The Fens: where north meets south

Fens (Figure 1) are a low-lying area of eastern England situated about seventy-five miles directly north of London, and fifty miles west of Norwich. Compared with the rest of southern England it is a rather sparsely settled region, many parts of which have a population density less than a fifth of that of England as a whole. They separate the counties of East Anglia, Norfolk and Suffolk, from the Midlands and the North – Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. The area has a rather unique geomorphological and demographic history. Figure 2 shows the Fenland in the early seventeenth century. The northern coastline lay up to twelve miles further south than at present. Most of the Fenland population at that time lived on a few islands of higher ground and in small communities on this northern coastline. The southern two-thirds of the Fenland consisted of undrained marshland which was subject to tidal flooding in summer, more continuous flooding in winter and was hence too unstable in most places for permanent settlement. Darby, for example, notes that ‘even those portions that escaped winter flooding were subject to an annual heaving motion, the mud absorbing water and swelling’ (1931: 18). The overall livelihood of many small Fenland communities was directly related to the success of efforts to hold the water back. Even the northern coastline settlements, the most stable and relatively heavily populated, witnessed major flooding in 1439, 1550, 1570, 1607 and 1613 (Darby 1974).

Up until the seventeenth century, the Fens were seen as a miserable place, where its inhabitants eeked out a meagre living in the most difficult of circumstances.