To the modern visitor Freiston Shore may seem an unlikely beneficiary of the description “the Brighton of the middle classes in Lincolnshire” (Robinson, 1989, p.53), as Brodie and Winter point out a more realistic description of its role may have been more truthfully described by a visitor as a place where “a number of tradesmen and farmers resorted with their wives in the hope of receiving benefits from their use of the sea water” (Brodie and Winter, 2007, p.13). The coast at Freiston is one of accretion; whereas the north part of the Lincolnshire coast is being gradually eroded by the sea, the area south of Skegness is growing as deposits are laid down by the sea (Robinson, 1981). During the eighteenth century, when sea-bathing was advocated as a cure for all manner of ills, Freiston became a popular and thriving resort. Its two bathing hotels still remain, the Plummers Arms is now residential apartments; the Marine Hotel is a ruined shell. David Robinson quotes the example of Richard Fowkes, a Leicestershire tenant farmer who resorted to Freiston to drink the sea water and to bathe, a journey which took him three days in 1805.
Sea Bathing on these shores is very good for all scorbutic complaints etc, and a poor appetite... Yet I thought a great many of the company came to see and be seen more than for sea bathing. Young ladies to see for husbands, and your fortune-hunters for wives. These are the humours of Freiston Shore.
The Lincolnshire coast was an obvious choice for such an individual because of its proximity to the midlands and it is from this period that visitors from the midlands start to make use of the Lincolnshire coast for health and recreation. The diary of William Gould, the Duke of Portland’s agent at Welbeck records in 1789:
The Lincolnshire coast was an obvious choice for such an individual because of its proximity to the midlands and it is from this period that visitors from the midlands start to make use of the Lincolnshire coast for health and recreation. The diary of William Gould, the Duke of Portland’s agent at Welbeck records in 1789:
Sunday 7th June 1789 Son Joseph and Mr. Bullivant have agreed to go to Freestone (sic) in Lincolnshire for a week or ten days in order to bathe in the sea for scorbutic complaints.
Friday 12th June 1789 This morning son Joseph and Mr. Bullivant set off for Freiston in Lincolnshire in order to bathe in the sea for about ten days, on account of a scorbutic complaint which they complain of.
(Gould, 1789, p.352)
Unfortunately Gould leaves no comment as to whether the waters at Freiston proved efficacious or not, but his brief account of his sons visit there demonstrates not only the popularity of the resort but also the emulation of aristocratic modes of behaviour by the middle classes.
The process of coastal accretion was to take its toll on Frieston the beaches gradually became salt marsh, the bathing hotels continued as inns for some considerable time and continued to attract visitors through the first three decades of the twentieth century.
From the early twentieth century Freiston had been used for military, educational and reformatory purposes and large areas of it were reclaimed in order to provide agricultural land. During the second half of the twentieth century the scientific interest of the area as a habitat for wildlife was recognised and attempts were made by the Nature Conservancy and Lincolnshire Naturalists Trusts to have it designated a nature reserve. These attempts were unsuccessful, as were similar attempts to prevent land reclamation elsewhere around the Wash, until the decision to allow the RSPB to buy the land and to demolish the sea bank and re flood the area to encourage its return to intertidal salt marsh and mud flats in 2002.
Brodie, A and Winter, G (2007) English Seaside Resorts Swindon: English Heritage
Gould, W (2002) Copies of the diaries of William Gould (1739-fl 1795), land agent of William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland MSS 736
Mills D (ed.) (1989) Twentieth Century Lincolnshire, Lincoln: Yard
Smith E (2009) Trustees for Nature, Horncastle: Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust
Robinson D (1981) The Book of the Lincolnshire Seaside, Buckingham: Baron
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