48 
Tvunk Drainage. 
on these occasions. V arious gentlemen of the neighbourhootl 
published pamphlets on the subject : Mr. Rendel was employed 
to make an engineer's report and propound a design ; and after 
a complete survey and jjreparation of plans and sections, a pre- 
liminary inquiry on the part of the Admiralty — whose oversight 
extends inland as far as the tide — and a long contest before Par- 
liamentary Committees, an Act was passed in 1852 " constituting 
Commissioners for the Improvement of the River Ncne and the 
Navigations thereof." 
The injured land of the Upper Valley consists of about 
16,000 acres, lying low and flat, accompanying the river in its 
sinuous course from a few miles above Northampton down to 
Peterborough. But it is narrow and irregularly distributed ; 
defined in some places by the limits of the woods. Towns 
and villages are thickly set along the edges of the valley, 
and, during a flood, the water covers from 80 to 200 acres in 
each parish — in many places spreading for 1 or 2 miles in 
breadth. In autumn and winter the floods always prevail, and, 
indeed, at any period of the year after a few hours' rain ; while 
summer inundations, which prove most destructive, occur at 
intervals of very few years — sometimes more than one in the 
same season. The upland farms are delivering their drain-water 
in much larger c[uantities, and more immediately after tlie down- 
fall than formerly, swelling to the depth of 3 to 6 feet over the 
20,000 acres of open ground which Ibrm one vast reservoir for 
it above and below Peterborough. The Nene used to overflow 
its banks to the extreme height about the third day after 
rain : tlie floods note reach the same height in about half tliat time. 
Twelve hours' rain will generally cause an overflow of the land, 
which all lies unembanked from the stream : and where it is 
already saturated this takes place in six, or even in two, hours. 
Such a quick rise will cause one body of flood-water to extend for 
40 or 50 miles in succession, with a width varying from a quarter 
of a mile to a mile, but it stays sometimes for six weeks or even 
two months upon the ground. And these floods come down with 
an alarming power and velocity : Ijridges which have stood for 
a century are washed away, and districts where floods were pre- 
viously unknown have become liable to their sudden periodical 
visitations. 
The land, being wholly in meadow, suffers very heavily from the 
destruction of its hay. So sudden are the inundations, that it 
frequently happens that hay made in the day has in the night 
been found swimming and gone. A public-house sign at VVans- 
ford commemorates the locally-famed circumstance of a man who, 
having fallen asleep on a hay-cock, was carried down the stream 
by a sudden flood ; awaking just under the bridge of that town, 
