The Adventurers

The Adventurers

The era of the Adventurers was the early 17th century from about 1600 to 1650. They were gentlemen, usually lords and noblemen, who invested their money in a venture to reclaim and drain the fens, at that time vast wastes of water, reed and swamp. They are aptly described in the story of St Guthlac:

There is in the middle of Britain, a hideous fen of huge bigness, oft-times
clouded with moist and dark vapours, a place of great dreadfulness
and solitude, which none have attempted to inhabit.

The Adventurers were granted a concession by the Crown to drain the fens and as recompense were to have a third part of the land reclaimed, but only on the condition that the whole should be firm and pasturable. It appeared a profitable proposition. Sir Cornelius Vermuiden estimated in 1630 that by an expenditure of £100,000, approximately 300,000 acres in the Bedford Level could be drained by which 95,000 acres would be allotted to the Adventurers. The annual income from reclaimed land being worth thirty shillings an acre, a not inconsiderable return.

But the Adventurers underestimated one very essential item, a mistake which is often committed to this very day, namely the annual cost of maintenance of the works, the very secret of good fen drainage.

It should be appreciated that the Adventurers had no visions of making the fens into arable lands as we know them today - their aim was firm and pasturable land for grazing and for hay. But from the outset their venture was doomed to failure from a financial point of view.

Their concession was to be a third of the land reclaimed but only on the condition that they drained the whole. This involved not only the interior drainage but also the embankment and the maintenance of the fenland rivers.

The Adventurers of Deeping Fen were responsible for the River Welland from Deeping to the sea, for the River Glen from Kate's Bridge to Surfleet Reservoir. They built the River Glen Sluice, the Vernatts Sluice, Spalding High Bridge, Crowland Bridge, Surfleet Bridge, Herring Bridge, Boarden Bridge, Pode Hole Bridges, Cuckoo Bridge, Horseshoe Bridge, Lucks Bridge and others.

History shows that the burden of taxation on the Adventurers to undertake these vast responsibilities was too great and there were many cases of "sequestration" of their lands due to failure to meet the taxes demanded.

The Adventurers showed great skill and ingenuity in their efforts. In the first instance they could drain by gravity only and they constructed subterraneous tunnels under the embanked fenland rivers and carried the outfalls for the interior drainage as far downstream as possible even to the sea. In the late 17th century they quickly adopted the method of drainage by windmills operating paddle wheels and almost every Adventurer had his own mill. The adoption of steam beam engines to drive the paddle wheels in the early 19th century was probably the turning point in their efforts to drain the fens successfully.

Their greatest works were no doubt the construction of the wash lands - reservoirs to contain the flood waters from the highlands - Welney Wash for the Great Ouse, Whittlesey Wash for the River Nene and Crowland and Cowbit Washes for the River Welland.

I salute the Adventurers whose works are still the foundation and the framework of the fenland drainage system to this day.

Reproduced from A History of the Drainage of Bourne South Fen and
Thurlby Fen by W D Miles, Engineer to the Welland & Deepings
Internal Drainage Board (June 1976).