THE FEN-LANDS 243 



Hardwicke's 16 bushels ; 36 bushels of barley to 18 bushels ; 36 

 bushels of oats to 18 bushels, or 20 bushels of oats to 8 bushels. To 

 this increase of produce must be added another advantage. Chil- 

 dersley and Knapwell, both enclosed, were entirely exempt from the 

 rot among their sheep, while the neighbouring parishes were 

 desolated by the disease. The ravages of the rot which are 

 chronicled may probably have been exceptional. On the open- 

 fields of Gamlingay a fourth of the flock, or 340 sheep, perished in 

 1793. The mortaUty is attributed to the want of drainage in the 

 arable land. At Croxton in 1793 1,000 sheep were rotted on the 

 unenclosed lands, and, in the same year, 700 on the open-fields 

 of Eltsley. In 1813 another Report on Cambridgeshire ^ was 

 issued. In the interval of twelve years, the area of open-field and 

 common had been greatly lessened. In consequence, says the 

 Reporter, Cambridgeshire farmers " have an opportunity of redeem- 

 ing the county from the imputation it has so long lain under, of 

 being the worst cultivated in England, and of proving (the fact) 

 that the same industry, spirit and skill which have been manifested 

 in other parts of the Kingdom, exist also in this, the open-field 

 state and system precluding the possibihty of exercising them." 



To the Eastern and North Midland districts mainly belonged 

 the fen-lands. This vast tract of waterlogged land still included 

 Peterborough Fen in Northamptonshire, embraced small portions 

 of both Norfolk and Suffolk, and extended over a considerable 

 part of Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire. At 

 a moderate computation, the total area, which at the best was 

 imperfectly drained, and lay to a great extent unenclosed, com- 

 prised 600,000 acres. The drainage works of the seventeenth 

 century had only partially succeeded. Where the system had been 

 carefully watched and maintained, the land had been greatly 

 improved. But the neglected outfalls were once more choked with 

 silt ; the porous banks admitted the water almost as fast as it 

 was removed by the draining-mills ; in some instances they had 

 been broken down by floods and not repaired ; in some they had 

 been wilfully damaged or destroyed by the commoners. Yet much 

 of this drowned area, either actually or potentially, consisted of 

 some of the richest land in Great Britain. Some portions of the 

 drier ground were cultivated on the open-field system, and the 

 commons were numerous and extensive. 



^ Gooch's Cambridgeahire (1813), pp. 2, 56. 



