Thus was dug, in 1651, the New Bedford River, and thus was built, somewhat later, Denver Sluice. Vermuyden's plan, which continued for two centuries to be gradually developed on the lines he originally laid down, was to cut a few main water-courses through the district, running at a higher level than the swamps around, with Lynn for their chief outfall, and an infinite number of short straight cuts at right angles to these, whence the water draining from the morass should be pumped into them. This pumping was originally done by windmills, and a picturesque sight it was to see their white sails dotting the wide expanse. But all are now superseded by the less poetical but more dependable steam pumping stations, whose tall chimneys form a notable object in the Fenland landscape.
The work was very gradual, with many drawbacks. The Denver Sluice, on which the whole plan depended, was, as has been said, destroyed in 1713, and not rebuilt till 1750, when the very towns which had most rejoiced in its fall were the loudest in demanding its replacement. Other calamities also affected the work, which was not finally completed till towards the end of the nineteenth century. The opposition, too, was unceasing, though it took the form of lawsuits rather than violence. But this, too, died out. The very last of them was an attempt by Wisbech, in 1844, to force the hand of the Bedford Level Corporation (as the old Company of Adventurers is now called) by proposing a rival scheme in Parliament.
Now, however, all is victory. For many years past the reclaimed fen has borne excellent crops; and if, since the agricultural depression of the later nineteenth century decades set in, it can no longer merit so fully as it did the title of "the Golden Plain of England," yet the widespread cultivation of fruit and flowers (mostly narcissus) has furnished no small compensation, and the district as a whole enjoys a very large share of prosperity. At this moment the vast areas allotted to the great Adventurers are being largely broken up into small holdings, with the happiest results.
Sentimentally, and even to a certain extent economically, we may regret the Fenland of old, with its vanished wealth of picturesque life; its reeds which made such splendid thatch, its marsh flowers, its butterflies, its shoals of fish, its endless skeins of wild-fowl, its clever "decoys" where these were taken in such exhaustless numbers that a single one (in 1750) sent up to London 3000 couples a week and let for £500 a year. But with these have also vanished the incessant fever and ague and rheumatism which were an ever-present torment in the old Fen life, and the incessant opium-eating in which the Fen-Folk were fain to find relief. Taking things altogether, the gain has outweighed the loss in the draining of the Fens.
CHAPTER XX
Coveney.—Manea.—Doddington.—March, Angel Roof.—Whittlesea.—Old Course of Ouse, Well Stream.—Upwell, Outwell.—Emneth.—Elm.—The Marshland.—West Walton.—Walsoken.—Walpole.—Cross Keys.—Leverington.—Tydd.—Wisbech, Church, Trade, Castle, Catholic Prisoners, Clarkson.—The Wash.—King John.
In close contiguity to the Island of Ely, on the west, is a tiny satellite, which supports the little village of Coveney. Here the church has some remarkable modern woodwork from Oberammergau, the gift of Mr. Athelstan Riley. The pulpit is also remarkable, dating from 1703 and being of Danish work. More remote are Manea and Stonea, both, happily for themselves, now on a railway line, but otherwise unspeakably inaccessible. It is strange at Manea to see the towers of Ely a short five miles away, and to know that twenty miles of bad road will scarcely get you there. Both names seem to have the same signification, Stone Island; which (as they are eminently unstony, being merely low elevations of gravel) may perhaps refer to the selenite crystals with which the ground here teems. Manea Station is one of the few inland places where the curvature of the earth can be clearly seen. The line (towards March) is perfectly straight and perfectly level, and along it you may observe the trains rising into sight over the horizon like ships at sea.
March stands on a much larger island, seven miles in length. At its southern extremity is Doddington, where the fine Early English church was once the richest in England. It was the Mother Church of a wide district, including its whole island and the fens for miles around. As these were drained so did the value of the benefice increase, till it became worth over £7,000 per annum. Parliament then stepped in, and divided the parish (and income) into seven Rectories, three of these being in the town of March, a modern growth around its important railway junction at the furthest northern point of the island. A fourth is Old March, a quiet "village-hamlet" (as Cardinal Wolsey calls it) two miles south of its larger offspring. The church here is most exceptionally beautiful. It is a Perpendicular structure, with a fine crocketed spire and flint patterns in the outer walls of the clerestory. The roof is beyond all magnificent, with "an innumerable company of Angels" along its vista of double hammer-beams. A brass commemorates William Dredeman, the donor of this crowning glory, who died in 1503; and there is another to Catharine Hansard, 1517, on which the Annunciation is depicted. The church is dedicated to St. Wendreda, a purely local saint.[246] The Parish account-books here give a striking picture of the mutations of the Reformation period. There are payments "for pluckynge doun emags [images] in ye Chyrch and for drynkynge thereat" (1547); "for breckyng down the Altar and carrying forth ye stons" (1550); "for makyng the Hy Alter" (1553); "for pulling doun ye hy alter" (1558); and "for a comunion tabull" (1559).
March is the half-way house between Ely and Peterborough, and between it and the last-named lies Whittlesea, also on a good-sized island of its own, which extends nearly to the Northamptonshire mainland. It is a pleasant little town, with a picturesque market place, where the ancient Market House still rises in the centre. And its church almost rivals that of March, with a still more glorious spire. In 1335 Whittlesea was the scene of a most unedifying conflict between the Abbeys of Ramsey and Ely. To begin with, the Abbot of Ramsey and his monks raided the lands at Whittlesea belonging to Ely, drove away sixteen horses, and (by firing the sedge) burned twenty others, besides ten oxen, eighty cows, and one hundred swine, along with much grass, reeds, and other property. In retaliation for this outrage the Prior of Ely (and he, too, the saintly Prior Crauden) organised a regular military expedition, and came, at the head of the whole Abbey musters, "with banners flying as in war," to Ramsey itself, where, as that House complains, he "hewed down our woods, depastured our grass, and drove off our cattle." Both parties appealed to the King; but the discreditable transaction seems to have ended in a compromise. That such wild work should be possible at all in England reminds us that at this date the country had not yet recovered from the confusions attendant on the fall and murder of Edward the Second eight years before.
Till the latter part of the nineteenth century Whittlesea gave its name to a famous mere, lying to the south of the town, and on the very border of the fens. It was a sheet of shallow water a couple of miles in length and breadth, and furnished a splendid field for angling, skating, and boat-sailing. Its shallowness made it none the less dangerous; for the bottom was fathomless ooze, so soft that the punting poles used here had to be furnished with a round board at their extremities, and demanded special skill, for if you once let this board get underneath the mud, it was much more likely to pull you in than you to pull it out.