Flixborough is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

North Lincolnshire North Lincolnshire is a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in Lincolnshire, England. At the 2011 United Kingdom census, 2011 Census, it had a population of 167,446. T ...

, England. The population at the 2011 census was 1,664. It is near the

River Trent The Trent is the third Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, longest river in the United Kingdom. Its Source (river or stream), source is in Staffordshire, on the southern edge of Biddulph Moor. It flows through and drains the North Midlands ...

, north-west from

Scunthorpe Scunthorpe () is an industrial town in Lincolnshire, England, and the county's third most populous settlement after Lincoln, England, Lincoln and Grimsby, with a population of 81,286 in 2021. It is the administrative centre and largest settleme ...

. The village is noted for the 1974 Flixborough disaster. Flixborough is in the

Burton upon Stather __NOTOC__ Burton upon Stather, also hyphenated as Burton-upon-Stather, is a village and civil parish in North Lincolnshire, England. The village is situated north from Scunthorpe, and is near the east bank of the River Trent. The civil parish ...

and Winterton ward of North Lincolnshire Council, and its boundary covers the southern part of Normanby Park. Its

Grade II In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

listed

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

church is dedicated to All Saints. The village

public house A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption Licensing laws of the United Kingdom#On-licence, on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the ...

is The Flixborough Inn on High Street.

History

Flixborough has had many different spellings through the centuries, from "Flichesburg" in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086 to Flikesburg, Flyxburgh and Flixburrow. Eminson suggests that the first part of the name is an early form of the word ''cliff'', and as the original settlement stood on a sloping cliff overlooking the

, the village's name can be translated as "fortified dwelling on the cliff slope". The remains of an

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

settlement in the parish of Flixborough were excavated by Humberside Archaeology Unit between 1989 and 1991. The settlement was located to the south of the

Humber Estuary The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England. It is formed at Trent Falls, Faxfleet, by the confluence of the tidal rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Trent, Trent. From there to the North Sea, it forms ...

, overlooking the

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high Discharge (hydrolog ...

of the Trent. During the two-year programme, an unprecedented Middle to Late

Saxon The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...

rural In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry are typically desc ...

settlement sequence was uncovered, dating between the early 7th and early 11th centuries AD. It is particularly exceptional because of the association of 40 buildings, floor surfaces and massive refuse dumps. A notable son of Flixborough is Sir Edmund Anderson, who was

Chief Justice of the Common Pleas The chief justice of the common pleas was the head of the Court of Common Pleas, also known as the Common Bench, which was the second-highest common law Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body ...

during the reign of Queen

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last and longest reigning monarch of the House of Tudo ...

and tried

Mary, Queen of Scots Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was List of Scottish monarchs, Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication in 1567. The only surviving legit ...

. Flixborough is one of the Thankful Villages that suffered no fatalities during the First World War.

Entry from the 1900 ''Kelly's Trade Directory''

Flixborough is a parish and pleasant village, northwest from Frodingham station on the Penistone and Cleethorpes branch of the Great Central (late M. S. and L.) railway, 7 miles east from Crowle and 21 miles north from Gainsborough, in the North Lindsey division of the county, parts of Lindsey, north division of Manley wapentake, Winterton petty sessional division, Brigg union, Brigg County Court district, rural deanery of Manlake, archdeaconry of Stow and
diocese of Lincoln The Diocese of Lincoln forms part of the Province of Canterbury in England. The present diocese covers the ceremonial county of Lincolnshire. History The diocese traces its roots in an unbroken line to the Pre-Reformation Diocese of Leice ...
. Here is a ferry over the River Trent to Amcotts, and the Gainsborough Hull steam packets call here on Tuesdays and Fridays. The old church of All Saints, a very plain edifice of stone, erected in the year 1789, was taken down and rebuilt in 1886, at a cost of £1,710; and is now an edifice in the Late Decorated style, consisting of chancel, nave, south porch and a western belfry of wood, with spire, containing one bell: the church retains a Norman font and a handsome carved oak chancel screen: there are 150 sittings. The register dates from the year 1573. The living is a rectory united with the vicarage of Burton-upon-Stather, joint net yearly value £429, including 163 acres of glebe and two houses, in the gift of Sir B. D. G. Sheffield Bart. and held since 1882 by the Rev. Francis Amcotts Jarvis M.A. of
Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...
, rural dean of Manlake and J.P. Lincs. who resides at Burton. A new rectory house was built in 1884 by the rector, and is occupied by the Rev. Peter Tivy Tomkins of St Aidan's, who is curate. About half a mile (800 m) from the village traces of an old church and the moat belonging to a mansion, formerly, it is believed, the seat of the Anderson family, are still visible: this place is supposed to have been the birthplace of Sir Edmund Anderson, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who died 1 August 1605, and was interred in the church of Epworth, Bedfordshire, where there is a monument with effigies to himself and his wife. Here was formerly a Roman settlement. Sir Berkeley D. G. Sheffield bart of Normanby Park, is Lord of the Manor and principal landowner. The soil is loam, clay, sand and warp;
subsoil Subsoil is the layer of soil under the topsoil on the surface of the ground. Like topsoil, it is composed of a variable mixture of small particles such as sand, silt and clay, but with a much lower percentage of organic matter and humus. The su ...
, various. The chief crops are wheat, barley, turnips, potatoes and beans, and some land is pasture. The area of the township is 2,651 acres of land, 72 of tidal water and 17 of foreshore; rateable value, £2,417; the population in 1891 was 242. Parish Clerk, G. Gillatt. Post Office – Samuel Tate, sub-postmaster. Letters arrive through Doncaster 8.15 am and are dispatched 6 p.m. Postal orders are issued here, but not paid. The nearest money order and telegraph office is at Burton-upon-Stather, 3 miles distant. Parish School (mixed) built in 1877, for 80 children; average attendance, 34; Miss Mary E. Ives, mistress.

Flixborough explosion

On Saturday 1 June 1974 at 16:53 Flixborough was at the centre of the UK's worst

industrial accident A work accident, workplace accident, occupational accident, or accident at work is a "discrete occurrence in the course of work" leading to physical or mental occupational injury. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more th ...

when the Nypro Works chemical plant was devastated by an explosion, known as the Flixborough disaster. The plant manufactured

Caprolactam Caprolactam (CPL) is an organic compound with the chemical formula, formula (CH2)5C(O)NH. This colourless solid is a lactam (a cyclic amide) of caproic acid. Global demand for this compound is approximately five million tons per year, and the vast ...

. Escaping

cyclohexane Cyclohexane is a cycloalkane with the molecular formula . Cyclohexane is non-polar. Cyclohexane is a colourless, flammable liquid with a distinctive detergent-like odor, reminiscent of cleaning products (in which it is sometimes used). Cyclohexan ...

formed a

flammable A combustible material is a material that can burn (i.e., sustain a flame) in air under certain conditions. A material is flammable if it ignites easily at ambient temperatures. In other words, a combustible material ignites with some effort ...

vapour cloud and ignited. Twenty-eight people died and more than 100 were injured, with around 100 homes in the village itself being destroyed or badly damaged. There is a memorial to the disaster."Flixborough Explosion Memorial"
geograph.org.uk. Retrieved 30 July 2011

Population figures (1801–1991)

References

Bibliography

* ''The Early Medieval Settlement Remains From Flixborough, Lincolnshire. The Occupation Sequence, c. AD 600–1000. Excavations at Flixborough''. Vol. 1. Ed. by Christopher Loveluck and David Atkinson. Oxford, Oxbow, 2007. * ''Life and Economy at Early Medieval Flixborough, c. AD 600–1000: The Artefact Evidence. Excavations at Flixborou''gh, Volume 2. Ed. by D. H. Evans and Christopher Loveluck. Oxford, Oxbow, 2009. * ''Farmers, Monks and Aristocrats: The Environmental Archaeology of an Anglo-Saxon Flixborough. Excavations at Flixborough.'' Vol. 3. Edited by James Barrett, Keith Dobney, Deborah Jacques and Cluny Johnstone. Oxford, Oxbow, 2007. * ''Rural Settlement, Lifestyles and Social Change in the Late First Millennium AD. Anglo-Saxon Flixborough in its Wider Context''. Excavations at Flixborough. Vol. 4. Edited by Christopher Loveluck. Oxford, Oxbow, 2007.

External links

*
Flixborough Anglo-Saxon Settlement, North Lincolnshire

PDF file from North Lincs Council
{{Authority control Civil parishes in Lincolnshire Villages in the Borough of North Lincolnshire