Middle Level Commissioners - History

History

In the distant past Great Britain was part of continental Europe with the rivers of eastern England being tributaries of the River Rhine, which flowed across a flat, marshy plain, which is now the southern North Sea. Following the end of the last Ice Age, the sea levels rose, severing Britain from Europe and flooding the area now occupied by the Fens. The fen area gradually became separated from the sea by extensive sand banks, which circled the fringes of the Wash. Within the fens, dense vegetation grew in the fresh water forming peat deposits, which built up over some 6000 years, until at the time of the Norman Conquest, the peat fen had risen above the level of the sea, although several lakes or meres remained. A number of settlements had been built, not only on the silt fringes of the Wash but also on a number of clay islands within the fens.

Although the Romans and Saxons had built a series of flood banks to protect the Marshland silts to the north, and a number of small local projects had been carried out during the Middle Ages to reclaim small areas of fen in the vicinity of some of the island towns and villages, no comprehensive schemes for the draining of the Fens were carried out until the 17th Century. During the period between 1630 and 1655, the Dutch engineer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden was employed by the Earl of Bedford and others to carry out a comprehensive scheme to reclaim the Great Level of the Fens. The scheme involved the cutting of the Old and New Bedford Rivers to bypass the meandering course of the River Great Ouse and create a huge washland from Earith to Salters Lode to store flood water. The Middle Level area was protected from the flood waters of the Great Ouse and Nene by two huge barrier banks which stretched from Earith to Salters Lode and from Stanground to Guyhirn. Within the Middle Level he cut a number of new straight drainage channels such as the Sixteen Foot, Forty Foot and Twenty Foot drains with the bulk of the Middle Level area draining into the Great Ouse at Salters Lode, via the Old Course of the River Nene which continued to be the major waterway of the area.

The improved drainage caused a rapid shrinkage of the peat fen and land levels dropped. By the early 18th Century, lowering land levels had required the Middle Level rivers to be embanked and many wind pumps to be built to lift the water from the field dikes into the rivers. By the early 19th Century many of the wind engines had been replaced by steam to allow the water to be lifted through greater heights, to take account of the even greater peat shrinkage resulting from the improved drainage.

By this time it was clear that improvements to the drainage systems would be a never ending process and, in 1844, an Act of Parliament was passed to allow the cutting of the Middle Level Main Drain, which moved the main outfall sluice from Salters Lode to St Germans, some 9 miles further down the Great Ouse, where low tide levels were 7 feet (2.5 metres)and lower. At Mullicourt Aqueduct, the old drainage channel, which is still a statutory navigation, is carried over the Main Drain, providing a graphic illustration of the effects of land shrinkage.

From the time of Vermuyden, the drainage of the Middle Level had been run by the Bedford Level Corporation, until 1862 when a new Act of Parliament set up the Middle Level Commissioners, who have continued to administer the drainage and navigation of the Middle Level to the present day.