Brigg is roughly directly north of
London. The nearest big towns are
Lincoln to the south,
Scunthorpe to the west,
Grimsby to the east, and
Hull to the north. The local area is broadly the south bank of the
Humber estuary. The town itself sits on a gravel spur of the
Lincolnshire Wolds that juts out into the valley of the Ancholme—a tributary of the Humber—which historically provided a narrow crossing point of the river and its flood plain. The Wolds proper rise to the east, reaching a maximum of roughly about from the town, although with a lower pass at the Kirmington Gap. To the west the land gently slopes up to roughly on the Lincolnshire Edge about away. Between these low ranges of hills the Ancholme river runs south to north through its flat, low–lying flood plain, with a north–south height difference of only a few metres. The town sits on alluvial soils of the Ancholme, and the area surrounding the town was previously a semi–flooded marsh known as
carrs. A series of drainage improvements from the 1630s to the 1820s transformed the whole of the valley into arable land. The largest of the drainage channels is also a
canal known as the New River Ancholme. The original course of the river has been obliterated in places by the drainage works, but its discontinuous surviving length is known as the Old River Ancholme. The town itself lies mostly on the east bank of the old river, with a small amount to the west. A portion of the west bank is cut off from the rest by the new river, forming an island–like piece of land known as Island Carr. Due to nearness of the river, the town regularly suffers minor flooding, and concerns over flood plain development are a major issue in local planning. The only other watercourse of reasonable size is Candley Beck, which runs through the very southern parts of the town. There are also about half a dozen clayponds along the riverside in Brigg where clay was formerly extracted for brick–making.
Townscape The old town is centred on the
marketplace and the adjoining streets of Bridge Street, Wrawby Street, and Bigby Street. The marketplace and Wrawby Street, where much of the town's retail is located, were pedestrianized in the early 1990s. A significant number of buildings in the town centre date to the late 1700s or early 1800s and are
listed, with the old town as a whole designated a Conservation Area. The marketplace is dominated by the
Buttercross and the Angel, a former
coaching inn with an early
mock Tudor façade, which is now home to Brigg Town Council and various North Lincolnshire Council services. Another former coaching inn, the Exchange, stands in Bigby Street, opposite the former manor house of the
Elwes family. The
Anglican church of Saint John the Evangelist, built in 1843, also lies on Bigby Street. Its style is of the
Gothic Revival architecture popular at the time, but
Pevsner notes the curious construction where the stone has first been carved into the shape of
bricks before being laid in courses. Much of the town's poorer housing formerly lay in a series of narrow yards that ran northward from the marketplace and Wrawby Street. The yards were considered unsanitary
slums by the late 1800s, but the housing was not finally vacated and demolished until the 1950s. However, the yards themselves remain in use, with the larger ones repurposed for retail and services, and the smaller for
public passageways. The
A18 bisects the town, running just north of the town centre. To the north and east of this road, housing development throughout the 1900s expanded the town significantly in size. To the west beyond the New River Ancholme, the town's urban area continues into the neighbouring hamlet of Scawby Brook. The settlement is substantially bounded by the
M180 motorway to the north and the Grimsby branch of the
Sheffield to Lincoln railway line to the south. ==Economy==