.Today’s Lincolnshire coastline was very different ten thousand years ago. At the end of the last Ice Age, the North Sea was dry land. As the climate gradually warmed up a forest grew.
It probably began as a pine forest but by about 7000 years ago it had developed into a mixed forest with alder, lime, hazel, oak and birch.
As the water level slowly rose, it killed the trees and they fell, leaving a jumble of stumps and trunks half buried by peat. By about 3000 years ago the sea had covered the slumps and buried them beneath a layer of sediment. In the last 100 years the continued erosion of the coast at Mablethorpe and Sutton-on-Sea has exposed the buried forest.
The remains of the lost forest out to sea were photographed in 1992 by Peter Leake – photos below.