I is for...

...Iron Age Fort.

On Tuesday Mark took me to Stonea to take photos of the Iron Age Fort. To be perfectly honest, there isn't much to see but there are a lot of information signs around which explain what is there.

The area is now owned by the Cambridgeshire County Council which means that the public are allowed to wander anywhere within the confines of the fences. The farmer still uses the land to graze his sheep and you are allowed to take dogs as long as they are kept on a lead. Metal detectors are not allowed.

The following text taken from the board at the entrance to the site. "STONEA CAMP is the lowest "hill fort" in Britain. Extensive banks and ditches protected the northern side, preventing access from dry land, while the marshes and streams of the Fens formed the southern defences.

Built by Britons in the Iron Age as a base for inter-tribal conflicts, the fort was also used to defend the area against the Romans. Most of the earthworks you see today were rebuilt in 1991 to the size and shape they were 30 years ago before the site was first ploughed. Two thousand years ago Stonea Camp was surrounded by wet fenland; reeds, sedges and alder scrub interlaced with streams stretched to the south and west. The land rises very slightly to the north, for the fort was built on an island of gravel about 2 metres above sea-level. Willow, silver birch, hazel, and oak grew on the drier areas, which could be seen from a distance as clumps of trees rising above the flat fens.

Dry fen islands like Stonea, Ely, and March were easily settled and the wet fens which surrounded them made the islands defensible. The creeks and major water-courses which ran through the fens can be traced today as roddons, pale ridges of silt running across the dark fen peat. These cause some of the bumps on fen roads, like those along the track to Stonea Camp.

Cyril Fox wrote this in 1922, when Stonea was first scheduled as an ancient monument. Unhappily its remote location meant that no objections were raised when the site was levelled and ploughed, and the damage continued until Cambridgeshire County Council returned the land to pasture in 1990.

With help from English Heritage and Fenland District Council, the County's Archaeology Section excavated sections through the ditches to learn more about the development of the Camp. A mechanical digger was then used to remove the recent infill from the ditches and recreate the banks of the original earthworks.

WILDFLOWER SEED MIXES have been sown on the banks and ditches, and we hope that the flowers will eventually spread over the whole meadow. Trees once native to the area have been planted, and barn owl boxes have been placed in mature trees to encourage this rare bird which hunts over open grassland.

The small pond, once filled with farm rubbish, has been cleaned and replanted. Stonea Camp is an ancient monument, and will now become a valuable area for wildlife which has become rare in the arable fen landscape; the Countryside Stewardship Scheme helps us to care for the site.

B is for......

Black Gold.

This is what the soil is known as in the Fens as it is extremely rich. The Fens were completely covered in forest after the Ice Age. As the ice melted the sea rose, flooding the low lying land and killing all the vegetation, which rotted into the swamps to form peat. Over the centuries the North Sea ebbed and flowed across the Fens, creating "roddons" - wandering waterways whose courses you can still see today - and depositing layers of silt accross the land. This mixture of peat and silt has created some of the best growing land in the world. Information is taken from the "Cambridgeshire Fens Visitor & Accomodation Guide".

I also took a photo of the Town Sign while I was out. I plan to use this to make the front cover of the journal when it is finished. Chatteris is recorded in the Doomsday Book as Cetriz or Cietriz. Both versions are thought to be Norman spelling of the Anglo-Saxon name of Ceatric, whose last syllable "ric" is Old English for a stream. The "stream" would have been the old Bedford Ouse which flowed along the western boundary of Chatteris. The shield-shaped sign links the links the Bishops of Ely through the crowns. The lower section shows a plough as a symbol of the towns most important industry - farming - and the eels where included as at one time they were used for the payment of taxes.

As you can see from the plaques, the original sign was donated to the town by the WI in 1977, to mark the double celebration of the Queens Silver Jubilee and the Golden anniversary of the WI.

The sign was repainted and repaired in 2004 when the gardens were replaced and the clock was put up. Information is taken from the "Village Signs of North Cambridgeshire" and "Chatteris - Then and Now".

Drains and Pumping Stations

Mark said he would take me out to take some photos of the Wind Turbines yesterday as the forecast was dry. I wanted some long exposure ones to try to get the effect of the sails going round. Well, yes it was dry but it was also bright and sunny. Absolutely no good for long exposures!!! So I went out on my bike instead!

D is for Drains. Or Dykes. Or Ditches. They seem to be called all three around here equally. This is the Forty Foot Drain, taken from the bridge on Dodington Road. The second photo is taken along the Forty Foot road.

The Fenlands are below sea level. Until the mid 17th Century, Chatteris was an island. The Romans tried to drain part of it to farm it but it wasn't until 1630 that Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden came along and built the Forty Foot that draining the Fens was successful.

Of course, for all these drains to work, you need Pumping Stations.

Since the Fens were drained the peat areas have shrunk and on avarage the land is 20 feet lower than it was when the Romans farmed it. Water has to be lifted as much as 7 metres uphill to keep the land dry. Fenland today is kept dry by numerous Drainage Boards in the North, South and Middle Levels. The pumping staion at Tydd Gote has 6 1200mm pumps, each of which can shift 200 tons of water a minute. Information is taken fromt the "Cambridgeshire Fens Visitor & Accomodation Guide".