The Wash.—From this it will be plain that the Wash (q.v.) is being silted up by riverine detritus. The formation of new dry land, known at first as “marsh,” goes on, however, but slowly. During the centuries since the Romans are believed to have constructed the sea-banks which shut out the ocean, it is computed that an area of not more than 60,000 to 70,000 acres has been won from the Wash, embanked, drained and brought more or less under cultivation. The greatest gain has been at the direct head of the bay, between the Welland and the Great Ouse, where the average annual accretion is estimated at 10 to 11 lineal feet. On the Lincolnshire coast, farther north, the average annual gain has been not quite 2 ft.; whilst on the opposite Norfolk coast it has been little more than 6 in. annually. On the whole, some 35,000 acres were enclosed in the 17th century, about 19,000 acres during the 18th, and about 10,000 acres during the 19th century.
The first comprehensive scheme for regulating the outfall channels and controlling the currents of the Fen rivers seems to be that proposed by Nathaniel Kinderley in 1751. His idea[3] was to link the Nene with the Ouse by means of a new cut to be made through the marshland, and guide the united stream through a further new cut “under Wotten and Wolverton through the Marshes till over against Inglesthorp or Snetsham, and there discharge itself immediately into the Deeps of Lyn Channel.” In a similar way the Witham, “when it has received the Welland from Spalding,” was to be carried “to some convenient place over against Wrangle or Friskney, where it may be discharged into Boston Deeps.” This scheme was still further improved upon by Sir John Rennie, who, in a report which he drew up in 1839, recommended that the outfalls of all four rivers should be directed by means of fascined channels into one common outfall, and that the land lying between them should be enclosed as rapidly as it consolidated. By this means he estimated that 150,000 acres would be won to cultivation. But beyond one or two abortive or half-hearted attempts, e.g. by the Lincolnshire Estuary Company in 1851, and in 1876 and subsequent years by the Norfolk Estuary Company, no serious effort has ever been made to execute either of these schemes.
Climate.—The annual mean temperature, as observed at Boston, in the period 1864-1885, is 48.7° F.; January, 36.5°; July, 62.8°; and as observed at Wisbech, for the period 1861-1875, 49.1°. The average mean rainfall for the seventy-one years 1830-1900, at Boston, was 22.9 in.; at Wisbech for the fifteen years 1860-1875, 24.2 in., and for the fifteen years 1866-1880, 26.7 in.; and at Maxey near Peterborough, 21.7 for the nineteen years 1882-1900. Previous to the drainage of the Fens, ague, rheumatism, and other ailments incidental to a damp climate were widely prevalent, but at the present day the Fen country is as healthy as the rest of England; indeed, there is reason to believe that it is conducive to longevity.
Historical Notes.—The earliest inhabitants of this region of whom we have record were the British tribes of the Iceni confederation; the Romans, who subdued them, called them Coriceni or Coritani. In Saxon times the inhabitants of the Fens were known (e.g. to Bede) as Gyrvii, and are described as traversing the country on stilts. Macaulay, writing of the year 1689, gives to them the name of Breedlings, and describes them as “a half-savage population ... who led an amphibious life, sometimes wading, sometimes rowing, from one islet of firm ground to another.” In the end of the 18th century those who dwelt in the remoter parts were scarcely more civilized, being known to their neighbours by the expressive term of “Slodgers.” These rude fen-dwellers have in all ages been animated by a tenacious love of liberty. Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, the worthy foe of the Romans; Hereward the Saxon, who defied William the Conqueror; Cromwell and his Ironsides, are representative of the fenman’s spirit at its best. The fen peasantry showed a stubborn defence of their rights, not only when they resisted the encroachments and selfish appropriations of the “adventurers” in the 17th century, in the Bedford Level, in Deeping Fen, and in the Witham Fens, and again in the 18th century, when Holland Fen was finally enclosed, but also in the Peasants’ Rising of 1381, and in the Pilgrimage of Grace in the reign of Henry VIII. So long as the Fens were unenclosed and thickly studded with immense “forests” of reeds, and innumerable marshy pools and “rows” (channels connecting the pools), they abounded in wild fowl, being regularly frequented by various species of wild duck and geese, garganies, polchards, shovelers, teals, widgeons, peewits, terns, grebes, coots, water-hens, water-rails, red-shanks, lapwings, god-wits, whimbrels, cranes, bitterns, herons, swans, ruffs and reeves. Vast numbers of these were taken in decoys[4] and sent to the London markets. At the same time equally vast quantities of tame geese were reared in the Fens, and driven by road[5] to London to be killed at Michaelmas. Their down, feathers and quills (for pens) were also a considerable source of profit. The Fen waters, too, abounded in fresh-water fish, especially pike, perch, bream, tench, rud, dace, roach, eels and sticklebacks. The Witham, on whose banks so many monasteries stood, was particularly famous for its pike; as were certain of the monastic waters in the southern part of the Fens for their eels. The soil of the reclaimed Fens is of exceptional fertility, being almost everywhere rich in humus, which is capable not only of producing very heavy crops of wheat and other corn, but also of fattening live-stock with peculiar ease. Lincolnshire oxen were famous in Elizabeth’s time, and are specially singled out by Arthur Young,[6] the breed being the shorthorn. Of the crops peculiar to the region it must suffice to mention the old British dye-plant woad, which is still grown on a small scale in two or three parishes immediately south of Boston; hemp, which was extensively grown in the 18th century, but is not now planted; and peppermint, which is occasionally grown, e.g. at Deeping and Wisbech. In the second half of the 19th century the Fen country acquired a certain celebrity in the world of sport from the encouragement it gave to speed skating. Whenever practicable, championship and other racing meetings are held, chiefly at Littleport and Spalding. The little village of Welney, between Ely and Wisbech, has produced some of the most notable of the typical Fen skaters, e.g. “Turkey” Smart and “Fish” Smart.
Apart from fragmentary ruins of the former monastic buildings of Crowland, Kirkstead and other places, the Fen country of Lincolnshire (division of Holland) is especially remarkable for the size and beauty of its parish churches, mostly built of Barnack rag from Northamptonshire. Moreover, in the possession of such buildings as Ely cathedral and the parish church of King’s Lynn, other parts of the Fens must be considered only less rich in ecclesiastical architecture. Using these fine opportunities, the Fen folk have long cultivated the science of campanology.
Dialect.—Owing to the comparative remoteness of their geographical situation, and the relatively late period at which the Fens were definitely enclosed, the Fenmen have preserved several dialectal features of a distinctive character, not the least interesting being their close kinship with the classical English of the present day. Professor E.E. Freeman (Longman’s Magazine, 1875) reminded modern Englishmen that it was a native of the Fens, “a Bourne man, who gave the English language its present shape.” This was Robert Manning, or Robert of Brunne, who in or about 1303 wrote The Handlynge Synne. Tennyson’s dialect poems, The Northern Farmer, &c., do not reproduce the pure Fen dialect, but rather the dialect of the Wold district of mid Lincolnshire.
Authorities.—Sir William Dugdale, History of Imbanking and Draining (2nd ed., London, 1772); W. Elstobb, A Historical Account of the Great Level (Lynn, 1793); W. Chapman, Facts and Remarks relative to the Witham and the Welland (Boston, 1800); S. Wells, History and Drainage of the Great Level of the Fens (2 vols., London, 1828 and 1830); P. Thompson, History of Boston (Boston, 1856); Baldwin Latham, Papers on the Drainage of the Fens, read before the Society of Engineers, 3rd November 1862; N. and A. Goodman, Handbook of Fen Skating (London, 1882); Moore, Associated Architectural Societies’ Reports and Papers (1893); Fenland Notes and Queries, and Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, passim; W.H. Wheeler, A History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, pp. 223 et seq. (2nd ed., Boston, 1897). Various phases of Fen life, mostly of the past, are described in Charles Kingsley’s Hereward the Wake (Cambridge, 1866); Baring Gould’s Cheap-Jack Zita (London, 1893); Manville Fenn’s Dick o’ the Fens (London, 1887); and J.T. Bealby’s A Daughter of the Fen (London, 1896).
(J. T. Be.)
[1] The word “fen,” a general term for low marshy land or bog, is common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch ven or veen, Ger. Fenne, Fehn, Goth. fani, mud; the Indo-European root is seen in Gr. πῆλος, mud, Lat. palus, marsh. The word “bog” is from the Irish or Gaelic bogach, formed from Celtic bog, soft, and meaning therefore soft, swampy ground.