Fenland - "England's little Holland"
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Fenland, or "The Fens" is a low-lying area of England, much of which is reclaimed marshland.
Historically Fenland was a remote and cut-off sort of place, it was a cluster are small islands within a great area of marshland.
The Fenland primarily lies around the coast of the Wash; it reaches into two Government regions (East of England and the East Midlands), four ceremonial counties (Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and a small area of Suffolk), 11 District Councils and six postcode areas (LN, PE, CB, IP, NR, and NG). The whole contains an area of nearly 1,500 square miles (3,900 km2) or about 1 million acres.
Most of the Fenland lies within a few metres of sea-level. As with similar areas in the Netherlands, much of the Fenland originally consisted of fresh or saltwater wetlands which have been artificially drained and continue to be protected from floods by drainage banks and pumps. With the support of this drainage system, the Fenland has become a major arable agricultural region in England for grains and vegetables. The Fens are particularly fertile, containing around half of the grade 1 agricultural land in England.
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After the end of Roman Britain, there is a break in written records. It is thought some of the Iceni may have moved west in to the Fens to avoid the Angles who were migrating across the North Sea from Angeln (modern Schleswig) and settling what would become East Anglia. The Fens formed a comparative 'safe zone', surrounded by water and marshes, and were easily defended, as well as being not particularly desirable to invading Anglo-Saxons with more important places to control.
When written records resume in Anglo-Saxon England, the names of a number of peoples of the Fens are recorded in the Tribal Hidage and Christian histories. These peoples (with their supposed territories) include North Gyrwe (Peterborough/Crowland), South Gyrwe (Ely), the Spalda (Spalding), and Bilmingas (area of South Lincs).
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It remained a place of refuge and intrigue. It was here Alfred Aetheling was taken to be murdered and here where Hereward the Wake based his insurgency against Norman England.
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Hereward the wake - the Anglo-Saxon rebel against the Normans.
Draining the Fens
Though some marks of Roman hydraulics survive, and the medieval works should not be overlooked, the land started to be drained in earnest during the 1630s by the various adventurers who had contracts with King Charles I to do so. The leader of one of these syndicates was the Earl of Bedford who employed Cornelius Vermuyden as their engineer. Contrary to popular belief, Vermuyden was not involved with the draining of the "Great Fen" in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk in the 1630s, but only became involved with the second phase of construction in the 1650s.[19] The scheme was imposed despite huge opposition from locals who were losing their livelihoods in favour of already great landowners. Two cuts were made in the Cambridgeshire Fens to join the River Great Ouse to the sea at King's Lynn - the Old Bedford River and the New Bedford River, also known as the Hundred Foot Drain.
Both cuts were named after the Fourth Earl of Bedford who, along with some "Gentlemen Adventurers" (venture capitalists), funded the construction, which was directed by engineers from the Low Countries, and were rewarded with large grants of the resulting farmland. Following this initial drainage, the Fens were still extremely susceptible to flooding, and so windpumps were used to pump water away from affected areas.
However, their success was short-lived. Once drained of water, the peat shrank, and the fields lowered further. The more effectively they were drained the worse the problem became, and soon the fields were lower than the surrounding rivers. By the end of the 17th century, the land was under water once again.
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The major part of the draining of the Fens, as seen today, was effected in the late 18th and early 19th century, again involving fierce local rioting and sabotage of the works. The final success came in the 1820s when windpumps were replaced with powerful coal-powered steam engines, such as Stretham Old Engine, which were themselves replaced with diesel-powered pumps and, following World War II, the small electrical stations that are still used today.
The dead vegetation of the peat remained undecayed because it was deprived of air (the peat being anaerobic). When it was drained, the oxygen of the air reached it and the peat has been slowly oxidizing. This and the shrinkage on its initial drying as well as removal of the soil by the wind, has meant that much of the Fens lies below high tide level. The highest parts of the drained fen now being only a few metres above mean sea level, only sizeable embankments of the rivers, and general flood defences, stop the land from being inundated. Nonetheless, these works are now much more effective than they were. The question of rising sea level under the influence of global warming remains.
The Fens today are protected by 60 miles (97 km) of Sea embanked defences and 96 miles (154 km) of fluvial river embankments. Eleven Internal Drainage Board (IDB) groups maintain 286 pumping stations and 3,800 miles (6,100 km) of watercourses, with the combined capacity to pump 16,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools in a 24-hour period if necessary, or empty Rutland Water in 3 days.
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(Some information from Wikipedia)
