History
The Isle of Axholme lies to the west of the River Trent and to the east of Hatfield Chase, a vast area of low-lying land which was described as a badly drained swamp in the 1620s. It was recorded as Axeyholme, with the three syllables Ax-ey-holme meaning water-island-island being contributed by successive groups of Celts, Angles and Danes. In the reign of King Charles I, the Dutch drainage engineer Cornelius Vermuyden set about draining Hatfield Chase, containing some 70,000 acres (280 km2) of wetland, in 1626. The River Don, River Torne and River Idle were re-routed and re-channelled, and although there were some flaws in the initial scheme, and considerable social unrest, including damage of the drainage works, the unrest was finally resolved in 1719, and the agriculture of the area prospered. The Stainforth and Keadby Canal cut across the region in 1802, providing some transport facilities, but the coming of the railway age resulted in calls for railways to be built to carry the agricultural produce to market.
Read more about this topic: Axholme Joint Railway
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“To summarize the contentions of this paper then. Firstly, the phrase ‘the meaning of a word’ is a spurious phrase. Secondly and consequently, a re-examination is needed of phrases like the two which I discuss, ‘being a part of the meaning of’ and ‘having the same meaning.’ On these matters, dogmatists require prodding: although history indeed suggests that it may sometimes be better to let sleeping dogmatists lie.”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)