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Revision as of 18:48, 13 September 2006 by GrimGary (talk | contribs) (→External links)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) For other uses, see Grimsby (disambiguation).Template:Infobox England place with map UA Grimsby (formerly Great Grimsby) is a seaport on the river Humber in the north of England, United Kingdom which has a population of around 90,000 (140,000 including Cleethorpes). 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). According to legend, Grimsby was first founded by Grim, a Dane. 'By' means 'village' in Old Norse and 'city' in the modern Danish language.
Historically in Lincolnshire, 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 was given county borough status in 1891, which it retained until it was moved into Humberside in 1974 (where it formed the borough of Great Grimsby) and since 1996 has been part of the unitary authority of North East Lincolnshire. However in terms of historic Lincolnshire it is the largest conurbation.
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 Grimsby.
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 Grim's by, or "Grim's Village". This is based on Grim the Danish Viking, supposedly the founder of the Town, with by being the Viking 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.
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.
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.
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 have 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. 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.
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 and overfishing, 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.
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 this large fish finger factory in 2005. The largest employers in the area are pharmaceutical giant Novartis, textile manufacturer Acordis, chemical producer Huntsman Tioxide, food processor Young's Bluecrest Seafood and the two oil refineries at nearby Immingham.
The port partnership of Grimsby & Immingham is the largest port in the UK in terms of tonnage, with a total traffic of 55.9 million tonnes, 10% of the total, in 2003.
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)
Shopping facilities
The area is home to a vibrant retail industry. Grimsby's catchment area for retail is geographically large, extending outwards to at least Hull in the North, Sheffield to the West, Lincoln to the South-west, and Peterborough to the South.
The award-winning Freshney Place Shopping Centre in the heart of the town boasts over 70 stores including Marks and Spencer, 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 Hammersons 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 1960's 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 Wilkinsons, the Halifax Bank and the St. James Hotel is based) and streets going back many centuries including Flottergate, Brewery Street and East St.Mary's Gate. In 1990 the council sold its share to Hammersons and the latter 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.
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 Peakes 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, though reflecting Grimsby's relative urban deprivation in terms of low private transport ownership and relatively cheap central commercial land (traffic jams can occur at busy times as a consequence). Other major retailers include the supermarket chains Sainsbury's, ASDA and Morrisons.
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.
A new retail and leisure complex is to be built on the West Marsh by landowners P&O Estates. Covering 85 acres and costing £30million it is planned to be open by 2009; a similar retail development is planned alongside the proposed new ground 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.
The area is also famed for its nightlife. 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 five such operations. It too attracts large numbers of people with areas with less-developed nightlife, such as Scunthorpe.
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 undertakings. Stagecoach had all the buses resprayed to their standard livery to replace the buses previous colour 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.
In 2005 Stagecoach bought out Lincolnshire Road Car, who provided buses to 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.
Grimsby also has rail links via Grimsby Town station and Grimsby Docks station. First 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 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 building.
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 avaiation, with five flying clubs based there. There are also scheduled flights to Aberdeen, Amsterdam and Dublin, provided by KLM, Eastern Airways and Ryanair.
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.
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.
Grimsby in the media
Bernie Taupin, who lived in Humberston and 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.
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. Currently the old ice factory on Grimsby docks is being used as one of the locations for new film 'Atonement' starring Keira Knightley. Grimsby Docks are being prepared for shooting to begin in the next few weeks.
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's daily newspaper (Grimsby Telegraph) also encouraged the town to support Big Brother 6 contestant Derek Laud as he was once a researcher for then-Cleethorpes MP Michael Brown in the early 1980s.
The docks area was used as a set for the 2007-released film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement.
Grimsby is also set to play a part in the upcoming PlayStation 3 videogame Resistance: Fall of Man, where the player will have to defend the town (and a number of other larger English cities) from an alien invasion.
Notable connections
Famous celebrities who come from Grimsby include actresses Patricia Hodge and Julie Peasgood, also the actors John Hurt, Johnny Leeze (formerly in Emmerdale) and the late comedian Freddie Frinton were raised in the area. Norman Lamont, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer was brought up in the town, as was the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse David Ross. His grandfather J Carl Ross was the founder of the once mighty Ross trawler company and who moved into frozen food. It is still a popular frozen food brand albeit no longer with any family connection.
Numerous well known snooker players come from the town, the best-known being Sid Hood, Ray Edmonds, Dean Reynolds, Mike Hallett, Sean Storey and Stuart Carrington. Although synonymous with nearby Scunthorpe Graham Taylor, the former England manager, was once captain of Grimsby Town FC in the 1960s. His former house can still be found in Young Place, Cleethorpes.
Swimmer Brenda Fisher, was the daughter of a Grimsby trawler skipper - she famously swam the channel. A very famous Grimsby based tug was named after her.
Arguably the most noteworthy resident the town ever had was John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth I. There is a Comprehensive School on the Willows Estate named after him.
Trivia
Grimsby is colloquially known as UK Food Town, 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.
Football
The leading 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). They reached an FA Cup quarter-final (1987) and in 1998 won the Auto Windscreens Shield and the second division play-off final.
Blundell Park has the oldest stand in English professional football, the Main Stand, first opened in 1899 although only the foundations date from this time. The club plan to move to the Conoco Stadium at nearby Great Coates in the summer of 2008. This will cost £14m and accommodate 20,000 spectators.
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.
Twin cities
Grimsby's twin cities include:
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See also
- Lay of Havelock the Dane
- Great Coates
- Grimsby Chums
- Grimsby Rural District
- Grimsby Town F.C.
- Humberston
- Waltham
- New Waltham
- Little Coates
- Nunsthorpe
- Old Clee
- Scartho
- Weelsby
- West Marsh
External links
- Grimsby Telegraph - the local newspaper
- Channel 7 Television - the local TV channel
- Grimsby Town Football Club
- Franklin College
- Grimsby Intitute of Further and Higher Education
- Spirit Searchers - Grimsby ghost hunters
- Freshney Place Shopping Centre
Notes and References
- "A Brief History of Grimsby". Retrieved April 12.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - "Historical Grimsby". A thousand years of history and famous figures from Grimsby in Lincolnshire. Retrieved April 12.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - "Leslie Aitchison, Lincolnshire Acts of Parliament". Retrieved April 12.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - "Grimsby Guide". Introduction. Retrieved April 12.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - "Grimsby Guide". Retrieved April 12.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - "The Legend of Grim & Havelock". Retrieved April 12.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - "Newspaper Reports". Retrieved April 13.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - "Department for Transport Maritime Statistics 2003" (PDF). Retrieved August 28.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - "Resistance: Fall of Man". Retrieved August 20.
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Notes
- [http://www.rospa.co.uk/awards/winners2006/silver.htm RoSPA Silver Award
- Resistance: Fall of Man
- UK Food Town
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