The River Humber is a major river in eastern England; it forms the boundary between Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and its broad estuary provides access to the ports of Grimsby, Immingham and Kingston upon Hull (Hull).
The Humber is formed by the confluence of the River Ouse (or Yorkshire Ouse) and the River Trent at Trent Falls. The consequent very broad waterway flows past Hull before entering the North Sea at Spurn Head. Upstream of Hull, the river is crossed by its only bridge, the Humber Bridge opened in 1981.
The Humber gave its name to the early medieval Kingdom of Northumbria, which at its peak stretched from the Humber to the Firth of Forth in present-day Scotland. The name meant 'north of the Humber'. As the kingdom declined, it lost large areas of territory until the last fragment of the earls (no longer were they kings) of Northumbria lay between the rivers Tyne and Tweed, in the form of the modern county of Northumberland, which at its nearest point is more than a hundred miles from the river after which it is named.