The Fens
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The Fens or Fenlands in eastern England are a naturally
Fen is the local term for an individual area of marshland or former marshland. It also designates the type of marsh typical of the area, which has neutral or alkaline water and relatively large quantities of dissolved minerals, but few other plant nutrients.
The Fens are a National Character Area,[2] based on their landscape, biodiversity, geodiversity and economic activity.
The Fens lie inland of the Wash, and are an area of nearly 1,500 sq mi (3,900 km2) in the south east of Lincolnshire, most of Cambridgeshire (which also includes parts of the old historic county of Huntingdonshire), and western most parts of Norfolk and Suffolk.[3]
Most of the Fens lie within a few metres of sea level. As with similar areas in the Netherlands, much of the Fenland originally consisted of fresh- or salt-water wetlands. These have been artificially drained and continue to be protected from floods by drainage banks and pumps. With the support of this drainage system, the Fenland has become a major arable agricultural region for grains and vegetables. The Fens are particularly fertile, containing around half of the grade 1 agricultural land in England.[4]
The Fens have been referred to as the "Holy Land of the English" because of the former monasteries, now churches and
Background: historical flooding and drainage
The Fens are very low-lying compared with the
Without artificial drainage and flood protection, the Fens would be liable to periodic flooding, particularly in winter due to the heavy load of water flowing down from the uplands and overflowing the rivers. Some areas of the Fens were once permanently flooded, creating lakes or
Since the advent of modern drainage in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Fens have been radically transformed. Today arable farming has almost entirely replaced pastoral. The economy of the Fens is heavily invested in the production of crops such as grains, vegetables, and some cash crops such as
Areas of the Fens
Drainage in the Fenland consists of both
Great Level
- The Great Level of the Fens is the largest region of fen in eastern England: including the lower drainage basins of the Great Ouse, it covers about 500 sq mi (1,300 km2). It is also known as the Bedford Level, after Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, who headed the so-called adventurers (investors) in the 17th-century drainage in this area; his son became the first governor of the Bedford Level Corporation. In the 17th century, the Great Level was divided into the North, Middle and South Levels for the purposes of administration and maintenance. In the 20th century, these levels were given new boundaries; they included some fens that were never part of the jurisdiction of the Bedford Level Corporation.
- The South Level lies to the southeast of the Ouse Washes and surrounds Ely, as it did in the 17th century.
- The Middle Level lies between the Ouse Washes and the Nene, but historically was defined as between the Ouse Washes and Morton's Leam, a 15th-century canal that runs north of the town of Whittlesey.
- The North Level now includes all of the fens in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire between the Nene and the River Welland. It originally included only a small part of these lands, including the ancient parishes of Thorney and Crowland, but excluding most of Wisbech Hundred and Lincolnshire, which were under their own local jurisdictions.[10]
Bourne and Deeping Fens
Bourne Fen and Deeping Fen lie in the southern most parts of Lincolnshire, between the Rivers Welland and the Bourne Eau with the River Glen running between the two Fens and the area covers both the town of Bourne as well as The Deepings including the villages of Langtoft and Baston.
Linsdey Level
The Lindsey Level, also known as the Black Sluice District, was first drained in 1639 and extends from the Glen and Bourne Eau to Swineshead and then across to Kirton. Its waters is carried mostly though the South Forty-Foot Drain through to the Haven at Boston though the Black Sluice. Also this area includes the market town of Spalding and the ancient village of Sempringham. The above were all redrained at one time or another after the Civil War (1642–1649).
Holland, Wildmore, West and East Fens
These areas cover the northern most part of the Fens from Boston right up as far north west as Washingborough near Lincoln along the course of the River Witham and to the north east it extends up as far as the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds to the seaside town of Skegness.
- The Witham Commission Fens:
- First District: from Washingborough to Billinghay Dales
- Second District: Blacksluice – Holland Fen
- Third District: north of the River Witham above Bardney
- Wainfleet
- Fifth District: Kyme Eau to Billinghay Skirth
- Sixth District: Blacksluice – Helpringham Eau to Kyme Eau
These were drained in the 18th and 19th centuries.[11]
Formation and geography
At the end of the most recent
These rising sea levels flooded the previously inland woodland of the Fenland basin; over the next few thousand years both saltwater and freshwater wetlands developed as a result. Silt and
The wetlands of the fens have historically included:
- mud flats and braided rivers, which are sometimes exposed and at other times covered with water.
- Salt marsh: this is the higher part of a tidal wash, on which salt-adapted plants grew.
- Fen: this is a broad expanse of nutrient-rich shallow water in which dead plants do not fully decay, resulting in a flora of emergent plants growing in saturated peat.
- , but the word moor was applied to this acid peatland occurring on hills. These moors disappeared in the 19th century. Researchers did not think that the Fenland had this kind of peat, until the discovery of archaeological and documentary evidence showing that it did until the early 19th century.
- Waters: these have included:
- tidal creeks, which reached from the sea into the marsh, the Townlands and in some places, the fen. They were named only if big enough to be regarded as havens
- meres, or shallow lakes, which were more or less static but aerated by wind action
- many rivers, both natural and (from Roman times on) artificial
Major areas for settlement were:
- Townlands, a broad bank of silt (the remains of the huge creek levees that developed naturally during the Bronze and Iron Ages), on which the settlers built homes and grew vegetables for households
- fen islands: areas of higher land, which were never covered by the growing peat
- fen edges: uplands surrounding the fens
In general, of the three principal soil types found in the Fenland today, the mineral-based silt resulted from the energetic marine environment of the creeks, the clay was deposited in tidal mud-flats and salt-marsh, while the peat grew in the fen and bog. The peat produces black soils, which are directly comparable to the American
Since the 19th century, all of the acid peat in the Fens has disappeared. Drying and wastage of peats has greatly reduced the depth of the alkaline peat soils and reduced the overall elevation of large areas of the peat fens. It is also recorded that peat was dug out of the East and West Lincolnshire fens in the 14th century and used to fire the salterns of Wrangle and Friskney. In later centuries it was used locally for winter fuel and its digging controlled by the Duchy of Lancaster.[13]
Written records of earthquakes in the Fen area appear as early as 1048. According to Historia Ingulfi, p. 64, (1684)[14] this took place in Lincolnshire. In 1117 one affected Holland, Lincs, "endangering and injuring Crowland Abbey".[15] In 1185 Lincoln was damaged.[16] In 1448 a shock was recorded in south Lincolnshire (Ingulfi, p. 526). In 1750 John Moore records a severe shock attended by a rumbling noise in Bourn after midday. This was felt in Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. Houses tottered, slates, tiles and some chimneys fell. As it was a Sunday, some people ran out of the churches "in great consternation".[17] In 1792 another shock was also felt in Bourne and neighbouring towns.[18][19]
History
Pre-Roman settlement
There is evidence of human settlement near the Fens from the Mesolithic on.[20] The evidence suggests that Mesolithic settlement in Cambridgeshire was particularly along the fen edges and on the low islands within the fens, to take advantage of the hunting and fishing opportunities of the wetlands.[21] Internationally important sites include Flag Fen and Must Farm quarry Bronze Age settlement and Stonea Camp.
Roman farming and engineering
The Romans constructed the Fen Causeway, a road across the Fens to link what later became East Anglia with what later became central England; it runs between Denver and Peterborough. They also linked Cambridge and Ely. Generally, their road system avoided the Fens, except for minor roads designed for exporting the products of the region, especially salt, beef and leather. Sheep were probably raised on the higher ground of the Townlands and fen islands, then as in the early 19th century. There may have been some drainage efforts during the Roman period, including the Car Dyke along the western edge of the Fenland between Peterborough and Lincolnshire, but most canals were constructed for transportation.[22]
How far seaward the Roman settlement extended is unclear owing to the deposits laid down above them during later floods.
Early post-Roman settlements
The early post-Roman settlements were made on the
Early Middle Ages and Middle Ages
After the end of Roman Britain, there is a break in written records. It is thought that some
It has been proposed that the names of West Walton, Walsoken and Walpole suggest the native British population, with the Wal- coming from the Old English walh, meaning "foreigner".[23] However, the villages are in close proximity to the old Roman sea wall, so the wal- element is more probably from wal or weal, meaning "wall". Walton is generally believed to mean "wall-town",[24] Walsoken to mean "the district under particular jurisdiction by the wall",[24] and Walpole to mean simply "wall-pole" (Old English wal and pal).[25]
When written records resume in Anglo-Saxon England, the names of a number of peoples of the Fens are recorded in the Tribal Hidage and Christian histories. They include North Gyrwe (Peterborough and Crowland), South Gyrwe (Ely), the Spalda (Spalding), and Bilmingas (part of south Lincolnshire).
In the early Christian period of Anglo-Saxon England, a number of Christians sought the isolation that could be found in the wilderness of the Fens. Later classified as saints, often with close royal links, they include
Monastic life was disrupted by Danish (Anglo-Saxon) raids and centuries of settlement from the 6th century but was revived in the mid-10th-century monastic revival. In the 11th century, the whole area was incorporated into a united
Fenland monastic houses include the so-called Fen Five (
. As major landowners, the monasteries played a significant part in the early efforts at drainage of the Fens.Royal Forest
During most of the 12th century and the early 13th century, the south Lincolnshire fens were
Though the forest was about half in
Draining the Fens
Early modern attempts to drain the Fens
Though some signs of Roman hydraulics survive, and there were also some medieval drainage works, land drainage was begun in earnest during the 1630s by the various investors who had contracts with King Charles I to do so.[29] The leader of one of these syndicates was the Earl of Bedford, who employed Cornelius Vermuyden as engineer. Contrary to popular belief, Vermuyden was not involved with the draining of the Great Fen in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk in the 1630s, but only became involved with the second phase of construction in the 1650s.[30] The scheme was imposed despite huge opposition from locals who were losing their livelihoods based on fishing and wildfowling. Fenmen known as the Fen Tigers tried to sabotage the drainage efforts.
Two cuts were made in the Cambridgeshire Fens to join the
However, their success was short-lived. Once drained of water, the peat shrank, and the fields lowered further. The more effectively they were drained, the worse the problem became, and soon the fields were lower than the surrounding rivers. By the end of the 17th century, the land was under water once again.
Though the three Bedford Levels together formed the biggest scheme, they were not the only ones.
Many original records of the Bedford Level Corporation, including maps of the Levels, are now held by Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies Service at the County Record Office in Cambridge.
Modern drainage
The major part of the draining of the Fens was effected in the late 18th and early 19th century, again involving fierce local rioting and sabotage of the works. The final success came in the 1820s when windpumps were replaced with powerful coal-powered steam engines, such as Stretham Old Engine, which were themselves replaced with diesel-powered pumps, such as those at Prickwillow Museum and, following World War II, the small electric stations that are still used today.
The dead vegetation of the peat remained undecayed because it was deprived of air (the peat being anaerobic). When it was drained, the oxygen of the air reached it, since then the peat has been slowly oxidizing.
The Fens today are protected by 60 miles (97 km) of embankments defending against the sea and 96 miles (154 km) of river embankments. Eleven internal drainage board (IDB) groups maintain 286 pumping stations and 3,800 miles (6,100 km) of watercourses, with the combined capacity to pump 16,500 Olympic-size swimming pools in a 24-hour period or to empty Rutland Water in 3 days.[33]
Modern farming and food manufacturing in the Fens
As of 2008, there are estimated to be 4,000 farms in the Fens involved in agriculture and horticulture, including arable, livestock, poultry, dairy, orchards, vegetables and ornamental plants and flowers. They employ about 27,000 people in full-time and seasonal jobs. In turn, they support around 250 businesses involved in food and drink manufacturing and distribution, employing around 17,500 people.[33]
Over 70% of the Fens is involved in environmental stewardship schemes, under which 270 miles (430 km) of hedgerow and 1,780 miles (2,860 km) of ditches are managed, providing large wildlife corridors and habitat for endangered animals such as the water vole.[33]
Restoration
In 2003, the
The Fens Waterways Link is a scheme to restore navigation to some of the drainage works. It is planned to bring the South Forty-Foot Drain and parts of the Car Dyke into use as part of a route between Boston and Cambridge.
Sports
The Fens is the origin of English
Settlements
Many historic cities, towns and villages have grown up in the fens, sited chiefly on the few areas of raised ground. These include:
- Borough of Boston
- Chatteris, a market town
- City of Ely (meaning "Isle of Eels"), whose cathedral – one of the Fen Five monasteries – is known as the "Ship of the Fens"; administrative centre of the East Cambridgeshire District Council
- Cottenham, one of the five Silicon Fen-Edge Villages strung out along the Fens' southernmost border, just north of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire – from west to east: Willingham, Rampton, Cottenham, Landbeach and Waterbeach;
- Crowland, one of the Fen Five monasteries; also a medieval triangular bridge;
- Donington, birthplace of the explorer Matthew Flinders
- Guyhirn, bridging point over the Nene and home to a 17th-century Puritan chapel
- Holbeach, a market town
- Littleport, a large village approximately 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Ely
- Little Thetford, settled on a boulder clay island within the fens since the Bronze Age, 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Ely
- Long Sutton, a market town and home to UK's largest food cannery
- March, a market town and administrative centre of the Fenland District
- Market Deeping, a market town
- Woadmill.
- City of Unitary Authority
- Ramsey, a market town; one of the Fen Five monasteries
- Ring's End named after an early drainage project.
- Soham, a market town.
- South Holland, and famed for its annual Flower Parade held from 1959 to 2013 which was revived in 2023.
- Dukes of Bedford
- Tydd St Giles a low lying village formerly in the hundred of Wisbech.
- South Holland, five miles north of Wisbech.
- Walsoken, formerly in Norfolk, but part of which was merged with Wisbech in the 20th century.
- Whittlesey, a market town; annual Straw Bear Festival
- Wisbech ("Capital of the Fens"[36]), a market town and port.
Ancient sites include:
- Flag Fen, a Bronze Age settlement
- Must Farm, a Bronze Age settlement
- Stonea Camp, an Iron Age hill fort
- Wisbech Castle, the site of a Norman castle.
- March Sconce, a Civil War fieldwork.
In popular culture
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Some authors have featured the Fens repeatedly in their work. For example:
- Peckover House in Wisbech.
- Joy Ellis set her multiple detective series in the Fens: DI Nikki Galena series, Detective Matt Ballard series and DI Rowan Jackman & DS Marie Evans series, soon to be turned into a television adaptation (see below). Her stand-alone psychological fiction Guide Star is also set in the Fens.
- A Quantum Murder.
- M. R. James set several of his ghost stories in the Fens.
- Jim Kelly set The Water Clock, The Moon Tunnel and The Funeral Owl in the Fens.
- Philippa Pearce, a children's author, set many of her books in the Fens, for example Tom's Midnight Garden.
- Gladys Mitchell, prolific writer of detective fiction, took her eccentric sleuth, the psychiatrist Mrs Lestrange Bradley, to the Fens in several books, notably The Worsted Viper, Wraiths and Changelings and The Mudflats of the Dead.
- Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow has several chapters set in the Fens.
- Nick Warburton wrote a series of radio plays entitled On Mardle Fen, one of the longest-running series of plays on BBC Radio 4.[38]
- Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew chronicles' title character is a fictional physician living in 14th-century Cambridge.
- G. A. Henty's book Beric the Briton mentions some sections in the Fens.
- Norah Lofts features a character called Ethelreda Benedict, who comes from a small island in the Fens in the 17th century, in the second book of her ‘House’ trilogy, The House at Old Vine.
- Louis L'Amour's To The Far Blue Mountains, the central character Barnabas Sackett from Sackett's Land returns to his home in the Fens one last time in the opening chapter.
The following fictions, or substantial portions of them, are set in the Fens:
- Joy Ellis: D.I. Nikki Galena series, Jackman and Evans series, Detective Matt Ballard series, Guide Star
- Sabine Baring-Gould: Cheap Jack Zita
- Hal Foster: Prince Valiant
- Martha Grimes: The Case Has Altered, set in and around Algarkirk, Lincolnshire
- Georgette Heyer: A Civil Contract
- Charles Kingsley: Hereward the Wake
- Louis L'Amour: Sackett's Land
- Dorothy L. Sayers: The Nine Tailors
- Gregory Maguire: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
- Graham Swift: Waterland (made into a film, listed below)
- Robert Westall: Futuretrack 5
- Andrew Dennis: 1635: A Parcel of Rogues
- Philip Pullman: Northern Lights
- Lesley Glaister: Honour Thy Father.[39]
- P. D. James: Death of an Expert Witness
- Daisy Johnson: Fen (short story collection), Penguin, 2016.[40]
- Constance Heaven: Lord of Ravensley
- Paul Kingsnorth: The Wake[41]
- S. Pitt: Fen-wolf, Four Wonders, Cromwell's Promise
- Jordy Rosenberg: Confessions of the Fox
- Elisabeth Sennitt Clough At or Below Sea Level
- Stella Tillyard: The Great Level
- H. G. Wells, The Croquet Player
- Peter Grainger, DC Smith Investigations
Some films have large portions set in the Fenlands:
- Dad Savage (1998), starring Patrick Stewart, was set and filmed in the King's Lynn area.
- Waterland (1992), directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, is based on Graham Swift's book with the same title. Many of its scenes were filmed at Holbeach Marsh on the edge of the Wash.
And television:
- The 1974 Look and Read series Cloud Burst was set and filmed in the Fens.
- The episode Three Miles Up of the 1995 BBC series Ghostswas set in the Fens.
- The 2019 TV series Wild Bill was set in Boston, Lincolnshire.
- Richard Armitage’s White Boar Films and Sprout Pictures have acquired the film and TV rights to Joy Ellis’ Jackman and Evans crime series, with Armitage to play the lead character in a television adaptation based on the novels and entitled The Fens.[42]
Video games also have been set in the Fens:
- The Bedford Level appears in the video game Tom Clancy's EndWar as a possible battlefield.[43]
- The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure is set in a fictional town called Saxton, located in the Fens.
- In the game Sir, You Are Being Hunted the Fens is an area that the game can randomly generate.
See also
- Prickwillow Museum, the changing face of the Fens, including restored drainage engines
- Whittlesey Museum, a social history museum located on the ground floor of a 19th-century Town Hall.
- Wisbech & Fenland Museum, one of the oldest purpose-built museums in the UK. It has a wide collection of items associated with Fenland trades and settlements.
- Ely Museum[44]
- Fen skating, a sport for which the Fens are famous
- Gilbert Heathcote's tunnel, a drainage project in the 1630s
- Hereward the Wake, who led the English resistance to the Norman Conquest from the fens
- High Fens, between Belgium and Germany
- In the Fen Country, a symphonic poem by Ralph Vaughan Williams
- Pinchbeck Engine, a museum of fen drainage based around the longest-working beam engine and scoopwheel
- Somerset Levels, a similar area of wetlands in the southwest of England
- National Trust
- Fen, a British post-metal band
- Devil's Dyke, Cambridgeshire, a long straight ditch and bank
- The Broads, the navigable waterway system which crosses the fenland of Norfolk and Suffolk
References
- ISBN 978-0-435-32535-0.
- ^ "NCA Profile: 46. The Fens (NE424)". Natural England. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
- ^ It is debated whether this area includes the fen areas of north Lincolnshire, such as the Isle of Axholme. Some scholars, such as Keith Lindley, include the Isle of Axholme as part of the Fenland, as it has the same kind of environment and a similar environmental and social history. But it is not contiguous with the rest of the East Anglian Fenland, nor was its drainage ever jointly organised with that of any of the main Fenland drainage areas. It is generally designated as a separate area.
- ^ Studio, Root. "Agriculture". Fens for the Future. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
- ISBN 0-904701-10-7.
- ISBN 0-9613723-0-3.
- ^ H. C. A discourse concerning the drayning of fennes and surrounded grounds in the sixe counteys of Norfolk, Suffolke, Cambridge, with the Isle of Ely, Huntington, Northampton and Lincolne. London: 1629. Reprinted in 1647 under title: The Drayner Confirmed, and the Obstinate Fenman Confuted.
- ^ "UK's lowest spot is getting lower". BBC. 29 November 2002. Retrieved 26 March 2010.
- ^ Isle of Ely Archived 7 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Wheres The Path website
- ^ "An Act for settling the Draining of the Great Level of the Fens called Bedford Level", 1663, reproduced in Samuel Wells, The History of the Drainage of the Great Level of the Fens called Bedford Level, (London, 1830), Vol.2, pp.383ff.
- ISBN 1-871615-19-4
- ^ a b c David Hall and John Coles, "Fenland Survey. An essay in landscape and persistence", Archeological Report 1. English Heritage, 1994.
- ^ Aspects of Yellow Belly History, J. Dear & T. Taylor. 1988
- ^ Fulman, William; Gale, Thomas, eds. (1684–1691). Ingulfi Croylandendis Historia. Oxford: Sheldon.
{{cite book}}
:|work=
ignored (help) - ^ Ibid. p.129.
- ^ Roger of Hoveden (1201) Chronica, p. 359, as cited in Fenland Notes and Queries, vol.1, p.28.
- ^ Moore, John (1809). Collections for a Topographical, Historical, and Descriptive Account of the Hundred of Aveland. Lincoln: John Moore. p. 27.
- ^ Ibid, p.27.
- ^ Miller, S. H. Saunders, W. H. Bernard (ed.). "21. Earthquakes in the Fenland". Fenland Notes and Queries. 1. Peterborough: Geo. C. Caster: 28.
- ^ Studio, Root. "Archaeology of the Fens". Fens for the Future. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
- ^ Christopher Taylor. The Cambridgeshire Landscape. Hodder and Stroughton, London, 1973. p30.
- ISBN 978-1-85074-477-1.
- Saint Guthlac(Cambridge University Press 1956), pp. 108–11.
- ^ ISBN 0-948400-15-3
- ^ Blackie, Christina (1887). Geographical etymology. A dictionary of place-names giving their derivations. London: J. Murray.
- ISBN 978-0-521-31386-5.
- ^ "ULAS – Thorney". University of Leicester Archaeological Services. 26 February 2007. Archived from the original on 18 December 2014. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
- ^ Forest Map near Kesteven. info.sjc.ox.ac.uk (image). Retrieved 19 March 2018.
- ^ "The drained fens". Greatfen.org.uk. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
- ^ Margaret Albright Knittl, "The design for the initial drainage of the Great Level of the Fens: an historical whodunit in three parts", Agricultural History Review, 55:1 (2007), pp. 23–50. Abstract Archived 21 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Historyof the Black Sluice Internal Drainage Board". Archived from the original on 28 April 2011.
- ^ "Frequently Asked Questions". Greatfen.org.uk. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
- ^ a b c "Why Farming Matters in the Fens (2)". NFU East Anglia. 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 April 2011. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
- ^ "Members - Federation of International Bandy". Worldbandy.com. Archived from the original on 14 December 2018. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
- ^ "Littleporticestadiumprojectltd". Archived from the original on 27 April 2018. Retrieved 21 January 2017.
- ^ "Welcome to Wisbech". Wisbech-town.co.uk. Archived from the original on 30 April 2008. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
- ^ "Fenland". British County Flags. 21 November 2016. Retrieved 28 September 2023.
- ^ "On Mardle Fen". Radiolistings.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2 March 2019. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
- ^ "Honour thy father". Lesley Glaister. Archived from the original on 19 March 2018. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
- ^ Johnson, Daisy (8 June 2017). Fen. Penguin.co.uk. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
- ^ Thorpe, Adam (2 April 2014). "The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth review 'A literary triumph'". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 September 2015.
- ^ "Richard Armitage acquires film and TV rights to Ellis' Jackman and Evans series and will play lead". The Bookseller. Retrieved 4 January 2023.
- ^ Ubisoft (2008). "Locations". Ubisoft. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
- ^ "Home". Elymuseum.org.uk. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
Further reading
- Dugdale, William (1662). History of Imbanking and Drayning of Divers Fens and. Marshes. London.
- Wells, Samuel A. (1830). A history of the drainage of the Great Level of the Fens called Bedford Level. Vol. 2. Fleet Street, London: R.Pheney. archived online: Volume 1, Volume 2
- Wheeler, William Henry (1896). A History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire (2nd ed.). Boston, London: J.M. Newcombe and Simpkin, Marshall & Co. .
- Bealby, John Thomas (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). pp. 256–259. .
- Page, William; Proby, Granville; Inskip Ladds, S., eds. (1936). A History of the County of Huntingdon. Victoria County History. Vol. 3. pp. 249–290: "The Middle Level of the Fens and its reclamation". Retrieved 30 December 2010.
- Bevis, Trevor (1990). A pocket guide to The Fenland. Trevor Bevis.
- Hewitt, Peter (2000). FENLAND: A Landscape made by Man. Wisbech Society.
- Sly, Rex (2003). From Punt to Plough: A history of the Fens. The History Press.
- Ash, Eric (2017). The Draining of the Fens. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9781421422015. Retrieved 15 March 2017.
- Pryor, Francis (2019). The Fens: Discovering England's Ancient Depths. Head of Zeus Ltd.
- Boyce, James (2020). Imperial Mud: The Fight for the Fens. Icon Books.
- Merrison, Karen (2022). Secret Fens. Amberley.
External links
- Prickwillow Museum the changing face of Fenland
- Flag Fen Archaeology Trust official website
- The Great Fen Project official website