Fens

Fens, natural region of about 15,500 square miles (40,100 square km) of reclaimed marshland in eastern England, extending north to south between Lincoln and Cambridge. Across its surface the Rivers Witham, Welland, Nen, and Ouse flow into the North Sea indentation between Lincolnshire and Norfolk known as The Wash, but the natural drainage has largely been replaced by artificial channels. The area is essentially a flooded clay plain with slight “island” eminences, notably Ely. The basin gradually became infilled by sediment, leaving The Wash as the remnant of a more extensive indentation. Around The Wash is a belt of marine silts and clays, south of which an expanse of black peat covers the area. The peat, much thicker before drainage was undertaken, now varies in depth from a few inches to more than 10 feet (3 meters).

The Romans cultivated both islands and silt lands, but in subsequent Anglo-Saxon times the Fens were a thinly settled waste. Throughout the Middle Ages piecemeal encroachment took place, but the peatlands remained untouched until the mid-17th century, when the 4th earl of Bedford engaged a Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, to drain the southern peat area, later known as the Bedford Level. Most notable among the drains then constructed was the Old Bedford River; running from Earith to Salter’s Lode, it was 70 feet (21 meters) wide and 21 miles (34 km) long. The New Bedford River, 100 feet (30 meters) wide, ran parallel to it about a half mile to the east. The immediate prosperity that these drains helped create proved short-lived, because they had the effect of lowering by perhaps 10 to 12 feet (about 3 to 4 meters) the level of the peat surface.

The introduction of windmills, substituting pumped for gravity drainage, saved most of the drained Fens from being reinundated, but the peat continued to sink as the drainage became more effective, so that by about 1800 some areas once inhabited had become watery wastes. There were still tracts that had never been reclaimed, particularly the large reed-bordered lakes of Whittlesey Mere and Ramsey Mere. Fishing and fowling remained characteristic occupations, and ague, or fen fever, was prevalent. From 1810 windmills began to be replaced by steam-pumping stations, though a few windmills survived even into the 20th century to form familiar landmarks. Pumping is now done by diesel engines, but the perennial problem of protecting the low drained lands from the high-riding river remains and was dramatically illustrated in the severe floods of March 1947, when several riverbanks were breached.

The Fens are now one of the richest arable areas of England, supporting not only traditional crops such as wheat but also potatoes, flowers, fruit, and vegetables. A few stretches of peat survive, two of them nature reserves, valuable for the study of rare plants and insects. Wicken Fen, on the eastern edge, with its waterlogged surface rising several feet above the adjoining peatlands, gives some indication of what the whole fen region was like before Vermuyden’s day.