The Taming of Cambridgeshire The Great British Story: Regional Histories

Cambridgeshire. Haunting, mysterious. This was once a wild

land. Marshy Fens, swarming with biting insects. A harsh landscape,

not for the faint-hearted. I'm taking a journey through time. Over

1,500 years to find out how the most disease-ridden part of Britain

became one of its wealthiest and I'll be travelling through my

adopted county, into the heart of Cambridge. Seeing how we used to

survive. So you're living history? Yeah, I hope I'm not the last one

either. Digging up clues. This site can tell us everything you could

possibly want to know about what life would have been like at the

time. Getting a taste of the past. This was their main form of

painkiller? It would have been grated up. You had to have been a

good swallower. Take one of these, three times a day. And hearing how

Cambridgeshire transformed the health of the nation. Cambridge is

surrounded by a continuous loop of sewage, basically. Yes, that's the

truth. This is the taming of Cambridgeshire, our part of a great

My starting point is Wickham Fen, now owned by the National Trust and

a great place to get a feel for how much of East Anglia used to look

before the Fens were drained for farming. For thousands of years,

Fen folk adapted to this wild, wet landscape. This is an original Fen

worker's cottage. I've come here to meet a guy who knows everything

there is to know about the history of the Fens. Ben Robinson is an

archaeologist, quite a tall archaeologist. Hi, there, how's it

going? Nice to see you. Now, I've got to ask you, while we're both

stooping here, were people shorter back then? There were tall people

and short people. These people were obviously shorter, but I'm a Fen

man and I'm tall. You're very tall indeed. Oh, and this is the inside

of the wall, isn't it? Yes, that is right. A typical construction,

using the materials at hand in the Fens, wood, reeds, just basically

mud. Vegetable matter, horse dung, everything plastered in there,

horse hair. So no brick? No stone? Well there's no stone out here in

the Fen. Plenty of clay for bricks, so we have a brick floor here, but

no stone. No. OK. A peat fire, of course? A very cheap source of fuel.

I mean it's out there in the Fen. You dig it, cut it into blocks and

let it dry. It make as reasonable fire, but not intense heat. The

thing about the Fens, there weren't many people around in the Fens,

throughout the history it was a sparsely populated area, but those

people that were, clung together. Now what are these? These are

stilts for Fen slodgers and we'll pick them up, because you'll

actually be needing these. Not sure I like the look of this. Ah, yes, I

see, water, everywhere. It's like being on a big sponge. Yes, of

course, it's so long since I've been on a big sponge. I'll have

take your word for that. You can keep yourself drier and cover

longer distances. Four centuries ago, Fen people were known as stilt

walkers. Stilts were still in use 150 years ago. If I go, Ben, we'll

both go. You go. Steady on, we're How many TV presenters have you

drowned? You didn't answer that question, I'm a bit worried?

Exactly. Past history is no record of current success, I think. You're

not going anywhere! What would they do when they were slodging around?

Wild fowling, fishing, egg collecting. You could do that sort

of thing while on stilts? Absolutely. This was a way of

getting across the Fen. There's no roads, no Causeways, no pathways.

There are just treacherous routes through. Untie me, Ben! I don't

think I can. I'm giving up on the stilts and moving to a more

sensible means of transport to explore the Fen and to go to the

start of our timeline. Can you take us back 1,500 years and paint of

picture of what it would have been like here? It's a mistake to think

of the Fens as one great big expanse of water, one great big

lake, even one great big swamp. It was never ever like that. It was

always a patchwork of different environments. We're floating along

a waterway here, a canal. The Romans have cut canals in the Fens,

and certainly by the later medieval period, the 9th, 10th century,

after the conquest, again they are cutting canals, loads for barge

transports, to drain the Fens. the Romans didn't ignore this part

of the world? No, but perceptions change throughout that time and

it's 1,500 years ago, about that time, we start getting the first

written references, well, at least that are reflecting on life at

those times. The lives of the hermit saints that came out here on

the Fens and they're really trying to big up how difficult it was,

what a hostile environment it was. So and so must have been a really

good saint because he chose to live in the Fens? Exactly. A hardy soul.

He put up with these problems, diseases, flooding, et cetera,

whereas the chronicle in the 12th century are all full of praise for

how wonderful the environment is. All the abbeys are fantastically

well endowed with this Fenland environment. There's more fish than

they know what to do with, there is meadow, it's a heaven on earth.

wetlands were a place were mosquitoes bred and spread diseases,

malaria, plague, and rheumatism all thrived here, but, as we'll see

later, food was plentiful. First, I'll need transport. Hi, I've come

to hire a bike. OK. We've got one here for you. Luckily, the National

Trust have a cycle hire hut at Wickham. I want to cycle all the

way to Cambridge on the loadsway? It's designed for that. Is it?

Perfect, right, well, I'll take this one, then. That's cool. I'll

see you in three weeks. No-one uses stilts today, but some skills date

back 1,500 years or more. Throughout history, these rivers

provided food and the techniques for catching fish and eels were

handed down through families. Peter Carter is the last of a long line

of eel catchers. Peter, good to see you, I'm Rory, nice to see you.

are you doing? I like this. Now, what's this? Is it a canoe or a

barge? No, it's a traditional Fen punt. How about we catch some eels?

We can have a look and see if we can find some. So, this is one of

the traditional traps, is it Peter? They call it an eel hide. How does

that work, you put bait in here, do you? Yep. Road kill, chicken guts.

Anything. In the old days they used to love old dead tom cats. So they

are not vegetarian, then, these eels? No, no. They clear up all the

dead animals in the river. Oh, that is great, yes. Swim in one end,

then they can't get out? Swimming in one end and unbung the other,

but these have just been made. is unbunged at the moment, but I

see what you mean. How many eels does that hold, then? You can have

a dozen small eels on a good night, but most time, there are one, two

eels these days. Am I right, in thinking your family has been

working in this part of the country for years and years? The family

trace back to this area to about 1470. Blimey! So between you,

you've caught a few eels? Yes! Peter makes and uses the same

design of eel traps as his ancestors. He also uses modern nets

and it's the modern one that has caught the eels today. Oh, got a

couple in here. Oh, yeah, we have eels, ladies and gentlemen we have

eels. Two, three? There are a couple of them there. Nice-sized

ones. Beautiful. We have a snack here. They fry up, they make a good

meal. There was everything you needed on the Fen at one time. You

had all the materials you want for building the houses, the willow,

the reeds, the rushes. Plenty of food. Plenty of food, you can't

starve on the Fens, if you know what you are after. From ducks to

eels. No, they had a good life. Shall we have a look at one of

those little beauties, then? Yes, we can. It's a sort of the emblem

of the Fens, isn't it? Yeah it is. This it is a beautiful creature. A

lot of people don't like them because they are slimy, but they

are a very important part. When people got married, they used their

skins for wedding rings. Really? Yeah, all sorts of things. They

used to believe it stopped rheumatism for wearing of it as a

guard. I think they are a fascinating creature. They are. So,

what we've been doing this afternoon has been going on in the

Fens for how many years? Well we know 3,000 years. Probably longer

than that. So you are living history? Yeah, well hopefully I

won't be the last one, either. sleeping eel, that's incredible.

Meeting people like Peter who works with traditions that are centuries

old is a great way of connecting with people from the past. It tells

us so much more about history than documents on their own ever could.

Now, new evidence has come to light that proves Peter's way of life and

even his equipment goes back to the Bronze Age, 3,000 years ago. Here

at Whitlesea, archaeologists have just found boats and eel traps that

are remarkably similar to Peter's, preserved in an old riverbed. Kerry

Morrel is from Cambridge archaeological unit. What happens

when they go in the ground they start off circular, and when they

are crushed under the pressure of the deposits, they crack and you

get a weak point. So quite often we lose the top half or are left with

the inside. I'll just take this off carefully. These vary in shape and

size, all of the ones we have found have been slightly different, but

generally, the themes are the same. So all the ones we have found have

what's called the chair, that you can see at this end. You have the

main circular basket and inside the smaller basket at the entrance end

where the eels would swim in and get caught in here and would not be

able to get back out again. archaeologists confirmed their

discoveries by comparing them to the willow eel traps made by Peter.

He put his traps down next to our traps and he couldn't believe how

similar they were. The technology is virtually the same. We're

finding a boat, a trap, a boat, a trap, literally on top of one

another. This is not one this is not just one period of occupation

it is continuous throughout the channel's life. If you could dig

anywhere in the Fen, you would find the same types of things that we're

finding here. The archaeology tells us how people lived and fed

themselves for thousands of years, but what were they thinking?

There's a way we can get inside the minds of our ancestors with some

So, I've come here to Bowell Museum to find out a bit more. Right, so

the Fens were really a mysterious place. This is storyteller, Fred

White. There was lots of strange things, I don't know if you've

heard of boggits? Have you heard of boggits? No. Have you heard of Will

o the wisp? No. Have you heard of dead hands? Yeah! Well it so

happens, in here is a dead hand. occurred to me as I was listening

to your story telling there, Fred, are there more of these sort of

stories to do with the Fens because the Fens is such a peculiar

landscapes? It's a very dangerous place. I mean not so much now, but

in years gone by, the only way of travelling was on narrow paths that

were sort of handed down. I mean they used to change. So story

telling was a way of keeping people safe, really. Tell me, the stories,

are they are way of explaining a way of dangerous and mysterious

landscapes? Yes, the stories were told to the children so that the

children stayed in doors, really. As soon as it went dark, they

didn't go out. There was a feeling that if they made a noise, the

Bogart would come and grab them and the dead hands would come out of

the mud and pull them under and they wouldn't be seen again. It is

like dead hands. If you think about that, then that could be some poor

soul, fallen into the dyke, grabbing someone to help and then

suddenly that has grown into that mythical thing about the dead hand.

If you find stones with holes in, what you want to do is keep them

because they keep the witches away. People forget details and add

details by mistake and make stuff up? A bit like Chinese whispers,

things would sort of change. People would put their slant on it. A

story, really, is a thing that evolves and grows, really. You can

sometimes see a shadowy figure, all dressed in grey with long hair and

a beard. That's Diddy Munn. Fred's stories remind us of how

dangerous the Fens were, and of course, they were full of disease,

so how did people make themselves better? The curator of Cambridge

Folk Museum, Polly Hodgson, has brought ancient remedies, which

were still being used around 100 years ago. In those days, most

families lived from the land and that's where their remedies came

from. Would I be right in saying that the Fens were an unhealthy

place to live? Yes, definitely. Very moist, damp conditions.

Subject to a lot of sea flooding. What sort of disease were they

suffering from? They were suffering from ague. Ague for me is one of

those words that is just a cover- all. It is every disease, ague.

Whenever you read about the historical, everyone was suffering

from ague. Basically it was. It was. Basically aching of the joints,

bones, fever, shivering. How did they go about curing or preventing

the diseases? They were using a variety of things. We have some

very exciting objects. We have some horseradish here. That would have

been grated and tied around the neck. Really? So that's grated

horseradish. You tie it around the neck for what? To basically cure

the ague. I think maybe the strong smell, possibly. It is quite strong,

isn't it? Yes. We have a white briny root also known as a mandrake.

This was their main form of painkiller. It would have been

grated up. You couldn't swallow that, could you? Take one of these,

three times I day. That's amazing. Basically they were looking for

pain killers. They also used willow, obviously. That has an aspirin

connection to it. They would strip the bark off the willow tea, grate

it up and drink it as a tea. this looks like holly to me? It is

holly. That would have been scratched on the legs and I think

help get the circulation going. All of these preventions were about

keeping them out on the land so that they could continue to do that.

Ouch, God. Medicine's come a long way since then, thank goodness. God,

that hurts! All of this is giving me a picture of Fenland countryside,

providing a tough but fertile existence. From the Bronze Age

until the 15th century. Time now, to see how Cambridge is faring with

its own health problems. In the 16th century, the University is

established and the expanding town This is the bridge over the River

Cam. The very first crossing point of the river where the Romans

decided to build their city. It is hard to believe that Cambridge was

once a thriving port on the edge of a marshy Fen. It looks lovely today,

but what was it like 500 years ago, before the streets were cleaned so

thoroughly? Alan Brigham is a local historian and tour guide. Hi, Alan,

nice to see you again. Hi, Rory. Now, we're going to be talking

rubbish today? We're always talking rubbish. Now, Alan, apart from

being Cambridge's top historian, you're other job is as a road

sweeper? I've been a road sweeper for 35 years. But there is no

rubbish around here? You can't see any rubbish, Rory, but probably

underneath this grass, I think there is 500 years of medieval

rubbish. Because all this area along the back, a awful lot of it

is probably built on medieval rubbish. Outside Kings, 20 years

ago, they did an archaeological dig, and when they were digging all they

found were bones and broken glass from the remains of college feasts.

What they threw away is what we find now? What they leave for the

next generation is like you before you dress up in the mirror before

you go out of your house to meet your loved ones. It's how you want

people to remember you. Look in your wheelie bin and you can tell

how you really live. Now, Alan, humans produce another sort of

waste apart from household rubbish, do they not? Sewage, Rory, that's a

big problem. That's a nice way of putting it, yes. Let's go and talk

about it, because I want to talk about the river and sewage. Oh, no,

I don't like the sound of that at all. In medieval times, the river

brought prosperity to Cambridge, Cambridge thrived as a port, but

the river washed away the excrement of the town. So this was like an

open sewer. Basically, you're talking people used to excrete

directly into the river? Yes, this was the sewer for this side of

Cambridge. People would have their loos, their privies hanging over

the river, like, see here. See this overhang? Yes! I am almost tempted

to move closer to you, just in case. Back in the 1300s, the three heads

of colleges were fined by the corporation, because they had their

privies overhang the rivers just like this. Yeah, if you had been

going underneath there, you'd have been in danger of something nasty-

smelling and landing on your head. There was a ditch, it is called the

King's Ditch. It ran in a loop around the town, joining up the

arms of the river. It was not small, it was big, about the third of a

width of this river. Would that have been filled with sewer as

well? That became an open sewer too. There's not much gradient in

Cambridge. So Cambridge around those times is a city surrounded by

a continuous loop of sewage, basically? Yeah, that's the truth!

And the ditch ran into the river about here. So this is the point

where the sewage from that side of the town met with the sewage from

this side of the town and floated off down the river towards Wickham

Now, I'm a graduate of this fine university, but I never new it was

built on rubbish. But at the end of the 16th century, things start

looking up for the health of the Fen folk and indeed, the whole

nation. With medicine based on This gate represents a turning

point in the history of medicine. It was built by Dr John Keys, the

style is Italian renaissance. He had just come back from Italy. That

is significant. He brought back with him revolutionary ideas.

Renaissance Italy was leading the world in art, architecture and

medical study and Keys wanted to improve the health of people back

home. He designed this new court for his college, which broke with

medieval tradition by only have three sides, less, he said, the air

being prevented by free movement, should become corrupted and so does

us harm. It's a reminder that in the 16th century, the enclosed

courtyards of Cambridge colleges trapped disease and were often

deserted due to outbreaks of plague and fever. Medical historian,

Professor Vivian Nutham, says Keys' new court represents a new era.

Morning professor! Good morning, Rory and welcome to modernity.

Modernity? Is this modernity? certainly is. Because when Keys

refounded his college, he wanted it to be the very model of modern

education. He derived these ideas from his time in Italy. Why did he

go to Italy? What was he doing there? He went to Italy to study

medicine at the most prestigious Wow, this is a room, isn't it?

is the splendid hall. At the end we have a portrait of the man himself.

Oh, that's John Keys? That's John Keys and his coat of arms. What was

his major contribution to the modern medicine? He brought British

medicine into the modern world of the 16th century. In particular,

anatomy. Cutting up people? Anatomy literally means to cut open and is

the study of the human body, as illustrated in these drawings by

Leonardo da Vinci. Before Keys, no- one had studied anatomy, so

superstition gave way to science. It was in two generations, we have

William Harvey who comes to Keys especially on a medical scholarship,

studies anatomy and medicine here, discovering that the blood

circulates around the body, which is one of the great discoveries in

medicine. A huge milestone in medicine? It's a major milestone in

medicine. I think it divides ancient from modern medicine. It is

all due, in a sense to John Keys. And here he is, the great man

himself. Here he is, presiding over his favourite college. Place names

and street names can give us clues to the past. Hobson Street has a

link to another milestone in the It's now late in the 16th century

and there is still no public sanitation, but in 1574, a solution

is proposed for the sewage problems we heard about earlier. It is known

now as Hobson's Conduit. To find out more, I have a date with the

intriguingly named, Conduit Trust. The chairman, Howard Slatter, has

invited me to join their annual inspection. My fellow trustees and

I will be walking part of the system, Hobson's Conduit, and

Fallen leaves in the brook, from the brook's point of view are bad

news? Yes. It's up to here, here but no further. There's nothing

showing at the moment. Cambridge in the late 16th century had a big

problem with plague which had been brought up from London. Andrew Purn,

who was vice chancellor for the year, has this idea that the main

cause of the ongoing eruptions of the plague is the King's Ditch

which was around the southern edge of the town. He thought that if

only we could get this thing flushed out, cleaned out, then the

problems would disappear. So they bring in fresh water from the

outside of the town? That's right. He had the idea that the water from

Nine Wells, that flows along what we now know is the Vicar's Brook

and goes into the town could be diverted to come into Cambridge as

far as the King's Ditch, and then be used to flush out the ditch and

keep it clean thereafter. Did it work? We think that nowadays that

in fact it probably never did flush the ditch properly, but the water

that it then provided into Cambridge, could be put to other

purposes. So it had benefits? indeed. About five years or so

after it was first constructed, they built a pipe to the

marketplace, Market Hill, and a fountain was put in there that the

public could use for drinking water. So it was that good? Nice, clean,

cold spring water? Yes, it was. It was chalk spring water. And the

name Hobson wasn't attached to the conduit at this stage? That's right.

His name comes on the scene basically when he died, because in

his will he left land which was to be used to generate income to

maintain the newly constructed brook. And so there after, people

called it Hobson's Conduit. Was he a university man, Hobson? No, I

don't think he was. He used to hire out horses and he used to carry

goods and people from Cambridge, mainly from London and back.

Everyone's heard of the phrase Hobson's Choice. Hobson's choice,

yes. That's the same man, of course. Hobson's choice, no choice at all?

That's right. You could have whatever horse you liked as long as

it was the one he wanted to lend you. So, rightly or wrongly, Hobson

is reminded for his choice, more than the conduit, which failed to

flush out the sewage, but turned out to be a success. I'm almost at

my journey's end and time for a well-earned pint, in what better

placed than The Eagle where Crick and Watson unravelled human genome,

I'm moving forward to the 19th century, the damp Fens and

Cambridge were still riddled with malaria. Dr Alice Nicholls can tell

me how it was defeated. Why, are we here to talk about malaria?

wanted to show you some of the remedies that were used to treat

malaria in the 19th century. So quinine is one of them. Quinine is

famous for being in tonic water, that contains quinine, they used to

drink it in the Raj, in their gin and tonics and get cured, but what

is quinine derived from? Quinine comes from the bark of the sincona

tree. The tree is from South America. It was first used in

England was by Cambridge board Robert Talbor, who developed a

secret remedy to treat King Charles II. It was only later that the

science was established. So presumably that's expensive? It was

one of the more expensive remedies, it was available from druggists, in

hospitals, on prescriptions, it could be bought over the counter,

but it was more expensive in this area in the 19th century. So what

did the poor people like you or me use? They would have opium. Opium

was cheaper? Yes, it was. There was a report from the mid-1860s, where

it was observed that the brewers in the cellars would put opium into

the beer. Really? It was very popular with the local people, but

visitors to the area were surprised. They must have been thinking, nice

beer round here, I say! I associate malaria with tropical places, is

this the same disease? It is a different parasite. So the parasite

that causes fatal malaria in the Tropics is different to the

parasite that was found in the Fens. Some people did die from it. But we

associate it with an area of widespread death, so this is a

different sort of... You were just feeling ill? Yes. So, the draining

of the Fens virtually eradicated the malaria? It lessoned the

breeding grounds for the mosquitoes, it made them smaller and fewer and

then increased the distance between the breeding ground and the human

blood meal. This is an accident? They didn't know it was anything to

do with mosquitoes? They didn't know it was anything to do with

mosquitoes, but it wasn't an accident that they knew that the

marshes were causing ill health. see. Their conception of it was it

was the fogs and the vapours, rising from the marshes that caused

ill health. The miasma of the marshland environment that caused

the ill health. If they were to drain the land, not only to reclaim

it for agriculture use, but that it would make it a healthier place to

live. So with drainage of the Fens completed, the worst diseases were

defeated. The end of the malaria is very much the end of our journey,

but having sorted out some of its basic health problems, this city

could now thrive. Some of the discoveries that have been made