Middle Level Navigations - History

History

The Middle Levels of the Fens are a low-lying area of approximately 270 square miles (700 km2), much of which is at or below sea level. Attempts to protect them from inundation, and to make them suitable for agriculture began in 1480, when the Bishop of Ely, John Morton, constructed a 12-mile (19 km) straight cut from Stanground to Guyhirne, providing the waters of the River Nene with a more direct route to the sea than the previous route through Benwick, Floods Ferry, March, Outwell and Wisbech. Morton's Leam, the name given to the medieval drainage ditch, was 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, and much of the manual labour was provided by prisoners of war from the Hundred Years War. In 1605, Sir John Popham, who was the Lord Chief Justice at the time, began work on a drainage scheme near Upwell, and although the scheme was ultimately abandoned in 1608, Popham's Eau, his 5.6-mile (9.0 km) cut from the old course of the River Nene near March to the Well Creek at Nordelph remains. The next significant advance was in 1630, when the Dutch Engineer Cornelius Vermuyden was employed by the Earl of Bedford and others to drain the Fens. The Old Bedford River was cut from Earith to Salters Lode, a distance of 21 miles (34 km), and provided sufficient drainage that the land could be used for summer grazing. In 1650, he supervised the construction of the New Bedford River, running parallel to the Old, and the Middle Levels area was protected. The Forty Foot, Twenty Foot and Sixteen Foot Rivers were cut soon afterwards, to drain water from the area to Salters Lode and Welches Dam.

Between 1824 and 1839, John Dyson Jr was employed as the resident engineer by the Beford Level Commissioners. He had been recommended by John Rennie, and was charged with the reconstruction of ten locks and sluices, together with "a great many other works of great importance", for which the estimated cost was between £50,000 and £60,000. The work included the rebuilding of Salters Lode sluice, which Dyson oversaw himself, as no suitable tenders were received when the work was advertised. It was completed by 1832.

As the land dried, the peaty soils shrank, causing the land surface to drop. Much of the Middle Levels was flooded in 1841-2, and this led the Commissioners to obtain an Act of Parliament in 1844, which authorised the construction of a new main drain, 11 miles (18 km) long, in order that water could flow by gravity to Wiggenhall St Germans, where the levels of the tidal river were about 7 feet (2.1 m) lower than at Salters Lode. The work was completed in 1848. In 1862 an Act of Parliament created the Middle Level Commissioners as a separate body to the Bedford Level Corporation, and they embarked on a series of improvements. Drainage was always the primary function, but navigation was also important, and the new body had powers to charge tolls for the use of the waterways.

1862 was also the year in which the Wiggenhall sluice collapsed and around 9 square miles (23 km2) of the levels were flooded. Sir John Hawkshaw constructed a new sluice, consisting of a large cofferdam, with 16 tubes, each 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in diameter, which passed over the top of it. The top of these pipes was 20 feet (6.1 m) above the inlet and outlet, and an air pump was used to remove the air from them, so that the water would syphon over the cofferdam. It was the only time that such a solution was tried in the Fens, and it was supplemented in 1880 by a more conventional gravity sluice, also constructed by Hawkshaw, as it was unable to discharge sufficient water.