Vermuyden

The river bank outside our front door was the highest point for miles in any direction.
Driving instructors from far and wide brought their pupils to the short gentle slope a few hundred yards down the lane. Fenland is flat: unsurprisingly, since it was once all part of the North Sea. Even as late as the 17th century it was a huge waterlogged marsh sparsely dotted with a low islands of firmer ground.
Then along came the 4th Earl of Bedford and his Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden. From 1632 to 1653 Vermuyden reclaimed over 95,000 acres of peat land in the area now known as the Bedford Level.
Unfortunately, Vermuyden’s success almost became
disaster. As the peat dried out it shrank, lowering the level of the reclaimed land and reintroducing the danger of flooding. An army of mechanical pumps, driven at first by windmills and later by steam then diesel, sprang up to feed a sprawling network of artificial and natural waterways. The battle continues.