Looking North over the Bedford New Cut, Welney

Looking over the fens of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk today it is hard to imagine that the landscape was created by the hands of men with the basic tools of a wooden spade and a woven basket to move the earth.

The draining of the fens began around 1631 when the first drains were cut to channel the water from the vast wetlands, this was a landscape where people used boats to move between villages as there were few or no roads, the people who lived here did not want their way of living changed so the early group of gentlemen adventurers who were financing the drainage found it hard to get local labour to carry out the scheme.

I suppose you could say their salvation came from the English civil war in the form of forced labour using prisoners, like around 500 dutch sailors taken from a sea battle off Portland Bill, but the majority of the prisoners they used were Scottish soldiers who fought against the parliamentary ‘Roundheads’.

Many of these prisoners were held in gaols and were forced marched from places like York to the fens to start the digging of drains and straightening and deepening of existing rivers to increase the water flow and digging of new large new drains like the Bedford New cut 21 miles long.

They were made to wear white course wool suits to make them stand out as prisoners, they lived in wooden huts that were dismantled and moved along as they dug out the drains.

Life was hard as they dug and carried their baskets of mud to create the banks, many died of exhaustion, bronchial or malaria related diseases in the harsh landscape of the fens, as it was costly to move any bodies to graveyards the bodies were buried in the banks of the drains.

The Scots were preferred to be used  for this work as they were hardy and came from a land where the conditions were like those of the fens even if the landscape was very different, many managed to escape and were helped by local fen folk who were opposed to the draining, an escaped prisoner was not pursued if they managed to get as far north as the River Trent.

After the end of hostilities many were released and returned to their native Scotland, but others stayed and married local women.

As you look today at the banks they created you will notice the flat tops, by doing this they had made walkways to make getting around the fens easier, they also made roads on the reclaimed land so really we have a lot to thank these men for as we travel with ease around the fens, perhaps we may pass by the forgotten body of one of the thousands of Scots who died creating this landscape one that we could say was ‘Made in Scotland’

Bedford new cut from footbridge at WWT Welney

Today was quite a busy day, started early with a work party and some conservation work on a meadow managed by the Wildlife Trust, Muriel’s meadow is one a several meadows that make up Chettisham meadows near Ely, not ploughed as the soil was too heavy, although Chettisham Meadow which is owned by the Wildlife trust shows evidence of medieval ridge and furrow, so obviously ploughing was tried.

Muriel’s Meadow is named after the lady who used to live there in an old railway carriage as a child with her parents, life must have been very hard and basic as it is at least 20 minutes walk from any road then it must be at least four miles to Ely. The railway carriage is still there but is in a very bad condition but I believe Muriel is still alive and she has asked the carriage is not removed.

View of Muriel’s Meadow

The Old Railway carriage where Muriel lived with her parents

It was a fantastic bright and sunny morning and there was still ice on the puddles, the birds were singing and our job was to start clearing back the brambles by about 2 feet  so plants can grow back, we will eventually over time clear the brambles back but by doing it gradually it gives plants a chance to establish.

Time for a break and tea

A well-earned brew and a chat after clearing the brambles

The can be nothing better than working outside on such a wonderful Winters day.

Next It was off to Welney and taking the hare walk and then the swan feed and talk, full number of people booked on the walk, then the largest number of people for the swan talk at 150 in the observatory, so many in fact I had to go out again and do another feed so those at the back got a chance to see what I do.

All in all a very satisfying day.

In this day of the internet and e-mails are we in danger of not recording events that have an impact on our landscape that may local to where we live, the world has been made smaller by the World Wide Web, but 100 years ago recording events local and national was by ink and paper, by newspapers or by people keeping diaries.

I mentioned in an earlier Blog Canon Reginald Augustus Bignold (1860-1944) Rector of my home village of Carlton Colville in Suffolk, from 1898 to 1944.

Canon Bignold made a diary that he had written in the fly leaves of the Parish Records and give an insight into the village and the effect the First World War had on it, the villagers and Canon Bignold himself, discovered in 1971 by the then rector of Carlton Colville the Rev. Frank L Thomas and later published as a book by J.R. Goffin, ‘The Carlton Colville Chronicles gives us an insight in to the life of the people of a small rural community on the Norfolk / Suffolk border, near to the coast their lives revolved round the sea, land and a war in a far off land.

Now when I return to the village of my birth it is hard to tell where the village ends and the start of the town of Lowestoft begins, I could still point out where the old black smiths once stood, the church and rectory still stand and where cows once grazed in the fields round the old Hall now stands modern houses and thanks to this book I can now see the village as it was 45 years before I was born there.

The Carlton Colville Chronicles, copyright Parochial Church Council of St.Peter’s Carlton Colville

For example on this day 100 years ago Canon Bignold wrote:

January 19th 1915 ‘Bombs dropped from airship on Yarmouth, The house in the village were much shaken’ (Carlton Colville is 12.9 miles from Great Yarmouth)

He continues ‘Two hundred and thirty of our men have joined H. M. Forces. I have gazetted Temporary Chaplain of the 25th London Cyclists Battalion’

(copyright Parochial Church Council of St.Peter’s Carlton Colville)

So just from that small entry over 100 years ago we have a small window on the past, the horror of the first bombs dropped from the air on civilians, the numbers of men joining up and the vision of men going to war on bicycles

The are on the World Wide Web, sites that are recording the past and I am sure there are many on East Anglia, so as i now live Cambridgeshire in the West of the region here is a link to Ely, memories of Ely Pits and Meadows

So next time you are in the countryside and looking at a pond, it may just have been created by a bomb dropped from an airship over a hundred years ago, somewhere they may be a record of this.