Moulton Marsh

Three soldiers were playing cards whilst drinking tea in a shed tucked behind a large earth wall at Moulton Marsh. As one of them laid his cards on the table a .303 bullet came through the wall and went through the Ace of Spades laid on the table  and into the earth floor. The man that told me this story had been shown the playing card with its bullet hole. This happened at the army shooting range on the south bank of the River Welland at Moulton Marsh in the early 1930’s. The range fell into disuse by the time World War Two started due to shortage of ammunition available for live firing shooting. It was not unusual for new recruits being trained by 1942 to have only fired five rounds or less.

1824 Map with refrence points of two droves and pub over-written

If you follow the River Welland from Spalding out to the sea you pass under Fosdyke bridge and along a widening channel that starts to be flanked by broadening marsh. On the south side of the river is Moulton Marsh and on the northern side appears Kirton Marsh, although historically before reclamation Earl Marsh and Freiston Low Marsh would have featured on the northern bank before reaching Kirton Marsh.

The earth bank that the soldiers sat behind is still in location today as you stand on it at Moulton Marsh Nature Reserve and look towards Fosdyke Bridge over the lagoons of the nature reserve and behind you are trees and scrubland on what was the rubbish tip. Few realise that this was once a military firing range used mostly for rifles, but also some hand grenade and small explosives training. The area was used by the Holbeach Rifle Corps on a very informal basis in the 1860’s, but firing was done towards the river with targets up to 500 yards away. This meant shooting had to be halted as boats passed down the river. However, occasionally a fisherman had a narrow escape when his boat was hit by a stray bullet. The Boer War in 1900 saw a government call for volunteers and a call for the development of rifle ranges throughout the country in order that men train to use rifles. The first use of Moulton Marsh as a rifle range by the army I have found in 1923 and it was used at least until 1936.

But how did this area of marshland and fields develop? If you look on the internet at the reclamation of land from the Wash you will come across many maps showing various boundaries over time, a bit like the rings of a tree trunk, showing the progression of sea walls advancing to encroach on the Wash. To many this creates a neat image of man conquering the sea and creating farmland that is rich and bountiful as it dries out. This is a misleading image for the land behind the sea wall often remained as marsh, wet and salty and still subject to tidal forces and the flow of water from inland of the Fens. The rapid reclamation is more a product  of modern techniques post 1945 that saw land reclaimed as late as the 1970’s and put into production within a few years.

Clues as to where the sea wall used to be are in place names such as Roman Bank, Surfleet Seas End and in this case Moulton Seas End just south of the current A17 arterial road that leads into Norfolk at Sutton Bridge. By the sixteenth century this was expanding out towards the Wash presenting raised roadways on top of earth banks  and land upon which farmsteads and then villages formed. By the 17^th century the sea wall  in the Moulton Marsh area would  be recognisable largely hugging the Middle Marsh Road of today. The land use would be very different in that much of it was wet marsh land and pasture. It was not well drained and water did not flow freely into the Wash, but rather meandered through creeks and meres. Indeed, we see Moulton Meer, south of Moulton, that is, inland of Moulton with the flow on the Moulton river very slow. Similarly the flow on the Holbeach river was slow and created a great stink in the town. Similarly the River Welland had a slow flow and the lack of scour caused problems with silting up restricting access to the port of Spalding. The 1824 OS map shows bends in  the Welland estuary that were later straightened out to improve flow of water and navigation.

In 1793 an Act was passed to permit embanking and draining  of “low lands within the several parishes of Spalding, Moulton, Whaplode, Holbeach and Gedney” and to prevent them being overflowed by the sea. This gave clear definition of land rights and empowered the appointment of a Commissioner to raise funds which would be by borrowing and charging rates on land owners to service that debt to fund any work done.

The embankments and the works done created silted up marsh that was of use as pasture and highly valued. In 1838 works were completed that straightened the Welland into a narrower deeper channel and the area between this and the new artificial channel and the old South Holland embankment, the sea bank, silted up. Throughout the history of the area common grazing rights and the right for land owners to claim land as it silted up on their frontages have been significant issues. The Moulton Saltmarshes Act of 1873 sought to recognise this and provide for further reclamation and drainage. Following this Act Mr. A.G. Morten Q.C. was approached as a judicial assessor for several weeks to hear claims and assess rights over a 16 day period. The assessment and reasoning of the assessor over about 600 acres of marshland give an interesting insight into how original plans changed and the needs to maintain navigation and its impact on land rights, tithes and parish boundaries. The press report illustrates this:

“The parish boundary was considered to be material, independently of liability or rating and tithe. The 1793 act stated, ‘the limits and boundaries between the parishes on the north shore  and the parishes on the south shore have been immemorially determined by the low watermark of the channel of the said Welland waters in their course  through the bare shifting sands.’ Both parishes agreed on this but they wanted a ruling whether the new channel of the River Welland being artificial ought to be taken, nevertheless, as indicative of the line of boundary between the parishes or whether that boundary should be fixed on some other line.”

The resulting judgement was shrewd in that it looked at the history of the river course that had been subject to artificial amendments going back to at least Roman times and that there was no reason for the present artificial channel not to mark the boundary between Fosdyke and Moulton parishes.

The works commenced with the Commissioner raising £4000 in funds borrowed by tender with a commitment to pay 5%. The debt interest and maintenance of works had to be funded by rates charged per acre on land within the parish of Moulton, the first charge being 10s. per acre in 1843. The assessment on the farmer Mr. Mossop was on 839 acres of his 1000 acre farm, 869 acres being marshland of which 769 acres were old marsh and 100 acres new. He disputed and resisted payment resulting in the Commissioner seizing 80 of his sheep. Mr. Mossop recovered possession of the sheep at some cost which he sought redress for the cost of this from the Commissioner, Chris Johnson.

Mr Mossop contended that the works and sluices etc. with the new river channel should only have been carried out with the consent of the charge bearers and the amount of land that benefitted from the works did not amount to the acreage upon which he was charged, rather it should be about 100 acres.

The judge instructed the jury that whether they awarded in favour of Mr. Mossop or not depended upon whether his farm benefitted from the works. The jury decided that not the whole farm benefitted from the new Moulton Drain, but 100 acres of the farm did benefit and should be charged to Mr. Mossop he therefore received the amount of compensation claimed less the amount due on 100 acres.

I imagine those that pay drainage rates today on farmland would have some sympathy with Mr. Mossop. It is often a quoted mantra by fenland farmers that they pay drainage rates for the benefit of those upstream or higher in the aquifers of the middle of England.

Mt earliest memory of visiting Moulton Marsh was riding down Red Cow Drove in my father’s van loaded with old TVs and radios to be dumped just over the sea wall onto the marsh just in front of the Hare and Hounds pub. I was about five years old, so this would be about 1972. My father’s TV shop in Spalding had the upper floors stacked floor to ceiling with old scrap TVs and radios. These were bulky items in wooden cases containing valves  and television tubes. It was not unusual for old TVs to be retained as a source of spares and there was many a hard up customer thankful for a cheap repair from my father or grandfather thanks to this hoard of potential spares. However, technology changed. Radios no longer had valves and many of the old components from the fifties and sixties were obsolete. A gypsy did call in enquiring whether my father had any scrap. My father offered it to him on condition he brought it all down the two storeys of stairs. The offer was declined.

So, every few days, when it was quiet, my father would trundle down Red Cow Drove with his van loaded  with old TVs and radios. He would then throw them over the old sea wall. He then threw pits of old brick at the TVs to smash the screens so that they wouldn’t explode when the council operator compacted the rubbish into the bank once a week. The simple fact is that the old sea wall and some of the land in this field has a great deal of waste hidden in it.

In the late 1980’s, when I started wildfowling, this field was growing crops and adjacent to the river Welland  was a strip of land that contained a  nature reserve and a Council rubbish tip.

MOULTON MARSH NATURE RESERVE

When you look at the modern history of conservation you come across shared interests crossing barriers of wealth, class and status. This is a particular old fashioned trait of rural life that contains aspects that cut across class. I believe this is because certain country people held status  and respect through their knowledge and skills, such as the gillie; the gamekeeper; and in the example of, Kenzie Thorpe, the marsh wildfowling guide respected by the very Royals whom years earlier he had poached at their Sandringham estate. This combined with a growing middle class that pursued common interests. You see this in the formation of various conservation bodies in the twentieth century where a middle class or upper class person purchases land as a nature reserve but carries with them the support of working class people, especially in the eastern counties, wildfowlers.

In 1926 we see the first county wildlife trust form in Norfolk when Dr. Long purchased Cley Marshes, a 435 acre site. Managing such a site by its very nature requires the co-operation of local skills: graziers; farmers; wildfowlers; reed cutters, to name but a few. Norfolk Wildlife Trust became a model for a further 45 Wildlife Trusts to be formed with the third one being the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust in 1948. These Wildlife Trusts developed from earlier organisations that formed in Victorian times, Naturalist Societies. The oldest Naturalist Society was Norfolk formed  in 1869  and the second oldest in Lincolnshire in 1893. All the early annual reports are held in bound form for both societies in Spalding Gentlemen’s Society library covering up to the 1950’s and they make fascinating reading. These were organisations largely of well-monied people who were mostly amateurs dedicated to studying and recording wildlife, geology, flora and fauna in a way that had in the past had only been enjoyed by the upper classes such as Joseph Banks, William Stukeley and Isaac Newton. Widening access to education enabled a wider range of people to participate in such activity on an amateur basis. It should be noted that amateur status should in no way diminish the quality and value of their work. It is a sad aspect of current conservation and environmental views that the countryman and the amateur are ranked behind the academic in the expression of knowledge, experience and opinion. Equally, social media generates a whole barrage of uninformed opinion with voices  disproportionate to the abilities, knowledge and experience of those people.

The Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust’s first nature reserve was a lease agreed to manage Gibraltar Point given by Lincolnshire County Council. This was followed in 1954 with the purchase of heath land at Scotton Common near Scunthorpe.

It is the nature of all things in Lincolnshire, whether public or private organisations, charities, trusts or businesses, that resources, people and investments tend to lean towards the north of the county.

Sometime after the Coronation Channel was built around Spalding local accountant Arnold Smith purchased a field adjacent to the Coronation Channel at Pecks Drove to form a nature reserve. He had wished to do this under the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, but it was felt that this was creation of an artificial reserve rather than preserving existing habitat such as that at Baston Fen (acquired 1967), or the aforementioned Scotton Heath and Gibraltar Point. This, combined with limited resources, saw Arnold Smith form South Lincolnshire Nature Reserves Ltd. The same reasoning by the County Trust saw South Lincolnshire Nature Reserves Ltd work with Spalding and District Wildfowlers Association to manage what was to become Moulton Marsh Nature Reserve.

The reclamation of salt marsh, combined with the straightening of the channel of the River Welland with improved banks saw a strip of land form on the south bank of the River Welland  roughly from just short of Fosdyke Bridge  to the end of Middle Marsh Road. This was owned and controlled by South Holland Internal Drainage Board. This had, in the past, been used as an army rifle range as described earlier. The shooting rights of the salt marsh were controlled by Spalding and District Wildfowlers Association, but by common consent was regarded as a quiet area. Tony Creasey of Spalding Wildfowlers had already worked with Arnold Smith on the Coronation Channel reserve and had helped with duck rearing and release projects. Tony and Arnold worked together and in 1979 Spalding Wildfowlers  and South Lincs Nature Reserves entered as joint bodies into a 21 year lease to manage the marsh as a nature reserve.

Almost immediately two problems had to be overcome:

-          Lincolnshire County Council, under threat of compulsory purchase, insisted on having 15 acres for a rubbish dump. A compromise was reached where they paid rent, paid £750 towards the cost of hides, and, as it was filled in, agreed to top-soil the area and plant it with trees.

-          Anglian Water moved in to raise the existing river bank. Vast quantities of silt were required to do this and, by close collaboration, an area of lagoons with islands was created with a controlled piped input of river water determining the depth of the lagoons.

By 1986 two hides had been built and the lunar landscape left by the excavation was starting to green up.

Aerial shot showing the early excavations of the lagoons at Moulton Marsh

I first started regularly visiting Moulton Marsh Nature Reserve and participating in various tasks in 1987. I got to know many people involved there, most notably Tony Creasey, Rod Woodthorpe and Terry Gladwell from Spalding Wildfowlers and Kay and Richard Heath from South Lincs Nature Reserves.

At the eastern end of the reserve remained the rubbish tip that smelled, had strange coloured run-off into the river and drains, and , when the wind blew, spread rubbish all over the local fields, river and marsh. As it was infilled we planted trees and bushes, usually in November. At the base of each tree we would put biodegradable mulch mats to prevent competing plant growth and tully tubes around the trunks of the saplings, i.e. plastic tube to prevent rabbits, hares and deer eating the trees. Over time, as we took these tubes off the trees  you would typically find  them containing various rubbish such as plastic pens, tampons and even syringes, as it was the habit of gulls and corvids to pick objects off the rubbish tip and drop them down the tubes.

At this time the Hare and Hounds pub was still open. This was something I was very glad of one Sunday when my car broke down for at least I could phone from there and drink a pint whilst awaiting the AA. Hanging  from the ceiling of the bar was a stuffed goose and a snake skin – the goose I understand was shot by Terry Gladwell and the snake skin was from a python that Terry had acquired on his travels abroad.

Terry Gladwell was an interesting character. Living on the edge of London he told me he started in forestry by going to work on the bus carrying his chainsaw on his shoulder in the early sixties. He planted 250,000 trees on Sunbridge Park Golf Club in Kent around 1962 and managed the woodland on the golf course harvesting the timber to build features such as storm shelters and an oak bridge over a pond. He purchased various woodland over time and, because it was a crop he could leave for a period, he would travel abroad to explore the world. He told me once that he walked through Africa, but was robbed at one point and the thieves stole his shoes. Undeterred, he used an old car tyre that he found and made himself a pair of shoes that he wore the remainder of his trip. So as not to get mugged again he procured a spear which he carried with him. On another occasion he told me he had a brother that taught survival skills to the army and his favourite trick was to cook squirrel and not tell them that is what they had eaten until after it was consumed.

Over the years Terry bought antique firearms including several revolvers and hand guns from the American Civil War with provenance of the officers that had owned them. He viewed these as his pension. Despite living in an urban area he had no difficulty with his firearms certificate renewal as it was counter-signed by the deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police. Terry told me his ideal retirement would be in a log cabin in the middle of a remote wood with a ready water supply. Electricity he viewed as a luxury. The last I heard, unverified, is that he had set up home in remote moor land in Devon with a friend and a few sheep.

Kay and Richard Heath were a mine of knowledge about birds, fauna and flora from which I learned much. My particular interest was in butterflies and in 1992 I noted on the Moulton Marsh Nature Reserve the following species: Gatekeeper, Common Blue, Painted Lady, Red Admiral, Orange Tip, Lesser Tortoiseshell, Small Copper, Meadow Brown, Large White, Essex Skipper, Peacock and Ringlet butterflies, altogether twelve species. The Essex Skipper is of particular note as throughout the 1980’s it had migrated northward along the east coast with the Wash marking its northern range in the early 1990’s.

By 1992 the landfill site had been completed by Lincolnshire County Council leaving a large mound at the eastern end of the reserve. Tree planting had had limited success with growth being stunted. Drainage  was poor and many plants did not grow. A scrubland formed with such plants as sea buckthorn and hawthorn. There was concern about the possibility of pollution from water draining from the infill site into the Welland. Older areas of the infill were piped horizontally directing gas towards the river.

View looking across the lagoons towards the rubbish tip end of Moulton Marsh Nature Reserve about 1989

In 1991 the spectre of a further infill site on the field neighbouring the reserve, just in front of the Hare and Hounds. This became especially pertinent as the 1990 Environmental Protection Act meant that liability for pollution not only lay with the original polluter, but also the current owner of land in the event of the original polluter either not being identified or being held accountable.

I attended the public meeting regarding the proposed rubbish tip at the Hare and Hounds and it proved highly entertaining. It was clear that John Birch, the county waste disposal officer was blissfully ignorant of the history of this 43 acre field and the bank of earth surrounding it. He described how to set up the site soil would be removed including some of that in the existing banks. I pointed out to him that to do this they would be removing existing rubbish dumped on the field edges including a large quantity of TVs and radios dumped by my father in the early seventies. The locals backed me up stating there had already been rubbish dumped there by the local authority. John Birch stated that prior to 1984 they had virtually no reliable record of where rubbish was dumped with holes filled in with rubbish all over the county. Older residents recalled live ammunition being dumped there from the rifle range in the 1930’s and that the site was also used to train in the use of small explosives and hand grenades. But the room went silent when an old lady called Eady Gardner piped up, “I remember as a little girl that’s where they buried the anthrax cattle.” It is a fact that anthrax was reported in the area in April 1929 and in 1909, so I believe what she said. I am convinced that this caused the proposal for the dump to be withdrawn as anthrax can remain in soil for many decades and has been found to be still viable in bones after 200 years.

At this time pollution was visibly obvious to me in the area. The Moulton Marsh tip had been over-used to the extent rubbish was dug out and put back in and compacted with a large tractor with metal bladed wheels that cut into the rubbish and the “blades” on the wheels prevented it getting stuck. Towards the end of using the tip large areas were dug out and fresh rubbish buried in before topsoil was placed creating an artificial mound. The type of waste was not well recorded, but it did include what was called “low risk problem waste” such as that created by hospitals.

But it wasn’t just the tip that was a cause of pollution in the area. At that time Fosdyke port was still in operation and on several occasions I saw off-loaded fertiliser spilled on the quayside that was just pushed into the river. One boat was so badly moored that when the tide dropped its bow was stranded on the wharf. Luckily the ship was not loaded and was floated off the wharf, albeit with the help of a crane, without breaking its back. Also at that time, Tinsley’s had a food factory that had a drain running from it which would fill with duck, mostly wigeon. In 1992 I observed, “The number of duck in this drain in the last two years has reduced. This is not surprising as the water at the sluice  where it meets the Welland is sometimes blue and usually smells unpleasant. The factory recently expanded without the appropriate improvement in sewage facilities and treatment. The N.R.A. assures me verbally that this drain should be ‘crystal’ by the end of this year.”

In 1992 South Lincolnshire Nature Reserves Ltd started the process of amalgamation with the Lincolnshire Trust for Nature Conservation. The people involved in managing the reserve largely stayed the same.

By the mid 1990’s it was clear that of the 15,000 trees that had been planted on top of the old rubbish many had died and those that did grow were stunted. Methane piped from this and the area had an added danger of potential sink holes as rubbish decayed causing indents that pooled with water, It was in one of these that I found a natterjack toad, which I was told was not possible until I had the picture I took developed. How it got there is a mystery.

I went nearly 20 years without visiting the site until 2019 when I was pleasantly surprised to see the well established growth of plants and scrubland that held a lot of wildlife. The lagoons and islands remained and the whole site was a lot greener than I remembered it. Whilst there I saw a white egret, a bird that was relatively uncommon twenty years previous. Although it is a purely man-made artificial construct such reserves provide islands for nature in a heavily cultivated region where the primary respite from disturbance are the many drains and banks that act as highways between such sites.