| - |
- Grimsby -
If it weren’t for Grimsby, we might never have seen the white beard of Captain Birdseye or heard the advertising slogan: ‘As fresh as the day when the pod went pop!’ For Grimsby – once the heart of the British trawling industry – has repositioned itself as Europe’s Food Town’; it was here, on Lincolnshire’s north-east coast, that Captain Birdseye (or someone close to him) invented the fish finger, and it was Grimsby which produced the first frozen pea. Though it is still officially Britain’s number one fishing port, today Grimsby is home to only about 60 trawlers; earlier in the 1900s 650 vessels fished out of Grimsby Dock.
Faced with the terminal decline of the fishing industry, Grimsby Fish dock Enterprises invested over £14million in a brand new fish market, which opened in 1996. Now Grimsby is the UK’s centre for buying, selling and freezing fish, though only about a quarter of the catch is landed in the dock itself.
Fittingly, Grimsby takes its name from a poor Lincolnshire fisherman called Grim who (according to legend) rescued Havelok, a young Danish prince who had been put to sea in a boat following the murder of his father, King Birkabeyn. Grim raised Havelok as his own, and when the prince returned to Denmark and won back his kingdom, he bestowed a handsome reward on his rescuer. Grim used his new found wealth to found the town, which bears his name.
It is a workaday place, and not richly endowed with fine buildings; but one landmark stands out – the dock tower, designed in rather lavish style by J.W.Wild in imitation of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, and built in 1852 by J.M.Rendel. Dominating the docklands at a height of 309 feet, the tower had a function when it was first conceived – to accumulate water pressure for working the locks, cranes and sluices of the docks. It remained in useful service for only 40 years, but since its retirement it has taken on a rather different role as the town’s distinctive symbol.
|
