The Draining of the Fens
The Fens was, and in a way, still is as Daniel Defoe described it the “sink of thirteen counties”, being the outlet of four major rivers and many minor. Draining the fens was a major earthworks project.
The main river is the Great Ouse, one of the longest rivers in the country. It carries the silt and sediments along with the watershed, of parts of Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, including Huntingdonshire, Suffolk and Norfolk.
The rivers Witham, Welland and Nene also flow through the Fens.
Prior to the seventeenth century, the Fens were a flat low-lying area of marsh, peat bogs, reed beds and Continue reading “The Draining of the Fens”