England’s Fens a Granary in Roman Days.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20276, 10 April 1934, Page 5

England’s Fens a Granary in Roman Days.

An aerial survey reveals an astonishing state of cultivation of Fenland in Roman times. Photographs of only, one-fortieth of the million acres to be surveyed show somewhere about a thousand Roman fields in the Gedney Hill district, in the heart of the Fens, linked by an irregular network of unmetalled roads and dotted with houses and farm buildings. It is obvious that the output of corn and other crops must have been far in excess of local requirements, and, since communication w’ith London was not particularly good, it seems probable that there was a considerable export trade to the Continent via the Wash. It is thought that the Romans must have undertaken some kind of drainage operations to bring the most fertile area into cultivation. The whole layout of the fields is irregular, the system of cultivation being British rather than Roman. The fields are marked out by their boundary ditches. On land covered with growing corn these ditches are shown on the photograph as lines of stronger and darker growth. On land near Shepean Stow and Holbeach Drove, which has not been ploughed for 1500 years, the whole of the Roman system is shown as slight banks and ditches in the grass fields. Buildings seem to have been in some cases light structures of wattle and daub. Where their existence is only suspected from the survey a visit to the site has usually revealed much broken pottery, animal bones and burnt clay daub.