A History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire

Abstract

THIS book, which is nominally a second edition of a book published in 1868, but has in reality been entirely re-written and enlarged, relates merely to the fens of Lincolnshire, situated between the Steeping River and the Nene, comprising an area of 363,000 acres, and does not refer to the fens of Norfolk. Cambridgeshire, and the adjacent counties, or to the rivers Ouse and Nene, which, with the rivers Witham and Welland, are known as the fen rivers. In fact, the author naturally deals with the fen districts in his near neighbourhood, having resided for many years past at Boston, on the Witham. The history of these fens is traced back to the time of the Britons, and more particularly to the Roman settlement which was made very early in the christian era; and to the Romans in the time of Severus, are attributed the construction of the first banks protecting the district from the sea, the land being from 1½ to 12½ feet below the level of high-water of spring tides, to which probably the appellations North and South Holland, denoting certain portions of the fens, are due. Lands outside the Roman banks have been gradually raised by the process of warping, or accretion from the deposit of materials brought down the fen rivers in flood-time, and have then been enclosed and drained. The area of land thus reclaimed from the sea, since the formation of the first sea banks about 1700 years ago, amounts to 63,300 acres, or an average yearly addition of 37¼ acres. Mr. Wheeler points out that the reclamations must be gradual, owing to the limited quantity of fertilising alluvium brought down by the rivers, and that the schemes which have occasionally been brought forward for enclosing large areas of the sandy foreshores of the Wash, adjoining the fens, would be financial failures on account of the barren nature of the sands before they are covered over with warp.

A History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire.

By W. H. Wheeler. Second edition. Pp. 489, and appendices. (Boston: J. M. Newcomb. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Go.)