THE FENS (Cont.)

As part of the research on this topic, I went back to an early book which is in my collection of topography books.

It is “The Scenery of England” which was written by the Right Honourable Lord Avebury, and the edition I have was the 4^th edition, published by Macmillan in 1906.

Chapter XIV (14 to you…) is entitled “Downs, Wolds, Fens, Moors and Commons”

“While the Fens and plains of East Anglia cannot perhaps vie in picturesqueness with some other parts of the country, they certainly possess a quiet beauty of their own”

Lord Avebury

“a sweet and civil country” Bishop Hall

“The air is clear and transparent: fogs are rare, and the inhabitants enjoy ‘as sunny skies, as beautiful starlit nights and as magnificent cloudscapes as any people in England’” Wheeler, “Fens of South Lincolnshire”

“Here are more good things than man could have the conscience to ask of God” – William Cobbett

“The Isle of Ely is a paradise…

The plain there is as level as the sea, which with green grass allureth the eye and so smooth that there is nothing to hinder him that runs through it.”

William of Malmesbury

Also get some quotes from Graham Swift’s “Waterland”

“that part of the world is flat. Flat with an unrelieved and monotonous flatness.”

What about FENLAND folklore ?

Fenland Tigers ?

Elgood’s Ales…

The effects of the shrinking peat as it dries out…

Cornelius Vermuyden…