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 settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

poem of the Battle of Brunanburh. The name is found in versions of the ''

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alf ...

'' 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 at Heswall, Wirral. Another possible location is Lingham, on the Irish Sea coastline of Wirral at Moreton. In an article in '' Notes and Queries'' 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