Why were the fens drained

Fenland was clearly an area with plenty of wind, as the windmills and pumps of previous ages demonstrated. This is something that can be exploited in the twenty-first century. Wind turbines of various sizes have already been erected across the area, and the Fens will increasingly supply the electricity used in England and Wales.

A short history of the Fens. The Fens have always been a unique part of England: few places today retain an individual character but Fenland certainly does. For many hundreds of years, they were regularly under water for a great part of the year: they were therefore mainly pastoral economies, supplemented by fishing and fowling.

However, where arable land was available it was often extremely fertile. The Fens were inhospitable to outsiders, partly because of disease: marsh ague was very common and traditionally countered by the use of opium. The Market Place in Boston. Fleet Church with its detached tower. Young men and women peat working. Carrying the turves across a Fenland river.

Working with wicker. Drainage mills in the Fens. Sign up for our newsletter Enter your email address below to get the latest news and exclusive content from The History Press delivered straight to your inbox. Peterborough Cathedral Cathedral. King's College Chapel Historic Church. Peterhouse College Historic Building. Toggle navigation. Best of Britain. The isolation of the fens proved an invaluable aid to Hereward the Wake. The Saxon rebel held out against the might of William the Conqueror by using the treacherous marshes as a barrier.

In the Duke gathered support from a group of investors and called in Dutch engineer Cornelius Varmuyden to drain Hatfield Chase. Vermuyden devised a series of ditches "cuts" and dykes that bit by bit reclaimed the rich peat soil beneath the waters. The scheme was violently opposed by the natives of the fens, both because Vermuyden employed Dutch workers, and because of the changes the draining would have on their traditional hunting and fishing rights.

They attacked the workers, and it was only after an agreement was reached to compensate the fen-dwellers and employ English workers that the project could proceed. Then Vermuyden worked out a scheme to drain the Great Fen, in return for which he was promised 96, acres for himself. His work was undone in when the Parliamentary army broke his dykes in an effort to flood the land and stop a Royalist army advance. And if sea level rises much more, the Fens, currently protected by coastal defences, would be under threat of flooding once more.

Much of the Fens already lies below the highest tide levels. The Dutch were employed in some of the earliest attempts to drain the Fens, bringing technology they had developed at home for similar environments. The first large scale attempt was in the s, masterminded by the Duke of Bedford. Needless to say, local people were up in arms because their livelihoods in the wetland would be destroyed.

However, these early works were simply too efficient. The peat shrank so much on being drained that the land fell below the level of the rivers and was re-flooded. Most of the drainage was, in fact, done in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, still with much local opposition and sabotage.