‘They wrapped their coats about them and turned their faces to the wind and snow. Wimsey and his man trudge towards the nearest village. It was past four o’clock, and New Year’s Eve the snow that had fallen all day gave back a glimmering greyness to a sky like lead.’
‘Right and left, before and behind, the fen lay shrouded. It is in a wintry Fenland that we encounter Lord Peter Wimsey and his unflappable manservant, Bunter, in the memorable opening to The Nine Tailors. Sheep and cattle grazed on the hard won grassland, and medieval Christians raised towering churches to thank their God for his benevolence. There were ancient settlements based on sites that earlier drainers – Romans and Saxons – had wrung from the watery expanse. Roads hugged the drain sides, and steam pumps tamed the tides. Arrow straight drains intersected vast fields of black, peaty soil – the most fertile in England. By the late 19th century the landscape had been transformed.
Ditches were dug, meres were pumped dry, first by windmills and later using steam pumps.
Inspired by Dutch and Flemish engineers, landowners began to drain the Fens. Nearer to the coast, the flatlands seem identical, but these were salt water marshes. That distinction is important, but often missed. Until the 17th century, Fenland was largely a swamp – a huge expanse of reeds and shallow, freshwater lakes.
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