John Norris Remembers - Fenland Drainage
BURWELL DRAINAGE SYSTEM involved a tunnel under Wicken Lode to take their water to a wheel on the other side of Reach Lode, the north side. This building is now a house, but the outline of a pumping station remains. The Burwell main drain was diverted into a tunnel under Reach lode nearer the highland, and the water pumped out by the Swaffham engines. There is a tale about that tunnel which I may recall when I have the energy !
As the fens were drained, the spring winds dried out the land to such an extent that the top surface would blow away, and the dust clouds were quite a feature of the nineteen sixties. To counteract this clay was dug from the subsoil, and spread over the peat to anchor it down, and to provide some minerals, sadly lacking in the raw peat. Shortly after the war this need for minerals was realised, and was achieved by a dragline, (there were no hydraulic diggers then), digging a trench down to the clay, and spreading the bucket loads either side of the trench as far as it would reach. After ten feet or so this trench would be filled with top soil, the offending peat, and the process repeated, so that in time a thin layer of clay could be mixed in. Later on in the eighties, a powerful tractor would pull a two foot wide sloping blade through the ground, so that a continuous ribbon of clay came to the surface, and brought up much more clay.
These lumps of clay were very difficult to incorporate unless we could wait for a frost to break them down, but even then it was a rough ride the first time over. We had just purchased a crawler tractor which made the job easier. These young folk who think this fen is only good for badgers and newts, have no idea of the trouble we took to reclaim this land for food production, and the vast amount of money spent in doing so. It seems to me to so wasteful to reduce this very fertile land to the level of an unkempt area for naturalists. Even Wicken Fen is false in that the water level is constant, far from the circumstances that created it, but it is a wild place creating a special character of it's own, and very popular for a day out.
During the past thirty tears, the rainfall has declined, and abstraction from the chalk by the water companies have both helped to reduce the water coming from springs. In the sixties the spring water was quite a problem, and in spite of careful routing of the drains, much of it had to be pumped. The massive spring at the end of the grass drove leading to the old station, has dried down to a trickle, and the one in the wood near Swaffham Prior House has stopped altogether. Another example of the dearth of water is the well at Cadenham Farm. This used to have a rest level of some twenty feet below ground level, today it is bone dry eighty feet down, the full depth of the well.
To make up for this short fall of water, and consequently the poor flow resulting, potable drinking water is flushed now and again down the water gardens of Swaffham Prior House, to help dilute the effluent from the sewage works, and help prevent pollution of Reach Lode. All very difficult in these times of washing machines, showers in every bedroom, and a general disregard for water conservation.
As a postscript to this, I mentioned the difficulties with authority of construction a tunnel under Reach Lode, or more correctly improving and repairing the old brick one. The River Authority, or the Navingation Section of it demanded that traffic down the load should not be interrupted during the work. Demonstrations by boat owners were held most weekends that summer to reinforce the point. So the engineers developed a scheme to bore the tunnel under the Lode. A large pit was dug near the river and a series of jacks was used to push the concrete pipes along. Men then crawled into the tube and dug out the soil, or clay mixture. Later a rail track was used as the distances grew greater to carry a tub on wheels.
All went well until they were half-way across when leaks started to appear, small at first then quite serious, so that digging had to stop. What do we do now, was the question of the day. The answer was clear right from the start , this boring idea to placate a few holiday boaters, and the Authority, was impracticable, and had to stop.
To cut a long story short, the Lode was dammed up both sides of the working, the water pumped out, and the pipe laid by hydraulic cranes. The work only took two weeks to complete, whereas the tunnelling exercise had been going on for over a month. There is a similar waste of time caused by Authority in the events of letting the new railway of 1884 pass over Bulbeck Lode. Here the Authority insisted that the trck was high enough over the water to allow barges to travel to the mill and other outlets. This was done at great expense, but the first train ensured the demise of river traffic for ever. On the close of the track in 1968 this bank was removed, and now forms the subsoil of the houses built on the site of Tillotsons factory
This short history of the Fen Drainage, and other matters, is only part of my idea to write down what I remember of these past fifty years living here. Very little seems to have been recorded, so if you have any memories of public affairs, then please write them down (or get in touch with the Crier and we'll send our Reporter to write them down - Eds) Even Parish Council, or Church Records have very little personal interest recorded, especially of comments made at the time by those involved.