Updated 22 Dec 2006

The fens we see today is very much a man made landscape.  The fens extended for 70 miles between Cambridge and Lincoln and was 35 miles wide.  Long ago it was a vast expance of sedge, willow and shallow lakes.  A few drier parts provided summer pasture but were soon swamped when the water level rose in winter.  The few raised areas became the only inhabitable places for the people who depended on the fens for survival.  They fed on fish and wildfowl, ussed the reads and sedge to build their homes and used dried peat for fuel. Things began to change in at Eirith before the civil war during the reign of Charles I when the Old Bedford River was cut.  After the civil war the New Bedford River (Hundred Foot Drain) was cut parallel with a wide stretch of washland in between to take the surplus water in season