The Fens

A love letter to the Fens

The Fens haven’t always been my home.

I arrived here one cold and snow bound January day, more years ago than I care to remember, to take up my first job as a teacher in a local primary school …. I stayed and slowly put down roots in these flat lowlands.

Moving from the rolling hills of the West Country, it took a while to become accustomed to the Fens, criss-crossed by dykes and ditches and rivers, where the uninterrupted views are endless and the horizon disappears from sight. Their beauty is not immediately obvious. No mountains, lakes or waterfalls at which to gasp; instead a sense of space, solitude and peace. Summer days with a huge blue sky-canopy above fields of golden corn; autumn days, when the ploughed fields stretch out unencumbered by hedge or wood, the rich brown soil like crumbled chocolate; winter with leaden skies and a row of trees in the far distance, like sentinels, just visible in the mist; and spring, when the banks of the lodes burst into life with the green shoots of reeds and a swan swims serenely, followed by her brood of fluffy grey cygnets.

 These are the reasons I grew to love the Fens.

Probably more than any other region of Britain the Fens have been moulded by the hand of man. They have a fascinating history.

Many centuries ago, they comprised a huge area of marsh and wet woodland connected by shifting channels of water and the occasional island of higher ground. Some attempts to tame this wild and inaccessible landscape had already been made, but it wasn’t until the 17th century that this began in earnest, when the 4th Earl of Bedford employed a Dutch engineer named Cornelius Vermuyden to systematically drain the land; a plan which was met with fierce opposition from local people who relied on the rich wildfowl and fish populations for their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, drainage caused not only the loss of large amounts of the ‘black gold’ peat due to shrinkage, but also the destruction of many rare species of flora and fauna. But now, there are exciting, extensive and long term plans, such as the Great Fen project, which aim to  restore large areas to the original fen landscape, thereby safeguarding the future of many endangered species as well as mitigating the effects of climate change.

The story of the Fens has come full circle.