A programme of palaeoenvironmental assessment was carried out at Beckingham Marshes. Coring was undertaken to the east of the site in two fields along two transects which were located to follow the line of the proposed pipeline. The stratigraphy in the eastern area of the site consisted of grey-brown silty clays to a depth of 1.0m, underlain by dark brown herbaceous well humified peats to a depth of 2.5m. This peat unit was in turn underlain by a grey-brown organic-rich silt. Pollen analysis was carried out throughout the humified peat layer in one core. The pollen record indicates that the floodplain environment was dominated by sedge fen with an alder fen carr developing during the Middle Bronze Age. The local dominance of alder on the site was replaced by sedge carr by the Late Iron Age. Pollen preservation was poor throughout the middle segment of the diagram and no further work is thus recommended.