WASH (The), the estuary of the rivers Ouse, Nen, Welland, and Witham, in Norfolk and Lincoln. It has a width of about 15 miles a short distance below the influxes of the rivers; it contracts thence, over a distance of about 15 miles, to a width of 10 miles opposite Hunstanton; and it gradually expands thence, over a distance of about 4½ miles, to immergence in the North sea. It is greatly choked with sands, or interspersed with large shoals; it includes deeper portions, called the Lynn deeps and the Boston deeps; it has intricate channels, with from 4 to 12 fathoms, buoyed; and, since 1850, it has been invaded by an extensive land reclamation, noticed in our article on Lynn.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))