The Wash - History

History

In Roman Britain, embankments were built around the Wash's margins to protect agricultural land from flooding. However these fell into disrepair after the Roman withdrawal in the year 407.

Before the 12th century, when drainage and embankment efforts led by monks began to separate the land from the estuarine mudflats, the Wash was the tidal part of The Fens that extended as far as Cambridge and Peterborough.

From the year 865 to sometime around the year 1066, the Wash was used by the Vikings as a major route to invade East Anglia and Middle England, with Danes establishing themselves in Cambridge in the year 875.

The local people put up fierce resistance against the Normans for some time after the Conquest of the year 1066.

Documents prior to the 16th century referred to the Wash as Metaris Æstuarium ("The Reaping/Mowing/Cutting-Off Estuary") - the name given to it by Ptolemy in Roman times, and still in occasional use today. In the mid-16th century, when large-scale drainage and coastal reclamation works led by Dutch engineers began in and around the Wash, documents began to refer to "Waashe" or "Wysche", but only for the tidal parts of the Rivers Welland and Nene. During the 17th century, however, "The Washes" came to describe "a very large arme" of the "German Ocean" (i.e. the North Sea).

Drainage and reclamation works around the Wash continued up to the 1970s, with large areas of salt marsh progressively enclosed by banks and converted to agricultural land, so that the Wash is now surrounded by artificial sea defences on all three landward sides.

In the 1970s, two large circular banks were built in the Terrington Marsh area of the Wash, as part of an abortive attempt to turn the entire estuary into a fresh water reservoir. The plan failed, not least because the banks were built using mud dredged from the salt marsh, which then salinated stored fresh water.