The Fens

Edward Storey
 

Beneath the huge sky

During the seventeenth century the Earl of Bedford employed the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden to drain the Fens. He set to work (with the help of thousands of labourers) and created the Bedford River and the New Bedford River which helped to move the water from the fens more quickly northwards and out into The Wash. Even today the area is known as the Bedford Levels.

After the land was drained however, the peat started to dry and contract so that the land sank further - leaving the rivers and dykes inside their levees at a higher level. In 1851 at Holme, a cast iron column was hammered into the ground so its top was level with the surface of the fen - however the post now stands 13 feet above the surrounding land.

Originally there was great resistance to the draining from the 'fen-tigers' - or people whose livelihood depended on the wetlands - and some of the reclamation work was sabotaged. Below is a famous seventeenth century, anonymous protest poem called the Powte's Complaint - a 'powte' being a sea-lamprey.
 

Powte's Complaint

Come, Brethren of the water, and let us all assemble,
To treat upon this matter, which makes us quake and tremble;
For we shall rue it, if''t be true, that Fens be undertaken
And where we feed in Fen and Reed, they'll feed both Beef and Bacon.

They'll sow both beans and oats, where never man yet thought it,
Where men did row in boats, ere undertakers brought it:
But, Ceres, thou, behold us now, let wild oats be their venture,
Oh let the frogs and miry bogs destroy where they do enter.

In his novel The Belton Estate (1866) Trollope paints a grim picture of the Fens. His heroine, Clara Amedroz, has to chose between a wealthy suitor and a distant cousin called Will Belton. Belton owns a farm near Downham Market but is keen to leave the Fens and take up his inheritance in the West Country.

Trollope was familiar with the fens through his work as a surveyor for the Post Office but was not enamoured by the landscape. In the book, Belton walks to Denver Sluice and back and Trollope writes 'a country walk less picturesque could hardly be found in England'.
 

Kingsley's novel Hereward the Wake (1866) is set mainly in the Fens. Hereward the Wake, who may have been born at Bourne in Lincolnshire, resisted the Normans by hiding out in the fens and by using Ely as a stronghold. In the novel, Hereward frequently uses his knowledge of the area to outwit the Normans.

Kingsley was Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University from 1860-69 and therefore would have had some personal experience of the fenlands.

However, the Fens that he writes about in the novel are the pre-drained version - consisting of marshes, dykes and reed-beds. Historically the Fens were regarded as a disease ridden place, haunted by witches and Will o' the Wisps and rife with superstition. Even today the Fens have retained a reputation for witchcraft.

As there are no hills or mountains in the Fens - the sky always seems much larger and more beautiful - as Kingsley points out in the prelude to Hereward the Wake:
 

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)

Her detective story The Nine Tailors (1934) - featuring the famous upper-class detective Lord Peter Wimsey - is set in the Fens. The book opens with Wimsey stranded at Fenchurch St Paul after a car accident on New Year's Eve. When one of the local bell-ringers becomes ill with influenza, Wimsey agrees to step in for a nine hour bell-ringing session and he soon becomes involved the Thorpe family (local squires) who have experienced a series of tragic events. The church in the novel is almost certainly based on St. Peter and St. Paul's at Upwell - which sits right on the Norfolk-Cambridgeshire border. Sayers' father was the vicar of Bluntisham in Cambridgeshire and, from an early age, she was familiar with the landscape and atmosphere of the Fens.
 

Edward Storey was born at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire and has written many books about the Fens. After completing his National Service  -he worked for fourteen years for Adult Education - before becoming a full-time writer in 1970.

In his prose and poetry he has captured the beauty and desolation of the place, recording its changing appearance through out the seasons. Here is one of his poems:
 

His books include: Spirit of the Fens (1985) and In Fen Country Heaven (1996). In Fen Boy First (1994) he gives an account of his childhood growing up in Whittlesey. Fen Country Christmas (1995) is a collection of stories, legends and Fenland superstitions (of which there are many) in which he takes a look at skating - which has always been a popular sport in the region. He has also written a biography of the poet John Clare.

Edward Storey has recently moved to Wales.
 

Round the bend
 

Graham Swift's novel Waterland (1983) is set in the Fens and the narrator  Tom Crick lives in a lock keeper's cottage on the bank of the (fictional) River Leem which flows out of Norfolk. (It may have been modelled on the Little Ouse which flows through Thetford and Brandon and then out onto the flat fens.)

Graham Swift (Photo © Ekko von Schwichow)

The novel tells the story of Tom's childhood and also the history of the Fens themselves and his mother's family the Atkinsons who were brewers from Norfolk:
 

The novel is influenced by George Eliott's Mill on the Floss. The novel ends tragically with the death of Tom's brother Dick - who commits suicide by jumping from a dredger into the Great Ouse River (see Downham Market).

A film of Waterland was released in 1992 - starring Jeremy Irons as the grown-up Tom Crick and directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal. Much of the filming was carried out at Holbeach Marsh in Lincolnshire. However, many critics felt that the film failed to capture the mystery and drama of the book.
 

Pylon Poetry
 

Dyke at Salters Lode
 

Personally I have always found the Fens to be a dramatic and inspiring landscape and one of the best ways to see them is to travel by train from Norwich to Peterborough. After crossing the Brecklands, the line drops down onto the fens and takes you through stations such as Shippea Hill, Prickwillow, Queen Adelaide, Ely and then out onto the Bedford Level - crossing the Hundred Foot Drain and proceeding through Manea and March. Sometimes the train stops for no apparent reason and you can find yourself stranded in the middle of this remarkably flat landscape with the weight of the sky pressing down on you. The following poem of mine was inspired by this particular part of the fens: