Water management in the Fens before the introduction of pumps

Abstract

ABSTRACT Much has been written about the seventeenthcentury draining of the (peat) Fens debouching into The Wash but there are some persistent misunderstandings and also issues on which information is lacking. Some of the main issues relate to: relationships between drainage and navigation; management of water levels; and the antecedents of the scheme undertaken by Cornelius Vermuyden from 1649. These uncertainties are additional to the over-riding lesson of this enterprise, that the peat Fens as a whole could not be drained successfully in the absence of pumps, initially windmills, to lift water over waterway embankments to compensate for shrinkage of the peat once drained. These lessons enable us the better to appreciate the achievements of the Anglo-Saxons and their successors in defending the silt lands and modifying the channel network in the peat areas; much of this network modification was apparently for transport purposes, the peat lands acting as a vast flood storage area. From the mid-thirteenth century, Commissions of Sewers were established in response to disasters and the failure of customary maintenance arrangements; these Commissions reflect the scale and sophistication of the inherited infrastructure but we do not know how the works had originally been organised and executed.