Over Fen and Wold

by James John Hissey

So we drove on till the tall hedgerows ceased and the country became more open and assumed a wilder aspect: narrow dykes or ditches now divided the fields instead of the familiar fences, so that our eyes could range unimpeded over the wide landscape. Then presently, as we proceeded, a high and long grass-grown embankment came into view, right in front of us, and so our prospect ahead was suddenly shut in, reduced from miles to yards! Approaching close to this embankment, we found that our road turned sharply to the left and ran immediately below and alongside of it. Here we pulled up and scrambled to the top of the steep bank, just “to see what was on the other side.” The mystery of the vast earthwork was solved: it was no Brobdingnagian railway scheme, but an earthwork constructed to keep the river Welland in bounds when flooded, though just then the river flowed sluggishly along, deep down below its high-banked sides, as innocent-looking a stream as could well be imagined.

One striking peculiarity of the Fenland rivers is that they are mostly held in thus by banks and are not allowed, as English rivers generally are, the liberty to meander about at their own sweet will; for in these parts the primary use of a river appears to be to do duty as a mighty drainage dyke, and this curbing of wilful nature gives such rivers an exceedingly artificial and somewhat tame look. Quaint to English eyes is it to observe these great river-banks standing high above the surrounding country and highways, for often, for convenience of construction, do the roads follow the course of the streams and water-ways. Well is this division of Lincolnshire called “Holland” or “Holland in England,” as some maps have it. Indeed, this mighty level land, now smiling with yellow corn-crops and rich green pastures, was erst a swampy waste, more water than land; fit only to be the home of wildfowl and coarse fish, till sundry Dutch engineers undertook to reclaim it, importing their own countrymen to assist in the task. We were told by a Lincolnshire man that several of the Dutch workmen never returned home, but settled and married in the new “Holland in England” that their labours had helped to create; furthermore, we were told that a goodly number of purely Dutch names still existed in the county.

After following along and below the embankment for a mile or more, our road took to itself a sudden whim and boldly mounted to the top of the bank which was wide enough to drive upon, and from our elevated position we had a space-expressing prospect over a level country, reaching all round to the long, low circling line of the bounding horizon. Though we could not have been raised much above sea-level, still I have climbed high mountains for a far inferior view. It is not the height one may be above a scene that gives the observer therefrom the best impression of it; indeed one may easily be elevated too far above scenery to appreciate it properly. A bird’s-eye view of a landscape is not the one an artist would select to paint; there is such a thing as a picturesque and an unpicturesque way of looking on an object. Sometimes, truly, scenery has been painted as a bird sees it, for the sake of novelty; but novelty is not synonymous with beauty: they may join hands at times, but as a rule they are utter strangers one to another.

DIFFICULT DRIVING

Then as we drove slowly and carefully on—for there were no fences to the road on either side and it was not over safe to approach too near the edges, or we might have been precipitated into the river on one hand, or on to the fields below on the other, either of which events would have brought our outing to a sudden termination—as we drove thus cautiously on, the one remaining tower and great vacant archway of Crowland’s lonely abbey came into sight, standing out a tender pearly-gray mass against the sunlit sky: in all the ocean of greenery round about there was nothing else in sight that raised itself noticeably above the general level.

There was something very impressive in this first view of the ancient fane, rising in crumbling yet solemn majesty out of the ever-green world below; a poem in stone, laden with ancient legend and fraught with misty history. It was a scene for a pilgrim, pregnant with peacefulness, and as lovely as a dream. Yet how simple was the prospect—a gray and ruined abbey, a silent world of green suffused with faint sunshine that filtered through the thin clouds above! Below us and before us stretched the river gleaming for miles between its sloping banks, winding away towards the picturesque pile of ancient devotion in curving parallels that narrowed toward the distant horizon to a mere point; and this describes all that was before us!

After the abbey’s pathetic ruins, beautiful with the beauty of decay, what most struck us was the sense of solitude, silence, and space in our surroundings. On every side the level Fenland stretched broad as the sea, and to the eye appearing almost as wide and as free; and from all this vast lowland tract came no sound except the hardly to be distinguished mellow murmuring of the wind amongst the nearer sedges and trees. The river flowed on below us in sluggish contentment without even an audible gurgle; no birds were singing, and, as far as we could see, there were no birds to sing; and in the midst of this profound stillness our very voices seemed preternaturally loud. There are two such things as a cheerful silence and a depressing silence; the difference between these two is more to be felt than described: of course all silence is relative, for such a thing as absolute silence is not to be found in this world; but the quietude of the Fens, like that of the mountain-top, simulates the latter very successfully. The thick atmosphere about us had the effect of subduing sounds doubtless, whilst it held the light, as it were, in suspense, and magnified and mystified the distance. The profound quietude prevailing suggested to us that we were travelling through an enchanted land where all things slept—a land laid under some mighty magic spell.

A DISPUTED SPELLING

As we proceeded along our level winding way, with the river for silent company, the outline of the ruined abbey gradually increased in size, and presently we found ourselves in the remote out-of-the-world village of Crowland—or Croyland as some writers have it; but I understand that certain antiquaries who have studied the subject declare that the latter appellation is quite wrong, and as they may be right I accept their dictum and spell it Crowland with my map, though, authorities and map aside, I much prefer Croyland as the quainter title.

The inhabitants appear to spell the name of their village indifferently both ways. One intelligent native, of whom we sought enlightenment, said he did not care “a turn of the weathercock” which way it was spelt, which was not very helpful; but we were grateful for the expression “a turn of the weathercock,” as it was fresh to us. He further remarked, apropos of nothing in our conversation, “You might as well try to get feathers from a fish as make a living in Crowland; and the people are so stupid, as the saying goes, ‘they’d drown a fish in water.’” Manifestly he was not in love with the place. He did not even think much of the old abbey: “It’s very ruinous,” was his expression thereof.