Draining the Fens with Steam

Whittlesey Mere in 1768

Prior to the nineteenth century the drainage of the Fens relied heavily upon the design of drainage supplemented by wind pumps. This had the limitations of wind power being at the mercy of gale or calm. The game-changer in the drainage of Fenland was the steam engine that initially powered scoop wheels to lift water from one level to another.

1820 saw the first Watt steam engine applied to operate a Fenland scoop wheel on Bottisham Fen about six miles from Cambridge. One of the engineers pioneering the use of steam engines was Joseph Glynn who summed up the success of his work in 1838: “ I have not only caused two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before , but I have had the pleasure to see abundant crops of wheat take the place of sedge and the bullrush. Thus was the swamp or marsh exhaling malaria, disease and death converted into fruitful corn fields and verdant pastures.”

The Great Exhibition of 1851 saw the demonstration of the Appold’s Centrifugal Pump, a light disc running rapidly with  little friction that would prove to be more efficient than the heavy scoop wheel. The inventor was commissioned to make a pump to drain Whittlesea Mere. It proved to be far more efficient than the old scoop wheel and in the space of two years areas that had been lake in 1851 were growing fields of yellow corn in the autumn of 1853.