Dingesmere is a place known only from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

poem of the

Battle of Brunanburh The Battle of Brunanburh was fought in 937 between Æthelstan, King of England, and an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin, Constantine II, King of Scotland, and Owain, King of Strathclyde. The battle is often cited as the poin ...

. The name is found in versions of the '' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' from the year 937. Lines 53-56 of the poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (version A) read: :::''Gewitan him þa Norðmen nægledcnearrum,'' :::''dreorig daraða laf, on Dingesmere'' :::''ofer deop wæter Difelin secan,'' :::''eft Iraland, æwiscmode.'' (The B, C, D and W versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contain the variant spellings ''Dyngesmere'', ''Dingesmere'', ''Dynigesmere'' and ''Dinnesmere''.) These lines have been translated as: :::''Then the sorry remnant of the Norsemen, who had escaped the spears, set out upon the sea of Dinge in their nail-studded ships, making for Dublin over deep waters. Humiliated in spirit they returned to Ireland.'' As Dingesmere does not correspond to any known place-name its meaning has caused considerable controversy. Apart from “sea of Dinge”, suggestions have included: “dingy sea”; “sea of noise”; and “wetland of the Thing (assembly)”. One of the locations that has been cited is situated on the

Dee Estuary The Dee Estuary ( cy, Aber Dyfrdwy) is a large estuary by means of which the River Dee flows into Liverpool Bay. The estuary starts near Shotton after a five-mile (8 km) 'canalised' section and the river soon swells to be several miles ...

Heswall Heswall is a town on the Wirral, Merseyside, England. At the 2001 Census, the population was 16,012, including the nearby villages of Barnston and Gayton. Before local government reorganisation on 1 April 1974 it was part of the administr ...

, Wirral. Another possible location is Lingham, on the

Irish Sea The Irish Sea or , gv, Y Keayn Yernagh, sco, Erse Sie, gd, Muir Èireann , Ulster-Scots: ''Airish Sea'', cy, Môr Iwerddon . is an extensive body of water that separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is linked to the Ce ...

coastline of Wirral at

Moreton Moreton may refer to: People Given name * Moreton John Wheatley (1837–1916), British Army officer and Bailiff of the Royal Parks Surname * Alice Bertha Moreton (1901–1977), English sculptor, draughtsman and artist * Andrew Moreton, a p ...

. In an article in ''

Notes and Queries ''Notes and Queries'', also styled ''Notes & Queries'', is a long-running quarterly scholarly journal that publishes short articles related to " English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism".From the inne ...

'' in 2022, Michael Deakin argues that such a wetland on the tenth-century Wirral coast of the Dee was unlikely. It has also been proposed that Dingesmere corresponds to Foulness Valley in the East Riding of Yorkshire, which in Anglo-Saxon times would have been a wetland, or ''mere'', from the region of Holme-on-Spalding-Moor to the Humber estuary. The name ‘Foulness’ comes from the Old English ''fūle ēa'', meaning “dirty water”, because iron deposits in the water produced a brown discolouration; i.e. a ‘dung-coloured wetland’, or, in Old English, ‘dinges-mere’ (Old English ''ding'', dungClark Hall, J.R, 1960, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., Cambridge University Press. + ''mere'', wetland).

References

10th century in England Anglo-Saxon settlements History of Cheshire Metropolitan Borough of Wirral {{England-hist-stub

See also

References