I have wandered about the various environments of marsh, fen and town through different times in my writing. In that meander you have seen a host of different people, fenmen, fishermen, farmers, farm workers, migrants, auctioneers and shopkeepers to name but a few. We have also seen different economic activity such as the harvesting of wildfowl and fish; small-holders and farmers; the industrial activity of food processing and distribution; and shops. The key throughout all the changes that have happened to these people and their activity has been the ever changing balance between the environment, the economy and people.
The simple fact is that in 2019 82.9% of England’s population lived in urban areas and the population in urban areas was rising at a greater rate than in rural areas. [i] The development of cities and urban areas was enabled by the Agricultural Revolution and is sustained by agriculture’s efficiency in freeing up people away from the necessity of food production into manufacturing and service industries of the urban areas. If you consider the vast output of the Fenland areas and add to it the food processing, packing and distribution you have to consider that the Fenland area of South Lincolnshire and beyond into Norfolk and Cambridgeshire is an area of national strategic importance. That the Fens are a food basket and even more so a processing and distribution centre for the cities of this nation cannot be denied. However the Fens are much more in that they are the drainage channels for approximately a third of England’s water that drains mostly into the Wash from the urban centres of the Midlands. The needs of people, the economy and the environment are a resulting juggling act.
In the past the Fens leading into the Wash were wetter. The peat fenland, long marshes and various meres slowed down the flow of water. However, it is greatly misleading to consider that the Fens were a reservoir because despite being wetter they experienced great variances between wet and dry resulting in droughts and difficulties with water supply to towns and villages. I have referred to this earlier, most notably in the case of Robin Harmstone’s failure of his dairy herd through drought. It also needs to be considered that a lesser populated Midlands with fewer rooftops, paving and roads in places like Northampton, Peterborough, Nottingham and Leicester delivered a slower flow of water. Also, the water from the uplands to the Fens had less channelling and came through at multiple points. I illustrate this with the following map – the River Trent had five openings through the terrain that were effectively diverted by man’s excavations: near Spaldford, Newton, the south side of the Foss Dyke, Torksey and Brampton.
As we see populations grow London in particular is running out of water I believe to the point of it risking the expansion of economic activity. I have visited farms on the edge of the M25 circle that have seen severe and massive drops in the water table as more houses and urbanisation has drawn upon the resource from below the ground with resulting loss of soil fertility. So much for a green belt if you can’t keep it watered! The lack of adequate investment in London’s water supply in the early 21st Century is possibly a scandal of the time. A little over a hundred miles north of London we see the Fenland areas of Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire considered as part of the solution as much of England’s water drains into the Wash. Added to this is a requirement for increased water supply to enable the enlargement of Cambridge. At the same time we see the developed Midlands having so much rainwater that the resulting flow of water through the lower lands into mid-Lincolnshire and the Fens has caused flooding on substantial areas of farmland and homes. Increase of flood storage areas and new reservoirs in the area can be part of a solution together with some sort of conduit or pipeline of water to the Capital. Thus we see the competing and overlapping needs of water supply, flood prevention and agriculture. Going back in time we see seventeenth century Fenmen destroying drainage works at the Bedford Levels for fear of losing their livelihoods from the bounty of the Fen as improved drainage increased the availability of agricultural land. All this is before we even consider the benefits of wetland habitat that are so finely illustrated by the work of the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust at Welney. Thus in water alone we see the Fens subject to the competing needs of the environment, the economy and of people.
The fishermen of the Wash were possibly the closest persons to the environment in that they learned to read the weather, tide, seasons and habits of fish and shellfish in an environment that, although affected by the activity of man, was not formed by man’s activity. From the sixteenth century to this day there have been various periods of over-fishing, restriction and periodic failure of fishing grounds forcing them to move further around the coast or suspend activity. This direct and immediate effect on their activity possibly makes them more vulnerable than almost any other group of people to the competing needs of the environment, the economy and people.
As soon as you step onto the foreshore of the marshes you enter an environment that has been managed by man and this increases further as you step over the sea wall into a land of fields and drains that in turn lead to roads, villages and towns beyond where the 82.9% live, many of them unfamiliar with the past and present activities of the countryside and the Fens.
It is, in my opinion, almost an irony that many of the most vociferous environmental campaigners come from or are active in cities. But as the competing needs of people, the environment and the economy need to be juggled, and the countryside serves the city, perhaps they have the most to lose.
A leading mantra of the environmental movement in the 2020’s, repeated by such great advocates for nature as Sir David Attenborough is that , “ The UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries.” My understanding of this is as follows. The earliest reference to this phrase I have found is in 2016 and it is the result of extensive and ongoing study that resulted in an index formed and constantly reviewing records from 1984 to 2013 with subsequent modelling. [i]If you consider a base line of 1984 it does not bode well for wildlife as much habitat and wildlife was lost before that date and this was bemoaned by natural historians from the seventeenth century onwards. As such the claim stands and is perhaps especially true of the Fens as I will mention again later. It also needs to be considered that the assessment of nature depletion is, in my opinion, very generous towards man, as it regards an area as “nature depleted” if it has 30% or less habitat as below this value it is deemed unlikely to be able to recover.
I have neither the expertise, knowledge or desire to dispute that “The UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries.” I find it interesting that of fifty eight people that used the phrase publicly only six had the courtesy to respond when I asked them over what period they believed the period of nature depletion covers. Each of these responded that they were not sure, but that they imagined it would be from the start of the industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century. For me it is telling that each of these people were prepared to use a phrase that had gained a status of popular fact without knowing its origins. Indeed, if you are to apply the depletion of nature to the Fens you can certainly go back further to the sixteenth century where you can see man’s drainage activity visibly changing habitat.
My concern with this statement of nature depletion is that the next question that needs to be asked is, “What place should man have in nature?” For part of that question needs to consider that perhaps man is part of nature and that depletion may be acceptable. Is the best natural resource for growing food the one that can produce the best yield from lessor resources of fuel, fertilizer, land and people? For surely an alternative is depopulation of man and the shrinkage of urban areas? Restoring nature, habitats and creatures is as radical and extreme as the processes of drainage and subsequent agriculture that destroyed it and the consequences as great. The balance between the needs of people, the economy and the environment is perhaps most keenly felt in the Fens. We should be under no illusion that it is exactly that…….a balance. A balance I shall discuss further.
[i] The Statistical Digest of Rural England DEFRA February 2021
[ii] This can be found in accurate detail on the Natural History Museum website and is an ongoing living study that will, in my humble opinion, only improve its accuracy and detail over time.
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