Proposals for a modest relief road designed to ease agricultural traffic near Skelfleet Marsh have met with stern opposition from local historian and retired postmaster Mr Arthur Petch.

The proposed carriageway, intended to connect the A1077 with the lower beet-loading yard, would pass within forty yards of a marshland drainage ditch known locally as The Big Sough. According to Mr Petch, the ditch was hand-dug in 1384 by monks from nearby Thornton Abbey and remains a monument of international significance.

“Modern planners see only mud and reeds,” declared Mr Petch, holding up a rusted iron shoe found near the bank in 1981. “What we are looking at is an intact medieval watercourse designed specifically to handle brackish runoff during high spring tides. To pave over even a yard of this turf is to spit in the face of Lincolnshire’s hydraulic history.”

He continued: “the planners think we are all Joshkins ’round here, don’t they? We aren’t being mardy, there’s a real issue here.”

Representatives from the County Highways Department attempted to reassure residents at a public consultation in the Assembly Rooms, pointing out that the ditch had been deepened with a diesel excavator in 1993.

Mr Petch dismissed the argument as irrelevant, maintaining that the “spiritual alignment” of the mud remained thoroughly 14th-century.

A petition bearing forty-seven signatures has been dispatched to the Ministry of Works. Meanwhile, parish elders have called for an immediate moratorium on heavy steamrollers within half a mile of the parish boundary.