We have not attempted to follow either Nen, Welland, or Ouse, to the sea, because their courses through the fenlands are now to a considerable extent artificial, forming part of a connected system of drainage; and because the whole district is an almost unbroken plain. A description written for one part will apply to any other; a few trees, more or less, grouped a little differently by the dykes or on the low shoals which rise a few feet above the plain; a little more or less of marsh or peat still left among the enclosures: that is all; the only differences are in the sluices, pumping-stations, windmills, houses, churches—in short, in the artificial, not in the natural features of the scenery.
The history of the drainage of the fens and the rectification of its river courses is a long and complicated one.[7] Restricting ourselves to the vast plain west and south-west of the Wash, the silted-up estuary, rather than the river delta of the Welland, Nen, and Ouse, it may suffice to say that, while works were executed so far back as Roman times, the first great effort for the reclamation of the land dates from the seventeenth century. Formerly these rivers branched in the fenland. The Welland divided at Crowland, one arm passing by Spalding, the other inosculating with an arm of the Nen, which was thrown off near Peterborough; of this river the other arm passed through Whittlesea Mere to Wisbeach, and so to the sea. The Ouse also divided at Erith, one arm passing northward to join part of the Nen, the other, that mentioned above, flowing south of the Isle of Ely and uniting with the Cam. The part of the fens which lay north of the Nen was partially reclaimed in the reign of James I. The drainage was completed by Rennie in the beginning of the present century, but some sixty years afterwards powerful pumps had to be added to his work to discharge the drainage into the sea. The reclamation of the district south of the Nen was undertaken by Vermuyden with the help of the Earl of Bedford. His scheme was elaborate and open to criticism, its history complicated and unsatisfactory. It may suffice to say that the work, begun under Charles, was completed under Cromwell; that the rivers were conducted along channels, mainly artificial, enclosed by banks, and that before long, owing to the drying of the peat, the consequent reduction of the slope of the ground, and the silting-up of the outfalls, it was found necessary to introduce windmills for pumping. Since then many improvements and alterations have been made. Whittlesea Mere, for example, a sheet of water from 1,000 to 1,600 acres in extent, has been drained, new sluices have been added, steam pumping engines erected, and the drainage of the fens may now be regarded as complete. The wild marsh-land, once a steaming swamp in summer, a vast sheet of water in winter, is now a plain of dry black earth, “green in springtime with the sprouting blade, golden in autumn with the dense ears of grain. It is a strange, solemn land, silent even yet, with houses few and far between, except where they have clustered for centuries on some bank of Jurassic clay, which rises like a shoal not many feet above the plain; with water yet dank and dark, but brightened in summer with arrowhead and flowering rush and the great white cups of water-lilies. Strange kinds of hawks yet circle in the air, the swallowtail butterfly yet dances above the sedges, though the great-copper no longer spreads its burnished wings to the sunshine. Few trees, except grey willows or rows of rustling poplars, break the dead level which stretches away to the horizon, like a sea, beneath a vast dome of sky kindled often at sunrise and at sunset into a rare glory of many colours.”[8]
AMONG THE FENS.
With the progress of cultivation the peculiar flora and fauna are gradually disappearing. The bittern, the spoonbill, the crane, and the wild swan, are becoming rare visitants, the ruffs and reeves, once so common, are now scarce; the decoys are falling into disuse, and the strange unearthly cry of the wild fowl less often breaks the frozen silence of the winter night; but if this is a loss to the naturalist and the sportsman, there is a gain to the labourer and the farmer. Ague and marsh fever have all but disappeared. Though the fenland is less wild and strange than in days of yore, he who has gazed in the early autumn from one of the high church towers over the vast expanse has seen a sight which he will never forget, for all around the endless fields of grain
“Are like a golden ocean,
Becalmed upon the plain.”
A word must be said of the fenland towns. Wisbeach claims to be the metropolis. Built upon the Nen, which is navigable up to it for vessels of moderate tonnage, and a prosperous town, it has little of special interest besides its principal church, for its castle has practically disappeared. Spalding, also a bright and thriving place, among shady trees; and King’s Lynn, at the mouth of the Ouse, with a fine church, an old Guildhall, and the curious pilgrimage chapel of the Red Mount—claim more than mention. Nor must we forget the once mighty Abbey of Crowland, that grey broken ruin which towers still so grandly over the fens, or its singular triangular bridge, or the memories of St. Guthlac and of Waltheof.
T. G. Bonney.