Free Folklore of Lincolnshire by Susanna O'Neill Page B

winds and lashing rain, which was unfortunate for the crew, but just the conditions that some of the inhabitants of Burgh-le-Marsh were waiting for. They had a beacon upon Marsh Hill, which they often lit to lure ships into danger, in order to loot them. However, they decided that on this night,the light would be construed as a warning, so it was better to leave the ship alone in the dark to face the inevitable disaster which would befall it in such a storm.

    The Burgh-le-Marsh beacon, situated next to the church, on a small hill within a field next to the main road.
    The Sexton Guymer, however, felt moved to help the poor wretches and so he took himself off to St Peter’s and locked himself in the belfry. The old man began to ring the great bell, Grandsire Bob, hoping the ship’s crew would hear it and be warned away from the coast. The villagers certainly heard it and ran to the church to stop the old man. They were furious but, hard as they tried, they were unable to break into the church. Guymer pulled and pulled on the bell and managed to keep ringing Grandsire Bob for a whole hour. The warning was heeded by the crew of the Mary Rose and they managed to steer away from the danger. When the villagers finally broke the church door down they found poor Guymer dead, still grasping onto the bell rope as if continuing his mission in death. Legend states that the captain returned to the village the following year to express his thanks for saving his life. When he learnt the truth, he apparently bought an acre of land in Orby Field, which he named Bell String Acre, and with the money he earned in rent he bought a new silken rope for Grandsire Bob.
    As well as ship wreckers and actual monsters, there have been some terrible monster storms which have devastated the coastline along Lincolnshire. One of the worst was the great storm of January 1953, in Mablethorpe, which claimed forty-one lives within just a few short hours. The Book of the Lincolnshire Seaside mentions the sad tale of four elderly people who were amongst the forty-one drowned. Annie Millward had made a prior arrangement with her neighbours that they could ring the bell connected between their houses if they ever needed help. On that fatefulday, however, Annie herself was marooned and could only listen in horror as the bell’s insistent ringing grew quiet.
    The sea was not the only water to be feared, as the tragedy of the Louth flood shows. On a rainy day, 29 May 1920, the usually peaceful River Lud broke its banks and caused a catastrophic flood in the town. Meteorologists suggested the cause was a ‘cloud burst’ some six miles away, which had then swept down the valley gathering such momentum that within half an hour of the Lud breaching its banks, it had risen to an unbelievable 15 feet above its usual level. Houses were swept away, bridges toppled, people were trapped and twenty-three died in the flood that day, including children. In one tragic incident a mother was trapped with her four young children. She apparently lifted three of them onto the kitchen dresser then climbed up herself with her baby in her arms. As the water level rose, she hung on to a hook in the ceiling and the three young ones clung onto her dress, until one by one they could no longer hold on and they were swept out of her grasp, only to drown before her very eyes. The mother and baby were rescued sometime later. There is a memorial stone in the town cemetery to all those who lost their lives, reading, ‘Let not the waterflood overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up.’

    The memorial stone to commemorate those who lost their lives during the Great Flood of Louth, 1920.
    There was a time when the Fens were often flooded and after a few days the area looked as it had before it was drained. It happened so often that there were flood laws that everyone adhered to, which Katherine Briggs relates in Barrett’s Tales of the Fens . The laws stated that anything found floating