56 The Drainage of Fens and Low Lands, 



Fenland. On the old one-inch Ordnance map there may be 

 counted five hundred windmills in the Fenland, which are in 

 use now, or were at one time engaged in draining the land. 

 In the Littleport and Downham district, in Cambridgeshire, 

 containing 28,000 acres, no less than seventy-five windmills 

 were engaged in lifting the water off the land — work which 

 is now much more efficiently done by two steam engines. In 

 1729 Captain Perry, an engineer who is known from his 

 attempts to stop the breach in the banks of the Thames, 

 erected a number of windmills for working scoop wheels for 

 lifting the water out of Deeping Fen, in Lincolnshire. In 

 1824 the forty-four windmills which from time to time had 

 been erected were replaced by one main pumping station, 

 having two large scoop wheels driven by steam-power, and 

 the Fen, which previously had been only in a half-cultivated 

 condition, became completely reclaimed.* 



Mr. Arthur Young, in his survey of Lincolnshire, made in 

 1799, gives the following description of a drainage windmill in 

 use on the estate of Mr. Chaplin, in Blankney Fen : — " In that 

 long reach of Fen which extends from Tatershal to Lincoln, a 

 vast improvement by embanking and draining has been ten 

 years effecting. . . . This is a vast work, which in the whole has 

 drained, inclosed, and built and cultivated, between 20 and 30 

 Square miles of country. Its produce before was little, letting 

 for not more than \s. 6d, an acre, now from lis, to 17^*. an 

 acre. . . . This vast work is effected by a moderate embank- 

 ment, and the erection of windmills for throwing out the 

 superfluous water. The best of these was erected by Mr. 

 Chaplin, of Blankney. The sails go 70 rounds, and it raises 

 60 tons of water every minute when in full work. The bucket 

 wheels in the mills of Cambridgeshire are perpendicular 

 without the mill ; this, which is called dritch^ has in it a 

 sloping direction in an angle of about 40°, and within the mill. 

 It raises water 4 feet Two men are necessary in winter, 



* * The Fens of South Lincolnshire.' 



