THE RISE AND FALL OF THE EAST MARSH DISTRICT OF GRIMSBY

John A. Walker (copyright)

I was born in 1938 at 105 Newmarket Street, in the East Marsh district of Grimsby a
fishing port on the River Humber next to the seaside holiday resort of Cleethorpes (the
two towns blend into one another). I lived there for ten years and spent another eight
years living a short distance away. The street consisted of terraces of two storey, red brick
houses with no front gardens, so the front door of our house opened directly on to the
pavement. Since in the 1940s and 1950s few people owned cars, small children could
play safely all day in the street while their mothers cleaned windows or stood in
doorways gossiping. The house was without a bathroom and so baths were taken in the
kitchen using a tin bath. The toilet was in an outhouse at the back of the house where
there was also a narrow garden. Rabbits kept in garden hutches as pets ended up on the
dinner table at Christmas time. My father worked on the fish docks first as a barrow boy,
then as a filleter of fish and finally as a small fish merchant. My mother raised two
children and then worked part time in shops. We were poor but never starved. Fresh fish
was always available. Our family benefited from the gradual growing affluence of the
post-war era and the founding of the National Health Service and the Welfare State. I
must record my gratitude for the local authority grants that enabled me to study at
University from 1956 to 1961. Despite the smallness of the houses, many families - even
couples with several children - let out rooms to lodgers to supplement their income.
Newmarket Street was one of many similar streets arranged in a grid pattern bisected by a
main shopping street - Freeman Street - (affectionally referred to by locals as Freemo)
that led directly to the fish docks. I find that in my old age memories of these streets
exercise an exceptional hold on my imagination and I have been driven to depict them in
a series of paintings based on memories and documentary and family-album type
photographs. I have also written short commentaries to accompany the images. I realise
now that as a child I accepted the East Marsh environment as natural: it seemed to me
that it had always been there and I assumed it always would be there. Only in recent
years have I considered such questions as: when were these streets built and who
designed and built them? Who were the houses intended for? Who lived in them and who
owned them? Why were they destroyed in the 1960s and 1970s?
Of course, the answers to these questions are inseparable from the history of the growth
of the town. Before the Victorian period, Grimsby was a small market town separated
from the River Humber by salt marshes. It had an old street market near St James Church
and Victoria St (where the main shops were). In more recent decades it seems to me that
the local politicians have favoured this older, posh area for investment and
redevelopments rather than the East and West marsh areas. During the 19th century,
which was the era of industrialisation, a new town was created closer to the Humber built
on the marshes. Distributing fish from the North Sea throughout Britain only became
possible on a large scale when new docks and railways were introduced in the 1850s and

the 1870s. Once these existed, trade expanded. (In 1855 the tons of fish landed was 188;
in 1901 it was 99,000 and in 1951 it was 198,000). The population - drawn from all over
Britain and abroad - also boomed. (In 1851 the population was 8.860, in 1901 it was
75,000 and in 1951 it was 94,000.) To house the families of the fishermen, dock workers,
and the employees of the many ancillary trades, cheap housing was needed near the
docks, the railway lines and timber yards. Hence the building of the terraces in the East
Marsh and the West Marsh districts which took place during the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s.
Many of the houses were owned by the Freemen of Grimsby (a group who enjoyed land
rights dating back to the Middle Ages) and the houses were rented to workers and had 99
year leases. My parents rented the house at 105 Newmarket St. As the houses aged and
the leases ran out they came to be regarded as slums and there was no incentive to renew
them and this explains why they were knocked down instead of being converted and
improved. Redevelopment meant, in some instances, ugly concrete tower blocks and in
other cases small clusters of new brick houses. In the course of these changes, the grid
pattern of the streets was often disrupted and so a powerful pattern which gave an
architectural integrity and unity to the area was lost. Some interruptions to the fabric of
the town had previously occurred during the 1940s as a result of Nazi bombing raids.
Although I eventually wanted to escape the East Marsh area (I was upwardly socially
mobile, attended a grammar school and then studied art at a University in Newcastle
upon Tyne - I had to move to London to be near my chosen industry - fine art - and it was
only during the 1970s as a result of a new political consciousness that I became proud of
my working class origins), I realise now that there was much to recommend the area:
within a short walk of my home were dozens of shops, several chain stores, cinemas,
pubs and cafes, a street market selling fresh vegetables and fish and chips, public houses
and libraries, snooker halls, chapels and churches, and primary schools, in short a
vibrant, thriving, working-class community. Goods were also delivered direct to the
houses: coal, soft drinks, milk, groceries, newspapers and magazines. Chimney sweeps
paid regular visits to the houses. Expensive, long-distance commuting so typical of life in
South East England was thus absent. The town was built on flat marshland and so
facilitated walking and cycling. Most adults and children owned bikes. Using them one
could reach most workplaces, the beaches of Cleethorpes and Humberston, the country
towns and ancient ruins of Lincolnshire, local woods, public parks and recreation
grounds; consequently, one could easily escape the claustrophobia of the streets and the
smell of rotting fish emanating from the fish docks when the wind was from the East.
Public road transport in the form of trams, trolley buses and petrol buses was also widely
available.
During the 1950s, the fishing industry was at its height. Grimsby was vaunted as the
greatest fishing port in the world, consequently, a huge amount of money surged through
the town and benefited all who worked there and who owned trawlers, shops and
businesses. There is not space here to recount in detail the decline of the fishing industry
and the so called Cod Wars with Iceland and the baleful influence of the European Union.
Suffice to say that the fishing industry of the town was decimated (even though people
still eat fish). Fish is still processed in Grimsby but it arrives by road via containers from

other ports and much of it derives from Iceland. This meant that the streets and people of
the East Marsh who depended on that industry suffered a severe decline, so much so that
the area has been described as the second most deprived of Britain. (1) While I
recognise that all industries rise and fall, the destruction of the trawler fleet seems to have
been wanton. A similar fate befell Cleethorpes because people began to take their
holidays abroad. The crowds of day trippers and holidaymakers ceased to throng the
beaches and promenade.
While most of the architecture of the two towns cannot be characterised as outstanding,
there were many buildings dating from the Victorian era - churches, chapels,
synagogues, schools, hotels, factories, breweries, icehouses, warehouses, theatres and
cinemas, banks, libraries, bathing pools, etc., that were worthy of preservation and re-use.
But time and time again they were knocked down. Squares and streets were destroyed by
clearances and misguided redevelopments. Often nothing was built to replace the old
buildings; consequently, blank spaces and car parks proliferated. The planners and local
councillors of Grimsby and Cleethorpes seem to have made mistake after mistake. There
is a local history website on Facebook entitled Grimsby and Cleethorpes History Club
which has over 12,000 followers. People post images of places they have known and
often add images of how things appear now to illustrate the contrast between past and
present. What is clear from this website, to which I also contribute images and
recollections. is that many residents of my home town share with me a tremendous sense
of loss - at the destruction of a community and the destruction of industries and the
physical fabric of the town. (See http://www.rodcollins.com/wordpress/the-decline-ofgrimsby-docks-an-illustrated-history and http://www.gycodhead.co.uk/eastmarsh.pdf.)
The feeling - often extreme anger and regret - goes beyond mere nostalgia for a past
golden age and a yearning for ones youth. There is a feeling that the powers that be
(local and national politicians, councillors and businessmen) have betrayed the people
whose hard labour over one hundred years created the town and made it vibrant. The
busy streets in which I played as a child are now deserted, many shops in Freeman Street
are boarded up. Of course, there are many industrial towns in Northern England to which
this also applies. It should, however, be acknowledged that Grimsby is still a major centre
for food manufacture, cold storage and fish processing and that new investments in the
docks area have recently taken place; for example, the Seafood Village complex. There
are some entrepreneurs, such as Toby Baxendale and David Ross, who have invested in
the future of the town. There is hope that the docks can revive due to the growth of
renewables - wind farms in the North Sea that will need to be built and serviced.
On the cultural front there are also some signs of change. A civic group exists that is
pressing for the establishment of a public museum and art gallery. A new arts centre
called The Warehouse has also opened at the very head of the street in which I was born.
While it is true there have been a number of regeneration schemes over the decades, they
struggle to replace the major industry - fishing - that has been lost. As a result of capital
investment by individuals and companies tens of thousands of workers were attracted to
Grimsby and made it their home. Once the workers had constructed the town, they
laboured in its industries. However, once capital had extracted every unit of profit,
industrialisation was followed by de-industrialisation as the pattern of economic forces

altered over time. Virtually the only remaining emotional option for the older generation
who grew up in the East Marsh Ward is to mourn. My paintings are a kind of mourningwork, memorials to the dead (some of whom were killed in the service of their country)
and to a vanished past.
A note on art and audience.
Most artists, I presume, have a rough idea of who their work is addressed to and who it is
intended to interest and please. In short, who their art is for. In the case of a
commissioned portrait, the answer is obvious: the patron who is paying for the portrait.
But in other cases, the answer is not so clear cut.
In recent years, I have been painting a series of canvases about my childhood experiences
of growing up in a working-class town in provincial England based on memories,
documentary and family album-type photos. This kind of figurative, narrative painting is
deeply unfashionable. It does not appeal to art world luminaries such as the Tate director
Nicholas Serota, the dealer Nicholas Logsdail, or the art collector Charles Saatchi or the
American hedge fund millionaires who buy contemporary art for investment and social
prestige purposes. This is as it should be because I do not intend my work for such
people but rather for my ancestors, family, relatives and the people who live in the
provincial town in question. When such people see my work - via reproductions on
websites or in the local newspaper - they respond positively but because they do not have
the money to buy art or the habit of doing so, my work is not purchased by them. Also,
unfortunately, the town in question does not possess a public art gallery (which is one
reason I felt compelled to leave it) where my work might be displayed and preserved
(though it does have a fishing heritage centre which displays paintings). I am therefore
struggling to reach my intended audience.
(1) The East Marsh area was the subject of a three-part, Channel 4, documentary TV
series that started on 24/11/2014. It was entitled 'Skint' and focused on the lives of
unemployed fishermen, prostitutes and petty criminals/drug users. This type of
voyeuristic documentary has been characterised as 'poverty porn'. The local newspaper,
concerned by such a negative portrayal of the town, waged a propaganda campaign
against it.