby Tramways livery is still visible on the front of the building.

Operating in the area until the 1950s was a network of electrically operated trolley buses which received their power from overhead power lines.

In the early years of the new millennium it was suggested that a Tramway system much like the Sheffield Supertram should be built in Grimsby. Various news reports and details of which areas the trams might go through were published, though the project was abandoned due to lack of funding. Currently there are no active plans to bring back this proposed system.

10 miles west of Grimsby is Humberside Airport, which mainly caters for charter holidays, and is popular for general aviation, with five flying clubs based there. There are also scheduled flights to Aberdeen and Amsterdam, provided by Eastern Airways and KLM respectively.

[edit] Redevelopment and regeneration

Grimsby is soon to be vastly redeveloped as over £13 million is being used to improve the town. It is currently being planned out by a small team of officials however no details have been released as to which areas of the town will specifically change.

[edit] Media

The Grimsby Telegraph, with an audited circulation of 40,533 copies (January-June 2004), has the highest circulation of a local newspaper in Grimsby and the surrounding area. The local radio stations are Radio Humberside, Lincs FM, Viking FM and Compass FM.The local television channel is Channel 7 Television.

[edit] Grimsby in the media

Bernie Taupin, who lived in Humberston and Tealby, near Market Rasen, when in his teens, wrote a song called Grimsby that was featured on Elton John's 1974 album "Caribou". Corporation Bridge was featured in the video for the Erasure song "The Circus". It also featured clips showing Cleethorpes' Big Wheel.

Grimsby was the location for the 1937 film The Last Adventurers.

The town's Scartho Hospital - now Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital, as well as the Scartho Cemetery entrance featured in the 1985 film Clockwise, starring John Cleese.

The old ice factory on Grimsby Docks was used as one of the locations for the film Atonement, to be released in 2007. Adapted from a novel by Ian McEwan the film stars Keira Knightley.

Local actor Tommy Turgoose, a pupil at Wintringham School, stars in the Shane Meadows film, This Is England (2006).

A rash of lottery winners in the late 1990s saw the town being officially designated "Winsby" by the Grimsby Evening Telegraph but despite popular support this new name never really caught on.

The town went 'Pop Idol mad' in 2003 when Grimsby girl Kim Gee made it into the final 12 of the live TV talent show and in 2006 youngster Georgia Taylor emerged from the smoke and dazzled the nation as the winner of Stars in Their Eyes Kids but later lost out in the live final.

Grimsby also went 'X Factor crazy' when in the first series, G4, a pop quartet with a member from Grimsby, and Verity Keays, a singer from Grimsby, all made final three. Verity and G4 didn't win the contest, but G4 went on to become a big success.

The Grimsby Telegraph also encouraged the town to support Big Brother 6 contestant Derek Laud because in the early 1980s he was once a researcher for Michael Brown, who was then then MP for Brigg and Cleethorpes.

Grimsby features in the PlayStation 3 videogame Resistance: Fall of Man, where the player has to escape a Chimeran Conversion Centre on the Docks.^[3]

[edit] Accent

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since April 2007.

Grimsby and surrounding areas, have their own unique dialect, instantly recognisable to a native of the town and other people from Lincolnshire and Humberside. Although showing influences from both Yorkshire and the East Midlands, the Grimsby accent has some unique aspects to both it's grammar and vocabulary.

The most instantly recognisable characteristic of the Grimsby accent is the unusual pronunciation of the 'ur' sound. Native Grimbarians tend to pronounce it in a similar fashion to the 'ai' sound in 'hair'. The result of this is that the words 'her', 'here', 'hair' and 'ear' all sound exactly the same^{[citation needed]} (as the letter 'h' is seldom pronounced in the town).

Many Grimsby people tend to use the present tense in conversation in place of the past, for example, "I see him last night" instead of "I saw him last night" and "she come downstairs" instead of "she came downstairs".

Another notable characteristic is the pronunciation of a short 'o' sound in place of a long one, so that words like 'over' and 'open' become 'ovver' and 'oppen'.

There are a considerable number of vocabular anomolies in the Grimsby-area accent including:

Spoggie - chewing gum

Jiffling - fidgeting

Boke - to vomit

Beal - to cry

Twagging - to truant from school or not turn up to work without good reason

Pyewipe - a peewit (also the name of an industrial estate in the town)

Skaffer - a local pronunciation of the district of Scartho (pronounced Scar-tho by outsiders)

Meggies - the nearby town of Cleethorpes (etmyology unknown)

[edit] Notable connections

The lack of green belt land and close proximity between Cleethorpes and Grimsby meant that many Grimbarians (natives of Grimsby) were born at the now defunct Croft Baker Maternity Hospital in Cleethorpes. Those born in the area include:

Patricia Hodge (1946) - television actress whose numerous roles include the series Rumpole of the Bailey and Jemima Shore Investigates. Her parents used to manage the now defunct Royal Hotel in the town.

Julie Peasgood (1956) - another actress who has had many television appearances including a major role as Fran in the former soap opera Brookside

Vivean Gray (1924) - actress most noted for the role of Nell Mangel in the Australian soap opera Neighbours; her father was once a fish merchant on Grimsby Docks

Patrick Wymark (1926) - actor noted for his roles in the popular 1960s ITV drama The Power Game and in the 1970 film Cromwell, alongside Richard Harris. The film was completed shortly before his premature death at the age of 44. Wymark View was named after him. (His daughter Jane Wymark is an accomplished actress in her own right, presently seen playing Mrs Barnaby in the drama Midsomer Murders

Freddie Frinton (1909) - a comedian famous for playing a drunk (although in real life he was teetotal). He is more famous in Germany and Scandinavia than he is in his native United Kingdom due to a recording of a sketch of his entitled Dinner for One. Based on a music hall act he used to perform this is shown in Europe each year as part of the New Year's Eve celebrations. In this country he is generally remembered for his role in the 1960s BBC comedy Meet The Wife which also starred Thora Hird.

Dame Madge Kendal (1848) - a famous theatrical actress at the turn of the 20th century. Dame Kendal Grove is named after her.

Michele Dotrice (1948) - actress famed for playing the role of Betty Spencer in the 1970s comedy Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em

Helen Fospero - newsreader for Sky News and Five News

Brenda Fisher - the daughter of a Grimsby trawler skipper, she was one of the first women to swim the English Channel

John Whitgift (1530) - rose to become Archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth I.

Dan Haigh (1981) - bass guitarist in rock group Fightstar, was also born and brought up in the town.

Matthew Stiff (1979) - vocalist with troupe G4 was born in the town and brought up in the nearby village of Waltham.

Quentin Cooper, the presenter of Radio 4's Material World, and film correspondent for Radio 2 grew up in the town.

Shirley Brasher (Bloomer) (1934) - won the French Open Singles and Doubles titles in 1957, and the French Open Mixed title in 1958. She played tennis in her early years at Grimsby Tennis Club. She was married to athlete Chris Brasher. Shirley was part of the successful 1958 team that beat the USA in the Wightman Cup, the first time it had been done for 30 years. At the veterans level, Shirley has won many British national tiles and continues to represent Great Britain internationally at the sport.

Duncan McKenzie (1950) - 1970s footballer. Played for Nottingham Forest, Leeds United and Everton. Famous for feats such as jumping over a Mini from a standing start and throwing a cricket ball out of the ground at Leeds.

Numerous well known snooker players come from the town, the best-known being Sid Hood, Ray Edmonds (1936), Dean Reynolds (1963), Mike Hallett (1959), Sean Storey (1971) and Stuart Carrington (c1990).

Ian Huntley (1974) - convicted for murder.^[4]

Those with connections to the town include:

Norman Lamont (1942) - Conservative MP and former Chancellor of the Exchequer was brought up in the town. His father was a GP in the area.

David Ross - businessman, co-founder and large shareholder in Carphone Warehouse was brought up in the town. His grandfather J Carl Ross was the founder of the Ross Trawler Company and who moved into frozen food. It is still a popular frozen food brand albeit no longer with any family connection.

John Hurt (1940) - although born in Derbyshire, the actor spent his formative years in the town while his father was a minister at a local church.

Jeffrey Archer (1940) - when he was Member of Parliament for the former Louth constituency from 1970 to 1974, his constituency house was in Tetney.

Those who live in the local area include:

Roy 'Chubby' Brown (1945) - adult comedian, lives in the nearby village of Tetney.

Graham Fellows - comedian, famed for his radio character John Shuttleworth and 1970s punk act Jilted John, lives in nearby Louth, as does singer Barbara Dickson (b. 1947) and actor Patrick Mower (b. 1940).

[edit] Trivia

Grimsby is colloquially known as UK Food Town,^[5] previously known as Europe's Food Town. It is said that more pizzas are produced in Grimsby than anywhere else.

The food production and seafood heritage links are perpetuated in a UK 2006 Young's Bluecrest Seafood television advertising campaign emphasising Grimsby as the source of its seafood products. In the campaign, Grimsby Docks are briefly shown, at dusk, lit and shot somewhat romantically.

Grimsby was featured in the Open University documentary Coast.

The MP for Grimsby before Austin Mitchell was Antony Crosland, who served in the Government of Harold Wilson as Education Minister and Foreign Secretary. He was a champion of comprehensive eduction, and Whitgift Comprehensive School is situated in the town's Crosland Road.

Grimsby is the site of a Blue Cross Animal Hospital, one of only four in the country, the other three being situated in London. The Grimsby hospital was previously in Cleethorpe Road, but in 2005 it moved to a new building in Nelson Street.

[edit] Sport

The football team is Grimsby Town F.C., nicknamed 'The Mariners', who play in League Two. Their ground is Blundell Park in Cleethorpes. It is the oldest professional football team in the county of Lincolnshire (indeed one of the oldest in the country being formed in 1878 as Grimsby Pelham with a home ground on land off Ainslie Street, Grimsby).

During the 1930s they played in the English First Division, the then highest level of the domestic game in England. They also appeared in two F.A. Cup semi-finals in this decade, in 1936 (against Arsenal) and 1939 (against Wolverhampton Wanderers. The latter semi-final was held at Old Trafford, Manchester, and the attendance (76,962) is still a record for that stadium.

They also reached an FA Cup quarter-final 1987 and in 1998 won the Auto Windscreens Shield and the second division play-off final. Notable former managers include Bill Shankly and Lawrie McMenemy.

Blundell Park has the oldest stand in English professional football, the Main Stand. It was first opened in 1899 although only the prsent-day foundations date from this time. The club plan to move to a proposed new stadium, sponsored by ConocoPhillips, at nearby Great Coates in the summer of 2009. This will cost £14m^{[citation needed]} and accommodate 20,000 spectators. There has been no commitment from ConocoPhillips on funds to date, however.

Grimsby Borough F.C. is a football club established in 2003 and based in Grimsby. They are members of the Central Midlands League Premier Division.

The area also boasts an amateur rugby union side, the Grimsby RUFC, and an amateur cricket side, the Grimsby Town Cricket Club, both of which attract reasonable levels of support. Tennis teams from local clubs have been successful in various inter-County competitions with the Mens Team from Grimsby Tennis Centre winning the Lincolnshire Doubles League again in 2005. Tennis players from the town represent the County on a regular basis at all age levels.

Grimsby Tennis Centre underwent a major redevelopment of facilities in 2005 and is now entirely accessible to the disabled.

The town had one of the largest table tennis leagues in the country (Grimsby & District Table Tennis League)with over 120 teams competing during the 1970's, but sadly, like the game of squash, the sport has declined in the town during recent years.

Cleethorpes Cricket Club (Chichester Road, Cleethorpes) has three squash courts, Millfields Hotel (in Bargate) two courts and there is one court at Grimsby Tennis Centre (Weelsby Avenue, Grimsby).