Flag Fen

The train took me through The Fens, running alongside little narrowboats on canals near Ely, vibrant and warm in their traditional rich colours. We pass slight undulations in the land and I can see canada geese floating together /click/ deer peering up from a field /click/ pheasant cock looking out for his mate. As I gaze out, hurtling towards the Bronze Age, I wonder, would this have all been marsh?

I see Little Downham on a hill that appears to be a mountain for the flat Fens, wreathed in morning mist, as daffodils bob their heads with the passing of the train. We glide past a flooded area between two dykes, swans swimming serenely around the top branches of drowned trees. We move onto vast flat fields of dark purple soil and vibrant green fields, glowing like an LSD trip even under the heavy, weeping skies, with wind turbines on the high ground pulling energy from the wild winds. 

We pass March, where genteel decay heralds the small triumph of nature at the end of the platform, before we continue into more level fields. I see the huge dykes and think of the Tiddy Mun. What would he think of his drained, monoculture Fens now? As Old Crockern rises to guard and restore Dartmoor, should we be awakening the Tiddy Mun to bring back the huge mazy Fens, an edge, a portal, a liminal space between this world and the next? I see the giant grey scar of a gravel pit and a huge, industrial power station come into view. Restoration of The Fens could return so much abundance and beauty.

The Fens used to be Britain’s largest wetland area, a mosaic of meres, marshes, bogs, wet woodland known as carr and misty islands, covering around a million acres. It would have been full of life, raptors, waders, waterfowl, eels, fish, amphibians, reptiles, clouds of insects. It was a wonderland for its human inhabitants, with abundant food supplies during the winter, as well as summer grazing, reeds for thatch and timber, whatever they needed. That is, until it was drained between the 17th and 19th centuries.

Prior to drainage and enclosure, stretching back deep into the Bronze Age, the communities developed complex nets of rights and responsibilities for all the resources, ensuring largely equitable division of the wealth of The Fens, from its natural wild food resources, to grazing rights and agriculture, and even salt extraction from about 1300 BC. The people living here were leading lives closely woven into the fabric of this subtle landscape, imbuing it with meaning through their myths, legends and histories of their ancestors, and respecting the natural spirits of The Fens.

I get in a taxi and we drive the short distance to Flag Fen. The building is low and unobtrusive, surrounded by a moat, home to many small and magnificent lives. I head through and over to the preservation hall, walking slowly around the ancient timbers of the post alignment, trying to imagine the causeway as it would have been, using the mural for inspiration. I walk all the way around, and then around again, and peer into the dripping gloom, a veil that I can pierce to view the work of 150 generations and 3300 years ago. It’s rich and damp and I wish I could drop into that freezing cold water and swim amongst the timber bones of my ancestors. 

The causeway stretches for a kilometre from west to east, from the mainland at Peterborough, an area now known as Fengate, across the wetter ground that would have been flooded in winter, across to Northey ‘island’. It was made out of approximately 60,000 posts, creating the ‘post alignment’ as it has been dubbed. It cuts straight across, with a slight kink and it was about 7m wide. 

The surface that your feet would have stood on to cross this was built from successive layers of wood and timber, slowly sinking into the water and mud below. The foundation was anchored in place by thousands of pegs, and then covered with planks of oak or brushwood. To combat the mud and the wet and create grip, sand and gravel were sprinkled over the planks and brushwood. I have walked across a wooden causeway over wet ground, and even with sand on it, it’s still very slippery. 

The work started around 1300 BC, just as the climate started to get wetter. It is not known for sure what the entire purpose of the causeway was, but it certainly connected two communities across wet and boggy ground that flooded in winter. Aside from this though, considering the amount of ritual deposition, it is likely that it had another, deeper significance. It could be exclusionary, keeping the changing world at bay. It could be a symbol of defence against the rising water, it could be a safe passage through the world of spirits. We have no records from these people, and we can only intuit answers based on what they left behind.

Towards the Northey ‘island’ end, there was a huge platform built, covering around 4 acres. People didn’t live here, but as there are a large amount of offerings deposited around this platform, it seems it was a ritual structure. It could have been seen, as its principal archaeologist Francis Pryor suggests, as a small area of dry land in the wild, watery landscape, a place of safety in the liminal and precarious wetlands. 

Work continued on the causeway and platform until around 900 BC, when the climate started to change, becoming even wetter, and people moved away from the area as they could no longer farm it. However, depositions continued right up into the early Roman Period.

I reluctantly leave the causeway and make my way to the Bronze Age roundhouse. Its turf roof is beautiful, dotted with tiny spring flowers, a living home that exists as a part of its landscape. This is an accurate reconstruction, the roundhouses were roofed with turf, with a flatter roof pitch, and since they were so heavy, they needed extra support from posts within. Inside is spacious and quietly dim, the hearth in the centre, drawing my mind back to a ritual roundhouse on Dartmoor, full of ceremony, music and fire. I squat by the ashes and offer a sprinkle of herbs, thinking of my far-distant ancestors and how they would have connected to the fire at the centre of their homes and lives.

I sit on a log inside, gently breathing in the space, but the peace is broken by squawling children seeking giant foam Easter eggs. So I get up and head to the Mesolithic shelter, which could easily disguise itself amongst haystacks. The space inside is to sleep, no hearth that I can see, its entrance a puddle from the recent rain and many feet. It sits lightly on the land and I wonder how our Mesolithic forebears would view our impact on the land today. With some horror I would imagine.

It is the droveway that surprises me with its depth. As I gaze along its short length, it is a scene that could be exactly as it was 3500 years ago. The trees are in blossom and full of songbirds. A rabbit catches sight of me and runs off, stops, stamps his foot, before darting across the droveway to the safety of his warren. Kestrel and buzzard circle overhead while the breeze sighs and clouds drift over the sun that is now peeking out. The children aren’t interested in this, it’s just a grassy lane that goes nowhere. To me it heads straight back to another day, many thousands of years ago, as a girl and her father drive their flock of sheep along the lane, delighting in the returning warmth of spring, waving to their neighbours in the fields as they pass by.

The fields would have been hedged, evidence has been found for banks of earth that were raised to grow the hedges on. We know that the fields were used for livestock due to their distinctive corner gates and the evidence of double-ditched droveways, neither of which would have been necessary for arable farming. They probably would have been for seasonal use, as during the summer they would have had access to the lush water meadows, which then flooded in winter, bringing the animals back to the fields near the house. But by the Iron Age the wetter conditions had pushed people away from Flag Fen, onto the dryer, higher ground and they moved to mixed arable and livestock farming. 

I head away and out to the Iron Age roundhouse, painted bright yellow and red with a steeper thatch roof and wattle and daub white-washed walls inside, that has a fire roaring inside. Filled with workers it’s not really a place to stop now, even though the fire feels welcome and warming, so I duck back out and head along the Roman road that Boudicca used. I go past the Roman garden and into the largely empty museum. I see the Iron Age shears I’ve read so much about, some shale bracelets, jet beads and a small gold ring, matching the only other one in existence, from La Tene, another liminal, marshy place with rushes blowing in the breeze. 

I head out around the mere, redolent in the calls of moorfowl and croaks of ravens. Finding a peaceful spot, dappled in sun, shadow and wind, I make an offering to the waters of a white egg-shaped quartz stone, a copper moon stamped with a serpent and spirals and some herbs. I lay them gently in the water with ancient words for the waters and sky that the people that built this causeway may have recognised, a language at least 3500 years old. Offerings have been made in this area for thousands of years, and it feels timeless to carry on this tradition. Water deposition started at least by 1700 BC in Britain, so by the time Flag Fen was starting to be settled, it was a well-established practise.

They have found Bronze Age weapons, a beautiful wheel made of alder, oak and ash, bracelets, pins, beads, rings and even a set of Iron Age shears in the water here. Many of the other offerings wouldn’t have survived, food, drink, leather, all would have decayed. The diversity of finds is stunning and covers a range of time, people and events. 

There were celebrations of births, marriages, comings of age, journeys completed safely, and commemorations of those passed on. There could have been propitiation of the spirits of The Fens, begging for boons, for healing, fertility and abundance. Almost all of the offerings that have been found have been damaged in some way, removing them from everyday use and consigning them to the otherworld, to the spirits. Most of the offerings are fairly local, but some come from France and the Alps. For a millennium and a half, people travelled here to make their offerings.

I sit to eat, disturbed occasionally by the shrill shrieks of children too young to understand the deep and rich resonance of this place. A willow warbler does her best to sing over the chainsaw behind us as the sun is covered by a blanket of cloud again. A young male chaffinch flits between the branches and in the moments when the chainsaw stops and the wind blows through the trees, I can imagine I am not so far away from my ancestors. 

Their remnants still remain in the earth underneath me, though what is left is threatened. It saddens me to think of what we are losing. Though many wonderful discoveries have been made in the peatlands, able to preserve even the most delicate items, the effects of drainage, intensive agriculture and climate change means that the peat is drying out and destroying our history, the legacy of our ancestors, from right beneath our feet. 

I shake myself, rise and return back through the site. I pass by the roundhouse again, delighting in the speedwell growing on the little turf roof, ladybirds crawling among the delicate blue blooms, a red splash of life. I go to sit by a fire on the terrace of the cafe with a fruit tisane and see a bumblebee flirt with the hot air rising, flakes of ash dusting the lilies on the surface of the moat. An odd butterfly drifts past and the afternoon light bathes me in gold. 

Tired and happy, I make my way back to the train station and climb on the next train. I clack past spring blooming, bright soft clouds, jackdaws, pheasants, rabbits and a big herd of deer, about thirty browsing together, undisturbed by the noise of the train. I feel content and connected, roots in the deep and misty past of the fenlands.

© Elena Tornberg-Lennox 2023