The Draining of the Fens 187 



The consequences of these fundamental difficulties were apparent even 

 before the seventeenth century' was over. Soon, disaster was abroad 

 everywhere. What had seemed a promising enterprise in 1652 had become 

 a tragedy by 1700. There was but one way to save the situation — the 

 substitution of an artificial for a natural drainage. Water was pumped out 

 from small dyke to drain, from drain to river, and so to sea. 



An early mode of fen drainage was the horse mill, but the only satis- 

 factory source of power at hand was the wind. The introduction of wind- 

 mills for pumping purposes was, in fact, the critical factor that saved most 

 of the Fens from being re-inundated. As the seventeenth century passed 

 into the eighteenth, windmill drainage became more and more frequent. 

 The whole of the Fenland came to consist almost entirely of small sub- 

 districts, each pumping its water into one of the larger drains that traversed 

 the region. For example, a pamphlet of 1748, written by Thomas Neale, 

 stated that there were no less than 250 windmills in the Middle Level. 

 "In Whitdesey parish alone, I was told by some of the principal inhabitants 

 there are more than fifty mills, and there are, I believe, as many in Don- 

 nington (sic) with its members. I myself, riding very late from Ramsey 

 to Holme, about six miles across the Fens, counted forty in my view." 



But the windmill was far from being the perfect engine. It was at the 

 mercy of gale and frost and calm. It was never very powerful, and soon 

 it ceased to provide a satisfactory solution to the problem of clearing water 

 from the drains. For as the surface level continued to subside, the wind- 

 mill became increasingly ineffective. Inundations grew frequent. It is 

 easier to put down statistics relating to these " drownings " than to imagine 

 the bankruptcy and distress when crops not merely failed but completely 

 disappeared beneath the rising waters. By the end of the eighteenth 

 century, according to Arthur Young,^ there were many fens "all waste 

 and water", where twenty years previously there had been "buildings, 

 farmers and cultivation". Some places had been particularly unfortunate: 

 "three years ago five quarters of com an acre; now sedge and rushes, frogs 

 and bitterns" . It was with dismay that he viewed the scene spread before 

 him in the summer of 1805 : 



It was a melancholy examination I took of the country between Whittlesea and 

 March, the middle of July, in all which tract often miles, usually under great crops 

 of cole, oats and wheat, there was nothing to be seen but desolation, with here and 

 there a crop of oats or barley, sown so late that they can come to nothing. 



He predicted the ruin of the whole flat district. 



The fens are now in a moment of balancing their fate; should a great flood come 

 within two or three years, for want of an improved outfall, the whole country, 

 fertile as it naturally is, will be abandoned. 



' A. Young, Annals of Agriculture, xliii, 539 et seq. (1805). 



