11th April 2023

50 Years of the Lincolnshire Wolds AONB: Ancient Heritage & Bright Future

The Lincolnshire Wolds Outdoor Festival is almost upon us and we’ll be taking the opportunity to celebrate a special anniversary. We know we’re blessed to live and work in the Lincolnshire Wolds and we’re by no means the first to appreciate its charms and wonders. Monday 17^th April will mark the 50^th anniversary of the Wolds being designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Nationally, Lincolnshire is known for its low-lying and level fens. Locals, however, know there’s a bit more to it than that. The 216 square miles of the Lincolnshire Wolds are defined by their rolling chalk hills, attractive topography and surprising, panoramic glimpses of swathes of countryside bounded by the Humber Estuary to the north, the North Sea to the east and the Wash to the south. Rising to a peak of 168m, ours is the highest ground between Kent and the Yorkshire Wolds.

Ancient sea life makes up the bones of our county, formed into limestone layers during the Cretaceous period between 66-million and 145-million years ago. Geologically speaking, our chalky strata rest upon earlier Jurassic strata, piled up into a scarp which rises near Barton-upon-Humber, peaks at Normanby-le-Wold between Caistor and Market Rasen, and runs south towards Spilsby where it loses its geological identity.

There’s plenty here to keep both serious hikers and geologists amused, but centuries of human and natural history have added their own chapters to our story. The Wolds lives up to its billing as Tennyson country, with rolling countryside bounded by market towns and villages which have retained their rural character. The Victorians and Edwardians left their mark on much of our architecture, and there are precious examples of older properties still in use, not least our own South Ormsby Hall, a grand country house whose origins date to the 17^th century.

Yet humans have been living and farming here since at least the early Neolithic period, around 10,000 BCE, and barrows were used for burial in the Bronze Age, around 2,000 BCE. In the largely agrarian society of the late Medieval period, Lincolnshire was one of England’s most populous and prosperous counties. Many of the historical changes that gave us the Lincolnshire we know today came at a great human cost. Historical forces from the Black Death to climate change and forced enclosures left their mark, and over 100 former Wolds villages exist now only as bumps and hollows in the turf. Local folklore holds that Oliver Cromwell knocked this county about in the 17^th century, but its Medieval character was long gone before he rode to Winceby.

The natural history of the Wolds is being written as we speak. It has been sculpted by humans for millennia, but the post-war era of intensive, high-yield agriculture has come at an unsustainable cost for the natural world, from the microfauna that make up the soil biome to the largest raptors riding the thermals over our heads. The decline in our natural diversity, here and across the UK, urgently needs to be reversed.

We’ve committed ourselves to honouring our Wolds heritage while building for a better future where farming, the community and the environment can thrive together. Like thousands of hard-working farmers, we’re committed to enabling the wild flora and fauna on which we ultimately depend to recover and thrive. To read more about what we’re doing for sustainable farming and biodiversity, and why we’re doing it, click HERE.

Our Lincolnshire Wolds Outdoor Festival Open Weekend – 20th & 21st May – is bursting at the seams with talks, walks and surprises aimed at making you a part of what we do. Armed with an appreciation of what makes the Wolds so special, we hope you’ll join us and help make the 50^th anniversary of our AONB one to remember.

If you’d like to share your views on anything you’ve read here, we’d love to hear from you. Just head to our Facebook page HERE and comment beneath the latest blog post. As ever, thanks for your support.

* Image of Wolds walkers by David Wright via Flickr CC

50 Years of the Lincolnshire Wolds AONB: Ancient Heritage & Bright Future

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