The Fens Talking Landscapes


The Fens

Similar Content

Browse content similar to The Fens. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!

Transcript


LineFromTo

I set out to understand some of the great landscapes of Britain,

0:00:040:00:09

to piece together the history that shaped them.

0:00:090:00:13

This is one of the most perplexing - the Fens.

0:00:130:00:17

A million acres of flat farmland, much of it below sea level.

0:00:170:00:22

Without thousands of canals, rivers and drains, it would disappear completely into marsh and mudflat.

0:00:220:00:30

It looks like an entirely man-made landscape.

0:00:310:00:36

The puzzle is - when was it made?

0:00:360:00:39

In one great feat of engineering? Or over thousands of years?

0:00:390:00:44

There's reclaimed and drained land throughout Britain, but nothing on the scale of the Fens.

0:01:050:01:12

They're in a great arc around the Wash.

0:01:120:01:17

It's a landscape as flat as the eye can see.

0:01:170:01:21

It's full of geometric patterns - straight lines of drainage ditches, right angles of fields.

0:01:210:01:28

It's like something off a drawing board. My first question is -

0:01:280:01:33

did this just grow up piecemeal through the centuries? Or was there ever a grand plan?

0:01:330:01:40

I went to Wisbech, to the museum.

0:01:410:01:44

I met Tom Williamson, a landscape historian working in East Anglia.

0:01:440:01:50

We looked out one of the earliest maps of the area, dating from 1631.

0:01:500:01:56

It shows that the Fens had not yet been drained.

0:01:560:02:00

This was a great, huge area of bog?

0:02:000:02:04

Yes, it's peat fen. Much of it would be flooded, certainly in winter -

0:02:040:02:10

reed beds, sedge beds, some grazing, a huge great common, really, teeming with life.

0:02:100:02:16

There's the Wash. This is this great area of peat fen, into which you have a series of rivers,

0:02:160:02:23

feeding from the Midlands and East Anglia - Cam, here,

0:02:230:02:28

-the Ouse and the Nene.

-At what point did they start to drain?

0:02:280:02:33

There were sporadic attempts in medieval times, but the big drainage was in the 17th century.

0:02:330:02:39

How did they do it? Did they get in a great drainage expert?

0:02:390:02:44

Yes, a bloke called Vermuyden. Francis, the 4th Duke of Bedford,

0:02:440:02:50

and some financial backers called "adventurers" because they ventured their capital on the enterprise,

0:02:500:02:57

they employed a Dutch engineer called Vermuyden - people pronounce it different ways.

0:02:570:03:04

But his view was quite simple really.

0:03:040:03:07

The rivers all feed into here. They're sluggish and meander around

0:03:070:03:12

with silt deposits in their beds.

0:03:120:03:14

Their outfalls get choked. They're too sluggish and if you don't speed them up, they'll take the water

0:03:140:03:21

-across this peat fen quickly and out through to the North Sea into the Wash.

-And carry the silt.

0:03:210:03:28

They'll be self-clearing channels.

0:03:280:03:31

So there really was a great plan.

0:03:310:03:34

In the 1630s, they think they can drain and develop the whole lot.

0:03:340:03:39

The great plan was to straighten out the silty rivers and then drain the land into them,

0:03:400:03:47

dividing it up into rectangular blocks for the adventurers.

0:03:470:03:51

The centre of the whole system was Vermuyden's new cut for the Ouse, named the Bedford River,

0:03:510:03:58

after the Fourth Duke, chief of the adventurers.

0:03:580:04:02

-Is this it?

-That's right. 1637 that was completed.

-God!

0:04:020:04:07

20 miles long.

0:04:070:04:09

20 miles dead straight. It'd be a major engineering achievement today.

0:04:090:04:14

Yeah. This was done with guys with spades and pickaxes and wheelbarrows.

0:04:140:04:20

It's a phenomenal thing. It takes a lot of the water of the Ouse so that it doesn't go meandering around.

0:04:200:04:27

It comes straight, speeding up the flow and preventing inundation, particularly in winter.

0:04:270:04:34

But the adventurers' grand plan ran into trouble. This had been common land

0:04:340:04:40

and local Fensmen resented the way it was being privatised by outside speculators.

0:04:400:04:47

And it wasn't long before the land started to flood again.

0:04:470:04:51

Once Vermuyden's cut was running, the Fens were drained, were they?

0:04:540:05:00

They were declared drained, but that's not the same thing. Flooding continued in many parts.

0:05:000:05:07

There wasn't enough capacity in these drains to get the water through and there was opposition, sabotage

0:05:070:05:14

and vandalism of the drainage works by the local commoners.

0:05:140:05:18

Then everything stopped for a while because of the Civil War. Then, in 1650-51, Vermuyden's back

0:05:180:05:25

-and they dig this, the new river bed.

-Good heavens!

-It's even bigger.

-Monstrous! 20 miles again?

0:05:250:05:32

Yeah, parallel with the other. Doesn't silt up. Thousands of gallons pouring through it.

0:05:320:05:38

-And this IS still working?

-Yes, it's the main arterial drainage channel for the peat fens.

0:05:380:05:45

-350 years and it's working.

-Yeah.

-So this was the Fens finally drained?

0:05:450:05:50

That's what they thought. But they were wrong. Come on, I'll show you.

0:05:500:05:54

What Vermuyden and the others hadn't realised was, as they drained the peat, it gradually shrinks.

0:06:000:06:06

It shrinks cos the water's removed and as it's ploughed, the peat surface desiccates and blows off.

0:06:060:06:13

-It falls and falls and falls.

-How did they get the water up?

0:06:130:06:18

-The land must be ten metres below...

-That's the most striking thing about the Fenland landscape.

0:06:180:06:25

All the rivers stand up above the farmland.

0:06:250:06:28

When you get to the late-17th, early-18th century, they have to pump the water from these lower levels

0:06:280:06:35

over this bank into the drain.

0:06:350:06:38

Where that house stands is the site of one of the wind pumps.

0:06:380:06:43

-There were two, one after the other, in steps.

-To bring it up in stages?

0:06:430:06:47

Yes, sometimes there were three. All this area, you'd have seen hundreds, particularly on these main banks.

0:06:470:06:54

Absolutely full of them.

0:06:540:06:57

Then, in the 19th century, those are replaced by these -

0:06:570:07:02

by steam pumps.

0:07:020:07:04

And did the land go on shrinking?

0:07:060:07:09

The land goes on shrinking, but the steam pumps are gradually replaced by more modern technology,

0:07:090:07:17

-which we have here.

-Great diesel.

0:07:170:07:20

The adventurers' investment straightened out and speeded up the rivers

0:07:270:07:33

so that the land could be drained into them and shared out.

0:07:330:07:37

But for 300 years, the peat's been drying, decaying and disappearing.

0:07:370:07:42

In some places, it's ten metres below its original level.

0:07:420:07:46

It was too much for the wind and steam pumps. What about modern ones?

0:07:460:07:51

You really have got a demonstration of the levels, haven't you?

0:07:540:07:58

There's the windmill up there, then the steam pump, then the diesel,

0:07:580:08:03

-and the latest - the electric pump at the bottom.

-Yes.

-How much longer can this go on?

-Not much longer.

0:08:030:08:11

Down here, we've got the peat soil.

0:08:110:08:14

As you rummage around, you find, in places, they're ploughing through into the clay.

0:08:140:08:20

-Down to the bedrock.

-Effectively, that's right.

0:08:200:08:25

Whereas peat is wonderfully fertile - as anyone buying it from the garden centre knows - this stuff is not.

0:08:250:08:32

So the amount of effort and money put in to keep this dry is not going to be viable eventually.

0:08:320:08:39

If you turn that thing off, within a few months, this will be under water.

0:08:390:08:45

-The Fens come back.

-The Fens come back.

0:08:450:08:49

The adventurers' grand design may be near the end of its life.

0:09:000:09:04

I tried to imagine what the Fens would be like if they came back.

0:09:040:09:09

I remembered how the Fensmen sabotaged the original drainage.

0:09:090:09:15

What had been so attractive about a bog?

0:09:150:09:18

I asked archeologist Ben Robinson and he took me to Wood Walton,

0:09:180:09:23

a few acres that have amazingly survived.

0:09:230:09:28

It looks to us a very beautiful, restful place, but presumably they thought it was wasted ground.

0:09:280:09:35

Not at all. It's got everything you need to sustain life.

0:09:350:09:39

These meres would have been shallow. The medieval fen would be stuffed full of fish and eels.

0:09:390:09:46

The reeds were harvested for building materials, the peat was cut for fuel. Woodland fringes this area,

0:09:460:09:53

which again was used for fuel and building, so it's full of resources.

0:09:530:09:58

We talk about biodiversity and rainforest, but fenland had it all.

0:09:580:10:02

-You make it sound as if they lived rather well.

-Yeah.

0:10:020:10:06

The monasteries carved up the whole fenland region among themselves...

0:10:060:10:11

-And grow rich on it.

-Yes, Ely ended up amongst the richest monasteries.

0:10:110:10:16

I could see now why the Fensmen sabotaged the great drainage.

0:10:180:10:23

In the Middle Ages, these were among the richest lands in England.

0:10:230:10:28

But wherever did they live?

0:10:280:10:31

Ben, who turned out to be a man of many parts, took me to see. Medieval Fensmen lived on islands.

0:10:310:10:38

There's a small fen island down there sticking up from the fen floor.

0:10:380:10:44

-It's surrounded by a drain.

-It does look like an island.

-That's right.

0:10:440:10:49

Exactly. An entirely different sort of field on top of the island there.

0:10:490:10:54

You can see most of the houses on the ridge on the firm ground,

0:10:540:10:59

surrounded by rectangular reclamation fields.

0:10:590:11:02

-It would flood on each side. There'd be reed beds.

-The fringes would be surrounded by seasonally flooded land

0:11:020:11:09

which might have been taken in for summer pasture.

0:11:090:11:13

There'd be reed bed further out and then a few meres. It would have stuck out as somewhere quite different.

0:11:130:11:21

There'd be orchards on some of these medieval islands, even vineyards.

0:11:230:11:28

-Really?

-On ones owned by monasteries. They really looked different.

0:11:280:11:33

It's very clear down there.

0:11:330:11:36

Before the great drainage of the 17th century, the Fen was a vast expanse of waterways and bog,

0:11:400:11:47

rich in reeds, rushes, summer grass and wildlife.

0:11:470:11:51

Its people lived on islands which they ploughed and cultivated -

0:11:510:11:56

a rare and rich way of life.

0:11:560:11:59

So the Fens aren't just a 17th-century landscape.

0:11:590:12:03

Medieval villages and fields survive if you know how to see them.

0:12:030:12:09

I drove north looking for other old fenland landscapes.

0:12:090:12:13

I'd almost reached the Wash when I hit a string of villages, each with a fine medieval church.

0:12:130:12:19

Whaplode, Fleet, Holbeach - old names.

0:12:190:12:25

And the landscape looks rather different - the fields are smaller, the soil is paler.

0:12:250:12:32

Is it possible this is another ancient landscape surviving in the Fens?

0:12:320:12:39

Along both sides of this narrow strip of old villages,

0:12:390:12:44

I noticed a succession of high banks snaking through the landscape,

0:12:440:12:49

most of them topped with roads.

0:12:490:12:51

It looked like these villages had built banks to keep the water back.

0:12:510:12:56

I asked Tom Lane, a fenland archaeologist.

0:12:560:13:01

When these villages were built, they must have been on quite a narrow strip of land.

0:13:010:13:07

It couldn't have been more than a mile and a half across.

0:13:070:13:11

It's almost like existing on a sandbank really.

0:13:110:13:16

They were really on the edge of the sea, I suppose.

0:13:160:13:20

They were in danger of going UNDER the sea. That's why these banks were so important.

0:13:200:13:26

At one time, the Wash continually flooded this area, reaching far inland.

0:13:260:13:32

That's why the soil is light and silty. The villagers built banks to keep the water away from their land.

0:13:320:13:40

From the air, you can see the banks, because now they have roads on top.

0:13:400:13:45

Tom said the oldest were to landward, built out into the Fen.

0:13:450:13:50

The first bank was built by Domesday - by 1086.

0:13:530:13:59

It's the one down there that's so wiggly.

0:13:590:14:02

That's because it was built in small lengths -

0:14:020:14:07

the Whaplode people, the Holbeach people, the Gedney people -

0:14:070:14:11

each doing their contribution - a fantastic community effort.

0:14:110:14:16

-That's good soil, isn't it?

-Silt soil is the most fertile in Britain.

0:14:160:14:22

That's why they were so successful when they made the banks. Initially, it was for protection,

0:14:220:14:28

but it worked as reclamation. They ploughed it because it was fertile.

0:14:280:14:33

We're also quickly coming up to the third one, which is called Hassock Dyke, 1180 this one.

0:14:330:14:40

It's just a straight line. There's actually one more, a common dyke,

0:14:400:14:45

which is built round about 1215

0:14:450:14:49

or into the mid-13th century.

0:14:490:14:52

Brilliant little system.

0:14:520:14:55

As the silty soil behind the banks dried, it turned out to be even more valuable than the Fen.

0:14:570:15:04

So between about 1050 and 1250, these villages built more and more banks and reclaimed 90 square miles.

0:15:040:15:11

They crossed their new land with drove roads for cattle to graze the peaty fen beyond.

0:15:110:15:18

It's another surviving medieval landscape.

0:15:180:15:21

So successful were the banks, that from the 13th or 14th century,

0:15:210:15:26

the villagers built them on the other side, out towards the sea.

0:15:260:15:31

And here they've been building them ever since.

0:15:310:15:36

We threaded between the banks along the River Nene, towards the Wash.

0:15:360:15:41

Once, it was just an open landscape, miles and miles of salt marsh.

0:15:410:15:46

-They made salt here.

-Sea salt was a huge industry in the Wash area in medieval times and before.

0:15:460:15:54

So the sea banks changed it all.

0:15:540:15:57

What happened was that people were able to reclaim land further and further out.

0:15:570:16:04

-When this lighthouse was built, this was the end of the land.

-On the sea?

0:16:040:16:09

-Right on the sea.

-So people have been winning back the land through the ages.

0:16:090:16:16

"Winning back the land" is the right phrase - over a very long period.

0:16:160:16:22

This medieval landscape of dykes and drove roads stretches almost all around the edge of the Wash.

0:16:230:16:31

Fensmen had after all been reclaiming little sections of land

0:16:310:16:37

before the great 17th-century plan.

0:16:370:16:40

I began to wonder how far back in time this piecemeal fen drainage went.

0:16:400:16:46

It's an astonishing thought that that's an ancient drove road

0:16:480:16:53

and some of these banks and ditches date back more than 1,000 years.

0:16:530:16:58

But people here will tell you the Romans started all this off.

0:16:580:17:03

So the next question is -

0:17:030:17:06

was it the Romans who first drained the Fens?

0:17:060:17:10

Everyone told me that the person to ask about Romans is Rog Palmer.

0:17:150:17:21

He's a photographer in Cambridge, using aerial photographs to map out faint traces of Roman remains.

0:17:210:17:28

What I'm doing is drawing out the archeological features I can see.

0:17:280:17:35

We can see some of the enclosures here, which would have been settlement enclosures or for stock.

0:17:350:17:42

A linear feature there which doesn't look like a track, but might be.

0:17:420:17:47

Most of what I'm seeing here are the ditches from former settlements and occupation.

0:17:490:17:55

So these are actually Roman? We've got Romans living in the Fens?

0:17:550:18:01

What we see on the Fens is Iron-Age peasants carrying on being peasants,

0:18:010:18:07

but under Roman government, if you like. These aren't Romans in togas.

0:18:070:18:12

Roger's photographs are oblique views from the side of a plane.

0:18:140:18:19

He straightens his tracings up by computer, then plots them on a map.

0:18:190:18:24

Piece by piece, he's been building a complete picture of Roman settlements in the Fens.

0:18:240:18:31

One thing that strikes the eye is this great string here.

0:18:320:18:38

They're all the way along in this line. Was it a main road they built?

0:18:380:18:44

No, these settlements were on the high and dry ground,

0:18:440:18:48

which were the silted beds of old rivers which we call "roddens" now.

0:18:480:18:53

-So this was a pattern of high ground at the time?

-Yes.

0:18:530:18:57

The rodden was a river in Neolithic times,

0:18:570:19:01

which has silted up since then and the silt is hard and compact

0:19:010:19:07

and doesn't compress as much as the peat does.

0:19:070:19:11

So the rodden stands in places two metres above the ground surface.

0:19:110:19:16

-This is the pattern of settlements here?

-Yes, they were on the roddens.

0:19:160:19:21

It's amazingly precise, isn't it?

0:19:210:19:24

-Well...

-It's astonishing.

0:19:240:19:26

So the Romans didn't drain the Fens. They didn't need to do so.

0:19:260:19:32

They used the high ground, yes, with no drainage.

0:19:320:19:36

The Romans didn't drain the Fens - they lived on the dry roddens.

0:19:360:19:40

But as the Roman Empire fell, the water table rose and the roddens and settlements disappeared.

0:19:400:19:47

Now the peat has shrunk, the roddens are back - strange humps in the landscape.

0:19:470:19:53

But the rest of the Roman world is gone.

0:19:530:19:57

Makes you wonder whether that is the end of the story.

0:19:580:20:02

Well, it's an amazing thing that Francis Pryor, at Flag Fen,

0:20:020:20:08

has discovered not only earlier settlements, but a whole earlier landscape.

0:20:080:20:15

Francis took me to a drove road, one reconstructed from his archeological evidence.

0:20:220:20:28

It dates back to long before the Romans.

0:20:280:20:32

At about two and a half thousand years BC, there were huge flocks of animals around here...

0:20:320:20:39

-So we're talking 4,000-5,000 years ago?

-Yes, the early Bronze Age.

0:20:390:20:44

-This was a pastoral economy.

-Yes, a very specialised pastoral economy.

0:20:440:20:49

As you can see by this. This is a specialised land-management feature, this Bronze-Age road.

0:20:490:20:56

It's on a grand scale, this great roadway here.

0:20:560:21:01

There were loads of these roadways, where people took their animals.

0:21:010:21:06

-This extends over a large area of the Fens here.

-Yeah.

0:21:060:21:11

Absolutely soaking wet. What did they do? Did they drain the land?

0:21:110:21:17

No, it wasn't soaking wet. It was dry.

0:21:170:21:21

-This was dry land?

-In the Bronze Age.

0:21:210:21:25

The fens around here STARTED to form about 2000 BC.

0:21:250:21:29

-So the Fens were dry?

-There WERE wet patches, but not the huge expanses of peat that formed later.

0:21:290:21:36

I wanted to know how Francis could be so sure this landscape was first flooded during the Bronze Age.

0:21:390:21:46

He took me to the remains of a timber platform he'd discovered.

0:21:460:21:51

It was built about 1300 BC, late in the Bronze Age.

0:21:510:21:56

Francis's theory is that it stood right through the years when this land passed from bone dry to fen.

0:21:560:22:03

In the early Bronze Age, this would have been just getting a bit boggy.

0:22:030:22:09

Then the water slowly crept up, inch by inch. Every winter, the flooding got worse and worse.

0:22:090:22:16

And that's why those posts have survived as high as they do.

0:22:160:22:20

If they hadn't been wet to the top of the post, none of that wood would have survived.

0:22:200:22:27

-This was a platform, a walkway?

-And much more than that.

0:22:270:22:31

I imagine this line of posts was a sort of symbolic wall against the incoming waters -

0:22:310:22:38

a King Canute effect. So they come to the posts to make their offerings

0:22:380:22:43

-at the posts.

-What sort of offerings?

-Valuable offerings - bronze swords,

0:22:430:22:49

daggers, spearheads. They're actually sending a message to the ancestors,

0:22:490:22:55

saying, "Keep back, water."

0:22:550:22:58

Because it's the ancestors who they believed controlled the elements like flooding and storms.

0:22:580:23:05

-Then we have a picture of this landscape changing over time...

-Slow change was from about 2000-3000 BC,

0:23:050:23:13

as the land slowly began to get flooded.

0:23:130:23:16

Then the flooding got worse and worse and about 1000 BC, it was really serious.

0:23:160:23:23

So that when the Romans came here in 43 AD, this part of the Fen was just water.

0:23:230:23:29

It's all very well as theory, but could I dig up any evidence

0:23:310:23:36

to show exactly how dry fields had been transformed into a bog of peat and silt?

0:23:360:23:42

Charlie French is a soil specialist. He's studied a prehistoric land surface, uncovered during quarrying

0:23:420:23:50

near the River Ouse, on the western edge of the Fens.

0:23:500:23:54

How far back in time does this cut take us?

0:23:540:23:57

What we're looking at is an old ground surface that was used until about the last 3,000 years.

0:23:570:24:04

So from here to here, if I clean this off,

0:24:040:24:08

we've actually got a buried soil,

0:24:080:24:11

so where you see this mottled grey and orange sitting on top of terraced sands and gravels.

0:24:110:24:18

-It was dry at this time.

-Yeah, very much a dry-land situation with woodland and trees.

0:24:180:24:25

Eventually it becomes subsumed. You see these darker deposits here - a mixture of freshwater peat,

0:24:250:24:32

which is coming in from the Fens with rising water tables,

0:24:320:24:37

mixed with freshwater silts and clays, this blocky material here,

0:24:370:24:42

which comes inland from Bedfordshire and so on, spreading out over this

0:24:420:24:46

and getting that combination of two flows - one from inland, one from the Fens to the east.

0:24:460:24:53

So when the Fens were first flooded, water came from two directions.

0:24:530:24:58

It's a story Charlie has pieced together by examining fenland soils under the microscope.

0:24:580:25:04

Water was coming from one direction because, 5,000 years ago,

0:25:040:25:09

melting ice from the last ice age was raising the sea level, flooding the area around the Wash.

0:25:090:25:16

As the land became boggier, the first peat began to form.

0:25:160:25:20

By the later Bronze Age, we have a great swathe of peat,

0:25:200:25:25

3,000 years ago, running up these major channel systems like the Ouse,

0:25:250:25:32

where we actually get peat formation or the build-up of organic remains.

0:25:320:25:38

The whole slide, as you might expect, dominated by organic matter.

0:25:380:25:44

'But then something else began to happen, which clogged up and spread out the rivers coming from inland.'

0:25:440:25:51

At the same time, in Bedfordshire, Leicestershire and Hertfordshire,

0:25:510:25:56

-we get clearance on thick, heavy soil for the first time.

-Felling?

-Yes, ploughing for the first time.

0:25:560:26:03

New sediment - clay and silt - gets into the water system, as we've seen on these slides.

0:26:030:26:10

Here, where we get fantastic silt and clay through the whole system.

0:26:100:26:17

-Masses of silt coming down those rivers.

-And, of course, it can't get out to the sea.

0:26:170:26:23

It spreads out, ponds back against that peat.

0:26:230:26:28

The material finally settles out of suspension in still-water conditions

0:26:280:26:33

And the water is locked in that great basin. There's an irony here.

0:26:330:26:39

We think of human action destroying the Fens, but your work shows that 5,000 years ago,

0:26:390:26:45

human activity helped create the Fens.

0:26:450:26:49

It was human exploitation of a wide catchment area around the system

0:26:490:26:54

which contributes to the formations we see today.

0:26:540:26:58

So water flooded this land from two directions - it came from the sea

0:26:590:27:04

and also from the slow, silty rivers clogged by the first farmers ploughing heavy soils in the west,

0:27:040:27:11

the same rivers the great drainage engineers would struggle to speed up 4,000 years later.

0:27:110:27:18

Before I left, I went back to that steam pump on the Bedford River.

0:27:180:27:23

I saw that this drained landscape is just a short episode in the history

0:27:230:27:29

of the way we've moulded these vast, flat acres.

0:27:290:27:34

I first saw the Fens as a man-made landscape, with its straight ditches and right-angled fields,

0:27:340:27:40

and it's true - it IS a man-made landscape, but in a way totally unexpected to me.

0:27:400:27:47

People thousands of years ago in middle England felled and cultivated and brought the silt down.

0:27:470:27:53

They created the Fens.

0:27:530:27:56

But the Fens are coming to another turning point in their history

0:27:560:28:01

because, after three centuries of drainage and cultivation, the peat's almost all gone

0:28:010:28:08

The bedrock clay is coming out.

0:28:080:28:11

It may not be economic to continue pumping.

0:28:110:28:15

It's an extraordinary thought that perhaps the waters will come back

0:28:150:28:20

and the reed beds, the willow, the alder and wildfowl will return,

0:28:200:28:25

just like in the Middle Ages.

0:28:250:28:28

Subtitles by Roger Young BBC Scotland - 2000

0:28:440:28:48

E-mail us at [email protected]

0:28:480:28:52

Download Subtitles

SRT

ASS