The people of the Marsh, Fen and Towns of South Lincolnshire and beyond have many identities. Many are deep rooted over time and in their environments. Perhaps the most obvious example being the Lineham family of fishermen and seafarers that were also wildfowlers. Every sinew of their identity was entrenched in their family history and activity of over 300 years. Perhaps in common with fishermen throughout the country, they have the closest relationship with the environment as both their lives and livelihoods depend upon understanding this.
Similarly wildfowlers, whether professional like the decoymen and marsh guides, or recreational have a closeness and identify with their environment. A true wildfowler, even today, will identify themselves as a wildfowler, even if it’s not their day job. Their identity intertwines with their quarry and the environment. In the case of Decoymen we see a similar succession in two main families I have mentioned, the Skeltons and finally in Billy Williams of Newborough whose lineage of decoymen went back nearly 300 years to 1670. Whilst the profession of decoymen died out the identity echoes on in the names of farms, bridges and locations bearing the name “Decoy” or “Coy”.
You see “Shep White” immortalised in the name of the site of his cottage at Holbeach Marsh that no longer holds its sheep. The former sheep owner and farmer is immortalised in the name Thimbleby House just inland of this site. Fred White’s ancestors can still be found around the area.
The Washlanders of Cowbit, Whittlesey and Welney all had their separate but similar identities and family links going back many generations and some of their ancestors still identify with both the area and their past activities. Whilst some of the ancestors survive, many of their practises are now only surviving by exception, like living museum pieces. Like the guns of Cowbit Wash that are preserved for royal celebrations.
The Washlanders of Welney and Whittlesey are sometimes identified as Fen Tigers – a moniker that has stuck in Fenland that people are rightly proud to attach themselves to. I recall the professional welterweight boxer Dave Boy Green from Chatteris originally having the moniker “Fen Tiger”. Although not the first local boxer to carry that name he was the most successful. Chatteris football club is known as the Fen Tigers. Mildenhall speedway team on the Suffolk edge of the Fens are called the Fen Tigers. Prior to 1970 there was event The Tiger public house in Great Fen Road, Soham. Then there were the mythical observations of a Fen Tiger reported to Cambridgeshire police in the 1990’s. In more recent times the area has been blessed with the Fen Tiger flag developed by James Bowman in 2016 and this flag can now be seen throughout the Fens in various forms.
In 1991 I found myself in discussion over tea and cake at Welney about what was a Fen Tiger. Obvious reference to old washlanders skating, catching eel, pike and fowl. However, we considered how their legacy would live on in younger locals. One stated that a Fen Tiger was so much more than the living off the Washes but rather a mindset, “A Fen Tiger likes to think for himself, won’t be fucked about by anyone, and don’t like strangers.”
One of the group piped up, “In Soham I find that easy nowadays as they are all strangers that go to Cambridge to work and come home to sleep.”
I felt they were wrong about Fen Tigers not liking strangers as “the good old boys” I had met in the Fens were always welcoming. I suggested that it was not that they disliked strangers, but that they were equally content with being alone as in company as much of their work was done alone.
The concept of a Fen Tiger being independently minded person with a peculiar lifestyle and habits held much mystery. In 1865 Walter White portrayed Fen Tigers of the seventeenth century as opium addicted eccentrics claiming the conditions led to opium eating, first as a medicine for Fen malaria and then as a stimulant, “No wonder that when opium became known as the antidote to the effects of noxious vapours, the fen dwellers took to it kindly, as they phrase it. And now opium chewing has become a habit as well as a necessity, and if you could stand in a druggists shop on a market day you see many lay down their pence for a small pocket of opium.” The claim was that this led to Fen Tigers being a wild and savage race of people with eccentric past-times such as indulging in the game of “flap-chaps”. This would involve them slapping each other’s cheeks right or left, warding off open palms as best they could. This would go on until the cry of , “Caps! Caps!” when a hat was snatched and thrown into the fire. [i]
Thus Fen Tigers were portrayed as a group of drugged up nutters!
The air of eccentricity of the Fen Tiger was parodied by the country and western musician and entertainer Pete Sayers who performed at my wedding as the banjo-playing ultra ego Fen Tiger, Dennis of Grunty Fen. This he did with a heavy “Fen Boy” accent that matched some of the old boys I have had the fortune to meet. I contend that the double-act Dennis of Grunty Fen performed with the broadcaster Christopher South on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire was a case of art imitating life as Dennis thought Mr. South was a “stuck-up townie” and Christopher South thought Dennis a “dim clod”, yet despite their differences they were friends.
One of the last Fen Tigers played a key part in forming a lasting legacy in the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Welney Wash. The first warden of this site was one of the last Fen Tiger punt gunners, Josh Scott and his knowledge, experience and ability was key in the successful transformation and management of this wetland site. In such a way his identity is engraved in the land and the legacy he left behind.
There are other references to Fen Tigers as the Fen rebels that sabotaged drainage and later rioters at Littleport in 1816, but I have failed to find of the time documentary references to them. However, I feel the original title Fen Tiger and its definition firmly belongs to Ernie James of Welney (born 1906) who’s memories were recalled in a book written by his daughter-in-law Audrey James in 1984. His words from a TV documentary of the time sum up what a Fen Tiger is in my opinion: “We have everything bar money……we don’t do one job; we learn ten and adapt and change with the seasons.”
Moving from the damp fens and marshes the next identity is that of the Fenland farmer. In 1987 when I worked at Barclays Bank Holbeach branch I was shown an old hand written ledger in two volumes. It was in a leather case that had a railway ticket attached to it for Holbeach railway station. Apparently each night the ledger would be sent down by train to London and returned the following day to be written up. The ledgers contained the names of every customer. Looking at them nearly a hundred years later I could see the names of farmers and their descendants had not changed, especially the farming ones. Indeed many of the farming names were even the same as it was common practise for first names to be passed down through the generations.
I recall this trait being discussed by Mrs Ward at a meal attended by the landlords of the Wildfowling club’s shooting leases. She explained that when her sons were born she determined to break the chain of the eldest son being called Joe. However, his grandfather continued to call her eldest son Joe to her annoyance. One day the boy turned to his mother and said, “Its OK Mummy, I know my name isn’t Joe, but I know grandad likes to call me that so I don’t correct him.”
The point is that the names of farmers become embedded in the landscape. Indeed if giving directions to anyone across the agricultural marshes and fens of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk I can find myself referring to farm names, or the names of houses and farms named after past generations. Yet such an identity is not set in stone, for example Spinney Farm at the bottom of Twenty Drove was once Smith’s but changed to Stephenson’s, and similarly Dyson’s farms have become distinctive named land marks near Carrington and Nocton. Other places retain names from farmers centuries past. Thus whilst identity and place can change and fade, like echoes from the past disappearing into an ever changing future.
This sense of identity is strong with farmers the world over. I do believe if you stay or live in a place long enough its identity rubs off with you. Perhaps Stuart Hay’s words describing his view reveal a little how the landscape becomes embedded in the heart of a farmer. Farming is a succession of people each handing over to the next like firmly rooted trees shedding their seed. However, such a strong identity as farming can become an overwhelming responsibility. The longest succession I ever came across was one of 900 years, it has not been unusual for me to see seven or eight generations going back to the seventeenth century. In the period 2004 to 2019 I interacted with 72 farmers of various size and description and the single most common cause of packing it in was lack of succession. It was not necessarily that they did not have children or relations to follow, it was that the potential successors had followed other life paths, often with the benefit of a University education that led them to other activities and locations. The effect of the retiring farmer could be great and was, in my experience, those feeling the greatest pain came from multi-generational farms of three or more generations.
In other cases I have seen succession cause pain to the successor and on two occasions have had a middle-aged son say, “I don’t want my father to buy any more land as I’ve had enough of farming and don’t know how to tell him.” Or words to that effect. Thus the identity and desire for succession of a farm can be strong and can become an albatross around the farmer’s neck.
As we enter the old market towns and see businesses and businessmen that made a stamp on their communities with their individual identities. For example in Spalding we see a strong legacy of people like Geest, George Adams, Sheddy Turners, Longstaffs and Elderkins all having strong identities that have survived in one form or another either as surviving businesses or historical names intertwined with the fabric of the town. Yet in other ways identity has been lost from town centres as a whole host of family businesses have faded away. I feel it may be a telling indication of identity that many of the new European shops in Fenland towns have names identifying with either Europe as a continent or specific locations of origin such as the Baltic or Lithuania. However, I hope that many of them become a greater part of the area and their hearts find a home that they can identify with more than or alongside their country or ancestry of origin. Perhaps, like my description earlier of the Shaheen Tandoori gradually changing its name to the Tulip Tandoori. I take heart from the fact that the designer of the Fen Tiger flag apparently moved from Birmingham in the 1990’s and clearly feels passionate about his adopted home area.
If I was to describe how identity works I would say that those closest to the more natural environment have that environment within their identity, whether it be wildfowlers, fishermen or fen men. As you venture onto more developed habitats such as farmland and ultimately towns it reverses so that people’s identity is upon the farm or forms the town. Of course there are many shades in between.
[i] The Norfolk News 20th March 1897
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