Fen and Sea

Book excerpt: Renowned environmental historian I.G. Simmons synthesizes 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 referring to everywhere from Cleethorpes to King’s Lynn as ‘the fens’. These usually labeled ‘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. The author has accumulated information from Roman times until the beginnings of fossil-fuel powered drainage, bringing 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.