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
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