Download or read book The Fens written by Francis Pryor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. 'Francis Pryor brings the magic of the Fens to life in a deeply personal and utterly enthralling way' TONY ROBINSON. 'Pryor feels the land rather than simply knowing it' GUARDIAN. Inland from the Wash, on England's eastern cost, crisscrossed by substantial rivers and punctuated by soaring church spires, are the low-lying, marshy and mysterious Fens. Formed by marine and freshwater flooding, and historically wealthy owing to the fertility of their soils, the Fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire are one of the most distinctive, neglected and extraordinary regions of England. Francis Pryor has the most intimate of connections with this landscape. For some forty years he has dug its soils as a working archaeologist – making ground-breaking discoveries about the nature of prehistoric settlement in the area – and raising sheep in the flower-growing country between Spalding and Wisbech. In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fenland landscape and its transformation – from Bronze age field systems to Iron Age hillforts; from the rise of prosperous towns such as King's Lynn, Ely and Cambridge to the ambitious drainage projects that created the Old and New Bedford Rivers – with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist. Affectionate, richly informative and deftly executed, The Fens weaves together strands of archaeology, history and personal experience into a satisfying narrative portrait of a complex and threatened landscape.
Download or read book The Fens written by Francis Pryor and published by Apollo. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A personal, historical journey across one of the most mysterious regions of England, exploring its archaeology, history and landscapes.
Download or read book The Draining of the Fens written by Eric H. Ash and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-05-29 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is a political, social, and environmental history of the many attempts to drain the Fens of eastern England during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both the early failures and the eventual successes. Fen drainage projects were supposed to transform hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands into dry farmland capable of growing grain and other crops, and also reform the sickly, backward fenland inhabitants into civilized, healthy farmers, to the benefit of the entire commonwealth. Fenlanders, however, viewed the drainage as a grave threat to their local landscape, economy, and way of life. At issue were two different understandings of the Fens, what they were and ought to be; the power to define the Fens in the present was the power to determine their future destiny. The drainage projects, and the many conflicts they incited, illustrate the ways in which politics, economics, and ecological thought intersected at a time when attitudes toward both the natural environment and the commonwealth were shifting. Promoted by the crown, endorsed by agricultural improvement advocates, undertaken by English and Dutch projectors, and opposed by fenland commoners, the drainage of the Fens provides a fascinating locus to study the process of state building in early modern England, and the violent popular resistance it sometimes provoked. In exploring the many challenges the English faced in re-conceiving and re-creating their Fens, this book addresses important themes of environmental, political, economic, social, and technological history, and reveals new dimensions of the evolution of early modern England into a modern, unitary, capitalist state"--
Download or read book The Lost Fens written by Ian D. Rotherham and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The loss of the great fenlands of eastern England is the greatest single removal of ecology in our history. So thorough was the process that most visitors to the regions, or even people living there, have little idea of what has gone. For many, the Fenlands are the vast expansive flatlands of intensive farming, the 'breadbaskets' of Britain. Lost are the vast flocks of wetland birds that filled the evening skies in winter, the frozen wetlands and the fen skaters of the winter, and the abundant black terns or breeding wading birds of the summer months. However, pause a while off main roads and consider place names and road names: Fenny Lane, The Withies, Commonside, Reed Holme, Fen Common, Turbary Lane, Wildmore, Adventurers' Fen, Wicken Fen, and more; they tell a story of a landscape now gone but once hugely important. The Fens bred revolution and civil war and paid the penalty. They nurtured religious non-conformism with global impact. After 1066, the Saxons withheld the Normans' onslaught, and in the 1970s, unting's Beavers took action against twentieth-century invaders. The fenscapes, neither water nor land but something in-between, breed independence and, if necessary, dissention. This story is of politically and economically driven ecological catastrophe and loss. So much has gone, but we do not even know fully what was there before. With global environmental change, and especially climate change, fenlands once again have major roles in our sustainable futures.
Download or read book An Environmental History of Wildlife in England 1650 1950 written by Tom Williamson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2014 While few detailed surveys of fauna or flora exist in England from the period before the nineteenth century, it is possible to combine the evidence of historical sources (ranging from game books, diaries, churchwardens' accounts and even folk songs) and our wider knowledge of past land use and landscape, with contemporary analyses made by modern natural scientists, in order to model the situation at various times and places in the more remote past. This timely volume encompasses both rural and urban environments from 1650 to the mid-twentieth century, drawing on a wide variety of social, historical and ecological sources. It examines the impact of social and economic organisation on the English landscape, biodiversity, the agricultural revolution, landed estates, the coming of large-scale industry and the growth of towns and suburbs. It also develops an original perspective on the complexity and ambiguity of man/animal relationships in this post-medieval period.
Download or read book Fen and Sea written by I.G. Simmons and published by Windgather Press. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reknown environmental archaeologist Ian Simmons synthesises detailed research into the landscape history of the coastal area of Lincolnshire between Boston and Skegness and its hinterland of Tofts, Low Grounds and Fen as far as the Wolds. With many excellent illustrations Simmons chronicles the ways in which this low coast, backed by a wet fen, has been managed to display a set of landscapes which have significant differences that contradict the common terminology of uniformity, calling the area 'flat' or everywhere from Cleethorpes to Kings Lynn as 'the fens'. These usually labelled 'flat' areas of East Lincolnshire between Mablethorpe and Boston are in fact a mosaic of subtly different landscapes. They have become that way largely due to the human influences derived from agriculture and industry. Between the beginning of Norman rule and the advent of pumped drainage, a number of significant changes took place. Foremost was the reclamation of land from the sea, which took place in both medieval times and the early modern decades. Part of the sequence along the coast of The Wash was due to land creation from the wastes of the salt industry. Next in importance was the management of the East Fen, both for its resources (mostly of a biological nature) and to keep it from flooding the surrounding lands and settlements. All these changes required a knowledge of water management that depended upon gravity until the coming of the drainage mill towards 1700. This area of Lincolnshire has been largely ignored by recent practitioners of historical geography, landscape history and archaeology alike, so one aim has been to accumulate as much data as possible from a variety of sources: documents, digs, aerial imagery, maps and fieldwork dominate. The project has accumulated information from Roman times until the beginnings of fossil-fuel powered drainage. This book would be first on this particular region and the first of its kind in trying to bring together both scientific data and documentary evidence including medieval and early modern documents from the National Archive, Lincolnshire Archives, Bethlem Hospital and Magdalen College Oxford, to explore the little-known archives of regional interest, such as that of the Bethlem Royal Hospital.
Download or read book The Story of the Fens written by Frank Meeres and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2019-03-29 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, as well as Peterborough City Council, all lay claim to a part of the Fens. Since Roman times, man has increased the land mass in this area by one third of the size. It is the largest plain in the British Isles, covering an area of nearly three-quarters of a million acres and is unique to the UK. The fen people know the area as marsh (land reclaimed from the sea) and fen (land drained from flooding rivers running from the uplands). The Fens are unique in having more miles of navigable waterways than anywhere else in the UK. Mammoth drainage schemes in the seventeenth and eighteenth changed the landscape forever – leading slowly but surely to the area so loved today. Insightful, entertaining and full of rich incident, here is the fascinating story of the Fens.
Download or read book Fen written by Daisy Johnson and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A singular debut that “marks the emergence of a great, stomping, wall-knocking talent” (Kevin Barry) Daisy Johnson’s Fen, set in the fenlands of England, transmutes the flat, uncanny landscape into a rich, brooding atmosphere. From that territory grow stories that blend folklore and restless invention to turn out something entirely new. Amid the marshy paths of the fens, a teenager might starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl and grow jealous of her friend. A boy might return from the dead in the guise of a fox. Out beyond the confines of realism, the familiar instincts of sex and hunger blend with the shifting, unpredictable wild as the line between human and animal is effaced by myth and metamorphosis. With a fresh and utterly contemporary voice, Johnson lays bare these stories of women testing the limits of their power to create a startling work of fiction.
Download or read book From Punt to Plough written by Rex Sly and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2003-09-18 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The counties of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and Peterborough City Council all lay claim to parts of the Fens. Since Roman times mankind, by his ingenuity, hard work and determination has increased the land mass in this area by one third of the size. It is the largest plain in the British Isles, covering an area of nearly three-quarters of a million acres, and is unique to the UK. The fen people know the area as marsh (land reclaimed from the sea) and fen (land drained from flooding rivers running from the uplands). The Fens are unique in having more miles of navigable waterways than anywhere else in the UK. Mammoth drainage schemes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, undertaken primarily by Dutch engineers such as Sir Cornelius Vermuyden and Sir Philibert Vernatti, changed the landscape forever - but it could be said that the Fens were not truly drained until the twenteith century, with improvements being carried out even to this day. Rex Sly's book draws on his many years of research, and his knowledge of and love for this unique area of England shine through on every page.
Download or read book England written by Erinn Banting and published by Crabtree Publishing Company. This book was released on 2004 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the geography, natural resources, trade and industry, cities, people, transportation, agriculture, and environment of England.
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 1500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Imperial Mud written by James Boyce and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **WINNER OF THE HISTORY AND TRADITION CATEGORY, EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARDS 2020** **LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2021** 'A real page-turner ... a warning about what happens when the rich and powerful dress up their avarice as "progress" - a lesson we could do with learning today.' Dixe Wills, BBC Countryfile magazine FROM A MULTI-AWARD-WINNING HISTORIAN, AN ARRESTING NEW HISTORY OF THE BATTLE FOR THE FENS. Between the English Civil Wars and the mid-Victorian period, the proud indigenous population of the Fens of eastern England fought to preserve their homeland against an expanding empire. After centuries of resistance, their culture and community were destroyed, along with their wetland home - England's last lowland wilderness. But this was no simple triumph of technology over nature - it was the consequence of a newly centralised and militarised state, which enriched the few while impoverishing the many. In this colourful and evocative history, James Boyce brings to life not only colonial masters such as Oliver Cromwell and the Dukes of Bedford but also the defiant 'Fennish' them- selves and their dangerous and often bloody resistance to the enclosing landowners. We learn of the eels so plentiful they became a kind of medieval currency; the games of 'Fen football' that were often a cover for sabotage of the drainage works; and the destruction of a bountiful ecosystem that had sustained the Fennish for thousands of years and which meant that they did not have to submit in order to survive. Masterfully argued and imbued with a keen sense of place, Imperial Mud reimagines not just the history of the Fens, but the history and identity of the English people.
Download or read book The Hoodsman Frisians of the Fens written by Skye Smith and published by Skye Smith. This book was released on 2019-04-10 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover Flap In the first two books in this series, the young porter, Raynar, survived the battles of 1066 first at Stamford bridge and then at Hastings road. In this third book, the year is 1067, and he is spreading the word that the Normans are coming to all of the small villages in the Fens of Lincolnshire. Towards the Wash from Hereward's town of Bourne, he helps some Frisian axemen rescue their village from the Sheriff's men, and after he is injured, he is nursed back to health by the village women. Nursed by the tall, slender, fair, wonderful, and totally self assured Frisian women. Of course he falls in love. In the first two books the elder Raynar completely got away with killing King William Rufus in 1100. In this third book, he must deal with the news that the new King Henry, the son of his worst enemy, plans to marry the daughter of his old friend and lover. About the Author Skye Smith is my pen name. My ancestors were miners and shepherds near Castleton in the Peaks District of Derbyshire. I have been told by some readers that this series reminds them of Bernard Cornwell’s historical novels, and have always been delighted by the comparison. This is the third of my Hoodsman series of books, and you should read the first “Killing Kings” before you read this book. All of the books contain two timelines linked by characters and places. The “current” story is set in the era of King Henry I in the 1100’s, while the longer “flashback” story is set in the era of King William I after 1066. I have self-published twelve “The Hoodsman” historical-adventure novels and one Companion reference book for the series: # - SubTitle William I Timeline Henry I Timeline 1. Killing Kings 1066 killing King Harald of Norway (Battle of Stamford Bridge) 1100 killing King William II of England. Henry claims the throne. 2. Hunting Kings 1066 hunting the Conqueror (Battle of Hastings Road) 1100 hunting Henry I (Coronation Charter) 3. Frisians of the Fens 1067/68 rebellions. Edgar Aetheling flees north with Margaret. 1100 amnesty and peace. Henry recruits English bowmen. 4. Saving Princesses 1068/69 rebellions. Margaret weds Scotland (Battle of Durham) 1100/01 Edith of Scotland weds Henry (Battle of Alton) 5. Blackstone Edge 1069/70 rebellions (The Harrowing of the North) 1101 peace while the economy is saved from the bankers 6. Ely Wakes 1070/71 Frisian rebellion (Battles of Ely and Cassel) 1101 Henry collects allies. Mary of Scotland weds Boulogne. 7. Courtesans and Exiles 1072/74 English lords flee abroad (Battle of Montreuil, Edgar surrenders) 1102 Henry collects allies (the honour of Boulogne) 8. The Revolt of the Earls 1075/76 Earls revolt (Battles of Worchester and Fagaduna) 1102 Earls revolt (Battles of Arundel, Bridgnorth, Shropshire) 9. Forest Law 1076/79 fighting Normans in France (London Burned, Battle of Gerberoi) 1103 fighting Normans in Cornwall (Battle of Tamara Sound) 10. Queens and Widows 1079/81 rebellions (Gateshead, Judith of Lens) 1103 Edith made Regent (Force 5 Hurricane) 11. Popes and Emperors 1081 Normans slaughter English exiles (Battle of Dyrrhachium) 1104 Henry visits Normandy (Duchy run by warlords) 12. The Second Invasion 1082/85 power vacuum, peaceful anarchy (Regent Odo arrested enroute to Rome) 1085/87 Re-invasion and Harrowing of all England (Battle of Mantes, Conqueror dies) 1104/05 Henry invades Normandy twice (Battle of Tinchebray) Other Novels By The Same Author: The Pistoleer – 9 historical adventures set in the English Civil War. Maya’s Aura – 8 new age adventures while tripping around the world. Knut – many historical adventures set in the Viking Era.
Download or read book British Plant Communities Volume 4 Aquatic Communities Swamps and Tall Herb Fens written by J. S. Rodwell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the vegetation types of Great Britain...
Download or read book British Plant Communities Volume 4 Aquatic Communities Swamps and Tall Herb Fens written by John S. Rodwell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-04-30 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British Plant Communities is the first systematic and comprehensive account of the vegetation types of this country. It covers all natural, semi-natural and major artificial habitats in Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland), representing the fruits of fifteen years of research by leading plant ecologists. The book breaks new ground in wedding the rigorous interest in the classification of plant communities that has characterized Continental phytosociology with the deep concern traditional in Great Britain to understand how vegetation works. The published volumes have been greeted with universal acclaim, and the series has become firmly established as a framework for a wide variety of teaching, research and management activities in ecology, conservation and land-use planning.
Download or read book The Draining of the Fens written by H. C. Darby and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-18 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The text is ambitious in scope, reflecting the author's position as a historical geographer, and covers a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, ranging from geology to socio-economic analysis. Numerous illustrative figures are contained, including maps, diagrams and photographs of the area, and a bibliography is also provided.
Download or read book Fenland Riots and the English Revolution written by Keith Lindley and published by Heinemann Educational Publishers. This book was released on 1982 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
