Dingesmere is a place known only from the Old English poem[1] of the Battle of Brunanburh. The name is found in versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 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 [2] 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”;[3] “sea of noise”;[4] and “wetland of the Thing (assembly)”.[5]
One of the locations that has been cited is situated on the Dee Estuary at Heswall, Wirral.[6] Another possible location is Lingham, on the Irish Sea coastline of Wirral at Moreton.[7] 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.[8]
It has also been proposed[9] 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[n] ēa, meaning “dirty water”,[10] 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, dung[11] + mere, wetland).