88 



Great Level. 



bouring floods, ditches made to empty themselves into a ''mill- 

 drain" terminating near a river, and upon the bank of this a 

 windmill erected, which by means of a water-wheeL dashed the 

 water out of the mill-drain up an ascending curve into the river. 

 This system, however, proved a remedy only to some districts at 

 the expense of others; the general evil at the outfalls was unre- 

 juoved, and as the inclosures on the high lands multiplied, floods 

 became more frequent and destructive. In a.d. 1770 a breach 

 of the Nene Bank inundated the North Level, laying the whole 

 7 or 8 feet deep under water; the breach of banks in 1795 inun- 

 dated 25,000 acres, from Denver to Ely, much of it 6 feet deep, 

 and flooded altogether no less than 141,000 acres; and nearly as 

 much in the floods of 1799, which were the result of having an 

 insufficient outfall, the burden of water from the better-drained 

 uplands, and full 500 mills at work emptying into the rivers. In 

 1721 the attention of the Bedford Level Corporation was directed 

 to the imperfect state of the river Nene below Wisbech, and a 

 new cut (now called Kinderley's Cut") was ordered to be 

 made, for the purpose of turning the channel of the river under 

 the Shire Drain Sluice, and keeping it confined within a nar- 

 rower channel. It was to be 2 miles in length, to begin at the 

 river's end about 4 or 5 miles below Wisbech ; and it was also 

 intended to carry the river, in a confined channel 2 miles further, 

 to a place named Peter's Point, where there was a fall of 5 feet 

 7 inches. This cut was not quite completed until the year 1773, 

 when, under the Tydd and Newton Drainage Act, the work was 

 performed, and it was found that this improvement tended essen- 

 tially to the security of the south bank of Moreton's Leam, which 

 is the great protection of the Middle Level. In the year 1751 

 Kinderley proposed a plan, worthy of a real genius, for im- 

 proving the drainage of the Fens and the navigation of the great 

 estuary called "the Wash." He designed to convey the waters 

 of the Ouse and Nene into the centre of the estuary, there to 

 unite with the Welland and the Witham, the consequence of 

 which would have been, first, avoiding all the shifting sands of 

 the Wash ; and, secondly, draining so much of it as would amount 

 to more land than the whole county of Rutland. Every one of 

 his cuts was proposed on the same principle that has governed all 

 the later improvements, that of "avoiding broad channels with 

 shifting sand-banks, and confining the rivers to narrow channels 

 in order to ensure de-pth by force and weight of current." This 

 noble idea was never executed, and little was done for improving 

 the outfalls until near the commencement of the present century, 

 the Fens lying, in the interval, in a most deplorable state. In the 

 year 1762 the "Witham Drainage Act" was passed. The river 

 Witham had been formerly navigable up to Lincoln; but the 



