306 



Farming of Lincolnshire. 



natural drainage. If such is ever the case, it will be by a 

 straightenino:, widening-, and deepening of the channel through 

 the town of Boston, accompanied by a much deeper excavation of 

 the river between the Grand Sluice and Horsley Deeps, or a con- 

 tinuation of the Sock-dike to Boston, in order to provide for the 

 navigation; for the conveyance of goods by railway between 

 Lincoln and Boston will be a very long lime in rendering 

 superfluous a canal which admits coasting vessels from London, 

 &c., up to Lincoln and the Trent. But the Witham, through 

 Boston, has long been abandoned as an outfall by the great dis- 

 tricts of fen on each side it, which might have aided such a 

 project by their participation in the raising of sufficient capital to 

 execute it ; at any rate, an artificial mode of drainage must be 

 followed as long as the interests of the Witham navigation remain 

 worth supporting. However, if the sluice which holds up the 

 water were removed, and the river deepened, so as to accom- 

 modate vessels, the engines would be materially relieved, and half 

 their present work might most likely be dispensed with. 



The improvements which have been made by drainage in all the 

 great districts discharging by the Witham and South Forty-foot are 

 truly wonderful. Prior to the opening of the new river Witham, 

 in 1764, and indeed for some time after, the whole country, from 

 Lincoln to Bourn, was often deluged by the expanding waters. 

 The floods covered the entire surface from Boston to the high 

 lands near Heckington, from Kyme to Tattershall, and on the 

 north side of Boston, from Frith Bank to the northern hills.* 



* A writer, who lived in Kyme Fen about half a century ago, graphically describes 

 the country thereabouts. He says, *' Near the Garwick milestone 

 " Nothing there grew beneath the sky 

 But willows scarcely six feet high, 

 And osiers barely three feet dry ; 

 And those of only one year's crop 

 The flood did fairly overtop." 



He adds, " I have times out of number seen cows loosed out of their hovels and swim 

 across a river with nothing but their faces and boms above water, and then take footing 

 at mid-rib deep, or less, but not one spot of dry land, and then forage till weary, and 

 return to their hovels in the like swimming position. No place whatever was more 

 famous for this than Chapel Hill, which I have known for a long continuance of years 

 (previous to cutting the new river Witham, or, to speak more fully, opening the Grand 

 sluice) inaccessible but by boat, or riding horse belly deep, and more in water than 

 mud. I have also known in the whole parish of Dockdyke not two houses commune- 

 able for whole winters round, and sometimes scarcely in summer ; wliich was in some 

 measure the case of all the water-side quite up to Lincoln. We used to carry the 

 sheep to pasture in a flat-bottomed boat, clip them in ditto, and afterwards fetch them 

 away in the same conveyance." With such a state of the country it is easy to see that 

 tlie breeding and fattening of cattle was conducted in the rudest and most unproHtable 

 manner, and the flocks were thinned by the rot ; the animals being of the coarsest 

 quality and the shaggiest covering that was aide to preserve life in the greatest priva- 

 tions. The agriculture consisted in dairying and haymaking; and fishing and fowling 

 trained up a race of inhabitants wild as the prey they lived upon, and destitute as 

 their isolated huts could inake them. 



