Fens, England
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FENS, ENGLAND Reginald W. Herschy Hydrology Consultant, Reading, UK
Introduction The Fens are unique with a history and character all of their own. This area of England fans out from the Wash across Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and West Norfolk, UK. Once an inhospitable swampy wilderness, the Fens have been tamed to leave us today with a network of intricate waterways, which are renowned as some of Britain’s most atmospheric and tranquil. An immediate problem in providing any brief summary of fens is that ecologists themselves differ in how they use the term. Firstly it is necessary to distinguish “fen” as an ecological term from “Fenland” as a geographical entity. Fenland, a geographical area of East Anglia Geographically, Fenland is the ancient area of marshes on the vast floodplain that surrounded the rivers Witham, Welland, Nene, and Ouse (and their subsidiaries) that drain much of central and eastern England and flow into the Wash between Norfolk and Lincolnshire. It is or was an area of several hundred square miles (3,800 km2) and, in postglacial times, evidently continued much further still into what is now the North Sea. It extended from Lincolnshire in the north to Norfolk in the southeast, encompassing much of the geographical (no longer political) country of Huntingdonshire and part of Cambridgeshire. Perhaps one indication of the immensity of the area is the myth and legend surrounding Hereward the Wake, an ancient “Robin Hood-like” folk hero or outlaw who operated out of the Fens and who fortunately has not yet been
subjected to the same recent historical and cultural media travesties as Robin Hood. Little of this ancient area now exists. Most is now arable farmland, a flat landscape of huge fields and drainage dyke, with few natural hedges and with scattered, surprisingly isolated human communities. A few fragments remain to provide most of our finest British examples of “fen” as an ecological concept. These include Chippenham Fen and Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, and Holme and Woodwalton Fens in Huntingdonshire, all of which are National Nature Reserves, though Wicken Fen, the most accessible of these, is owned and managed by the National Trust. Though outside Fenland as defined here, there are a number of named fens stretching further east in Norfolk across to the Norfolk Broads, generally as parts of valley mire complexes. Many of the fenland rarities are or were to be found in both areas.
Fens as an ecological concept Ecologists regularly use the word “fen” but establishing a precise definition is more difficult, reflecting the diversity and continuity of habitat and vegetation types. Generally, however, use of the term equates to the majority of topogenous mires, where local relief results in permanently high water tables, as on flood plains and in shallow depressions, or in transitional zones of vegetation bordering open waters. Smaller areas of fen may also occur within soligenous mires associated with routes of moving drainage water. It is understood here that any type of mire is generally
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