Lincolnshire Yellowbellies

The following article is from "A Second Lincolnshire Hotchpotch" by John R. Ketteringham.

What is a Lincolnshire Yellowbelly?

Over the years there have been many attempts in the columns of our county magazine Lincolnshire Life to explain the origin of the nickname applied to those of us born and bred in the ancient county and these are summarised below:

1. A frog native to the Fens has a yellow belly. It may also be an allusion to the eels which inhabit this area of South Lincolnshire.
2. The waistcoat of the uniform of the Lincolnshire Regiment was yellow. The fastenings of the uniform tunic which were known as frogs were also yellow.
3. Opium extracted from poppy heads and taken to relieve malaria which was prevalent in the Fens turned the skin yellow!
4. Sheep grazing in mustard fields got yellow tummies!
5. Apparently women market traders wore a leather apron with two pockets - one for copper and silver and one for gold. At the end of a good day they would say they had "a Yellow Belly" meaning they had taken a large number of gold sovereigns!
6. The most convincing suggestion is that the term originated in the name of the Rural Deanery which serves the fen area of the Lincoln Diocese. In turn this took its name from the Saxon Wapentake which was referred to as "Ye Elloe Bellie".

Elloe means "out of the morass" and bel was the Celtic word for hole or hollow. Therefore, the original Yellow Bellies were the inhabitants of the Fens and the expression over the centuries has been adopted for all inhabitants of the County.

Another Story of the Yellowbelly

This story came from Kath Heywood.

I seem to recall when I was at school in Cleethorpes many years ago doing a local history lesson, our history teacher told us a different version.

I'm rather sketchy on the details but I do remember he claimed that less reputable Cleethorpes folk engaged in a form of piracy, they would take torches down to the beach on dark nights and used them to trick passing ships which would sail towards the lights believing it to be the harbour and would hit the shallow waters on the Cleethorpes coast and run aground, the ships were then raided for their cargo by the locals.

Anyway, according to the story on one occasion the locals went to a great deal of trouble to coax a passing ship towards Cleethorpes beach believing the cargo to be of some value, but when they finally succeeded they found the cargo was actually a vast amount of yellow flannel material.

Obviously they could not be seen selling or using the cloth they had stolen so taking the attitude of "waste not, want not" they put it to good use and made undergarments out of it, as a result many of the locals were soon kitted out with nice warm yellow flannel vests and became yellow bellies.

Having said that my history teacher was rather odd so I wouldn't like to say how true the story is.

Page last updated 5 April, 2004

If you have any comments on my pages, please contact me on

Genealogy Home