Book I. 



AGRICULTURE OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE. 



1 1 :3.' 



these fens (a space of upwards of 280,000 acres) were once " of 

 the nature ot land-meadows, fruitful, healthy, and very gain- 

 fljl to the inhabitants, and yielded much relief to the high- 

 land counties in time of great droughts." Sir "\V. Dugdale 

 (who was bom 1605, and died 1686) was of the same opinion, 

 adding as a proof, " thit great numbers of timber trees (oaks, 

 firs, &c.) formerly grew there, as is plain from many being 

 found in digging canals and drains, some of them severed from 

 their r<x)ts, the roots standing as they grew, in firm earth, below 

 the moor." 



On deepening the channel of Wisbeach river, in 1635, the 

 workmen, at eight feet below the then bottom, discovered a 

 second bottom, which was stony, with seven boats lying in it, 

 covered with silt. And at Whittlesea, on iligging through the 

 moor at eight feet deep, a jierfect soil was Ibund with swards 

 of grass lying on it, as they were at first mown. Henry of 

 Huntingdon (who lived in the reign of Stephen, 1135,) de- 

 Scribed this fenny country " as pleasant and agreeable to the 

 eye; wateretl by many rivers which run through it, diversified 

 by many large and small lakes, and adorned by many woods 

 and islands." And William of Alalmsbury (who lived in the 

 first year of Henry II., ll.'4) has painted the state of the 

 land round Thorney in the most glowing colours : he says, " it 

 is a very paradise, in pleasure and delight it resembles heaven 

 itself; the very marshes abounding in trees, whose length 

 without knots do enmlate the stars." " The plain there is as 

 level as the sea, which, with the flourishing of the grass, 

 allureth the eye ; in some parts there are apple-trees, in others 

 vines." It appears then, on the authority of the authors 

 quoted, that the fens were formerly wood and pasture. The 

 engineers were of opinion that the country in question, for- 

 merly meadow and wood, now fen, became so trom partial 

 embankments preventing the waters fi-om the uplands going 

 to the sea by their natural outfalls; want of proper and suffi- 

 cient drains to convey those waters into the Ouse ; neglect of 

 such drains as were made for that purpose ; and that these 

 evils increased from the not embanking the river Ouse, and the 

 erection of sluices across it preventing the flux and reflux of 

 the sea; the not widening and deepening, where wanted, 

 the river Ouse ; and from not removing the gravels, weeds, &c. 

 which have from time to time accumulated in it. 



The .first aUemjpt at draininf; any part of the Jens appears to 

 have been made in the time of Edward I. (1272, &c.) ; many 

 otiiers with various success followed. The famous John of 

 Gaunt (or Ghent, who died in 1393), and Margaret, Countess 

 of Richmond, were amongst the draining adventurers; but 

 Gough, in his addition to Camden, says " the reign of Kliza- 

 beth may be properly fixed on as the period when the level 

 began to become immediately a public case. Many plans were 

 proposed and abandoned between that time and 1634, when 

 King Charles I. granted a charter of incorporation to Francis 

 Earl of Bedford, and thirteen gentlemen adventurers with 

 him, who jointly undertook to drain the level, on condition 

 that they should have granted to them, as a recompense, 

 95,000 acres (about one third of the level). In 1649, this 

 charter was confirmed to ^V'illiam Earl of Bedford, and his 

 associates, by the Convention Parliament ; and in 1653, the 

 level being declared completely drained, the 95,000 acres were 

 conveyed to the adventurers, who had expended 400,000/., 

 which is almost 4/. 4*. per acre on the 95,000 acres, and about 

 1/. 8*. on thewhole breadth, if the whole level contain 285,000 

 acres, and it is generally supposed to contain 300,000 acres. 

 In 1664, the corporation called " Conservators of the great 

 level of the fens" was established. This body was empowered 

 to levy taxes on the 95,0(X) acres, to defray whatever expenses 

 might arise in their preservation ; but only 8.3,000 acres were 

 vested in the corjroration, in trust for the Earl of Bedford and 

 his associates; the remaining 12,000 were a'lotted, 10,000 to 

 the King, and 20fl0 to the Earl of I'ortland. At first the levy 

 was an eijual acre tax ; but upon its being deemed unjust, a 

 gradual one was adopted, which is now acted upon. In the 

 year 1697, the Bedford level was divi<led into three districts, 

 north, middle, and south ; having one surveyor for each of the 

 former, and two for the latter. In 1753, the north level was 

 separated by act of parliament from the rest. In addition to 

 the public acts obtained for draining the fens, several private 

 ones have been granted, for draining separate districts with 

 their limits, notwithstanding which, and the vast sums ex- 

 pended, much remains to be done ; a great part of the fens is 

 now ( 1806) in danger of inundation : this calamity has vibited 

 them many times, producing effects distressing and extensive 

 beyond conception, indeed many hundred acres of valuable 

 land now drowned, the misfortune aggravated by the proprie- 

 tors being obliged to continue (o pay a heavy tax, notwith- 

 standing the loss of their land." 



The interior drainage qf the fnts is performed in most places 

 by windmills, which are very uncertain in their effects. Steam 

 has been tried, and there can be no doubt would be incompa- 

 rably ureferable, as working in all weathers. 



Einliankinf; may be considered a necessary accompaniment 

 of draining on the fen-lands. The fens are divided into three 

 large levels, and each of these levels are subdivided into nu- 

 merous districts by banks; but as these banks are made of 

 fen-moor, and other light materials, whenever the rivers are 

 swelled with waters, or any one district is deluged, either by 

 rain, a breach of banks, or any other cause, the waters speedily 

 pass through these bright, moory, porous banks, and drown all 

 the circumjacent districts. The fens have sometimes sus- 

 tained 20,000/. or 30,000/. damage by a breach of banks; but 

 these accidents seldom happen in the same district twice in 

 twenty years ; the water, however, soaks through all fen banks 

 every year in every district ; and when the water mills have 

 lifted the waters up out of the fens into the rivers in a windy 

 day, a groat part of the water soaks back through the porous 

 banks in the night upon the same land again. This water that 

 soaks through the bank, drowns the wheat in the winter, washes 

 the manure into the dykes, destroys the best natural and arti- 

 ficial grasses, and prevents the fens from being sown till too 

 late in the season. This stagnant water, lying on the surface, 

 causes also fen agues, &c. ; thus the waters that have soaked 

 through the porous fen banks have done the fertile fens more 

 real injury, than all the other floods that have ever come upon 

 them. The remedy for the soaking through of the water is 

 obviously that of forming a puddle wall in the middle, which 

 appears to have been first thought of among the fen bank- 

 makers by Smith of Chatteris, a profsed embanker, who thus 

 describes bis mode of putting a vertical stratum of puddle in 



old mounds: " I first cut a gutter, eighteen inches wide, 

 through Xhe old hank down to the clay (the fen substratum 

 being generally clay) ; the gutter is made near the centre, but 

 a little on the land side of the centre of the old liank. The 

 gutter is afterwards filled up in a very solid manner with tem- 

 jiered clay ; and to make the clay resist the water, a man in 

 boots always treads the clay as the gutter is filUd up. This 

 plan was tried last summer (1794), on a convenient farm, anil 

 a hundred acres of wheat were sown on the land. The wheat 

 and grass lands on this farm are now all dry, whilst the fens 

 around are covered with water. This practice answers so well 

 on this farm, that all the farmers in the parish are improving 

 their banks in the same manner, and some have btgun in ad- 

 jacent parishes." 



AV'ith respect to embanking from the sea, Vancouver is of 

 opinion, that the ground ought to be covered by nature with 

 samphireor other plants, or with grass, before an attempt is 

 made to embank it ; thtre is particular danger in hemg too 

 greedy. " If the sea has not raised the salt marsh to its fruit- 

 ful level, all expectation of benefit is vain, the soil being im- 

 mature, and not rijrened for enclosure ; and if, again, with a 

 view of grasping a great extent of salt marsh, the oanks or sea 

 wall be pushed furiher outwards than where there is a fimt 

 and secure foundation for it to stand upon, the bank will blow 

 up, and in both cases grtat losses and disappouitinents w ill 

 ensue." 



Paring and burning is every where approved of, and consi- 

 dered the sine qua non of the fen district, in breaking up turf. 

 Without it corn crops are destroyed by the grub and wire- 



Jrrigation Col. Adeane, of Barbraham, has 300 acres of 

 meadows which have been irrigated from the time of Qut'eu 

 EUzabtth. " Pallavicino, who -ftas collector of Peter's pence 

 in England, at the death of Queen Mary, having 50,000/. or 

 40,000/. in his hands, had the art to turn Protestant on the 

 accession of Queen Elizabeth, and appropriated the money to 

 his own use; he bought with it an estate at Barbraham, and 

 other lands near Bournbridge ; and procuring a grant from the 

 crown of the river which passes through them, was enabled 

 legally to build a sluice across it, and throw as much of the 

 water as was necessary into a new canal of irrigation, which he 

 dug to receive it in the method so well known, and commonly 

 practised in Italy long before that period. The canals and 

 the sluices are all well designed, and are the work of a man 

 evidently well acquainted with the practice ; but in taking the 

 waters from them, for spreading it by small channels over the 

 meadows, there does not seem to be the least intelligence, or 

 knowledge of the husbandry of watering. No other art is 

 exerled but that merely of opening in the bank of the river 

 small cuts for letting the ater flow on to the meadows alway.s 

 laterally, emd never longitudinally, so necessary in works of this 

 kind. The water then finds its own distribution, and so irre- 

 gularly, that many parts receive too much, and others none at 

 all. From the traces left of small channels in ditfierent parts 

 of the meadows, it would appear tliat the ancient distribution 

 formed under Pallavicino is lost, and that we see nothing at 

 present but the miserable patch-work of workmen ignorant of 

 the business. Irrigation lias not spread from this example, 

 but might be extensively practised on Uie banks of uU the 

 rivers." 



12. Live Stock. 



Cattle a breed i)eculiar to the coimty ; but some of all sorts. 

 Butchers give more for a Cambridge calf than a Suffolk one, 

 fancying the former whiter veal. The Cottenham cheese 

 ascribed to the excellence of the grass, in great part i-'iia 

 aquatica. 



The cow system consists chiefly in suckling of calves and 

 making of butter ; there is not nmch cheese made, except the 

 noted ones of Soham and Cottenham. The suckling season i 

 from Michaelmas to I>ady-day. It r 

 two cows to fatten a calf. The cows, 

 home, are milked in the pasture, and the milk brought home 

 by a horse or ass, in tubs, slung across : women cocld not do 

 tliis work, the travelling being, after the least rain, very bad, 

 even When there is no water to go through. Tlie butter is sold 

 rolled Up in pieces of a yard long, and about two inches in 

 circumference j this Is done for ttie conveiliency of colleges, 

 where it is cut into pifeces, called " paTtSj" and .so sent to 

 table ; its quality is nowhere excelled. 



BuJlocks of various kinds fattened en grass, and when not 

 ready in autumn, put uj) and finished on corn or oil-cake. 

 Col. 'Adeane buys in London at a falling market, and keeps till 

 a rising one before he sells. 



Shiep chiefly as in Huntingdonshire; !K>me Jsorfolks and 

 South Downs ; folding on the uplands. 



Horses of the cart kind much bred, and considered an article 

 in which the county excels; they are very large and bony ; 

 black ; with long hair from the knee to the fetlock trailing on 

 the ground. A cart stallion has cost 255 guineas, and his colts 

 have sold for sixty guineas. Horses kept in the stable through- 

 out the year, at a great exj)ense, because on dry food ; herbage 

 plants, artificial grasses, and roots being neglected, and no soil- 

 ing practised. 



The deer in Wimpole Park attacked by a singular disease, a 

 sort of madness ; tlse diseased animal begins by pursuing the 

 herd, then sequesters himself, breaks his antlers against the 

 trees, and gnaws large jiieces of flesh from his sides, &c. be- 

 comes convulsed, andsoon expires. 



Pigeon-houses on almost every farm ; kept in a great measure 

 because if any one were to give them up, he would be obliged 

 to keep the pigeons of others ; destroy thatched roofs, and oblige 

 every farmer to sow more seed than he otherwise would ; pro- 

 duce sent to Ix)ndon and other parts; often 100 dozen per 

 annum from one pigeonry ; dung highly prized. 



13. Rural Economy. 



Peat, sedge, or thin turf, and drie^ cow-dung used as fuel. 

 The cow-dung is spread on grass, about an inch and a half 

 thick, and cut into pieces, tight or twelve inches square ; there 

 it lies till dry. 



14. Political Economy. 



Roads miserably bad ; canals or navigable cuts in the fens in 

 all directions; a few fairs; a pottery at Ely for coarse ware; 

 excellent white bricks made there, and at Chatteris and Cara^ 

 bridge ; lime burned at various places. 



