Читать книгу Taming the Flood: Rivers, Wetlands and the Centuries-Old Battle Against Flooding - Jeremy Purseglove - Страница 22

Just when it looked as if the flood was winning again, technology came to the rescue. In 1710 complaints were made in Norfolk about the cost of the new ‘whirligigs’;³⁴ and soon, travellers to the eastern counties were noting the number of windmills dotting the landscape. They were to become the crucial factor which saved the Fens from total inundation, and although not generally adopted in Somerset, they fast became a typical feature of such wetland landscapes as the Lancashire Fylde and the Hull valley. The story of the wetlands in the eighteenth century is one of gradual development of new technologies, culminating at the end of the century in the discovery of steam as an even more efficient pumping force than windmills. In 1692 Sir Thomas Fleetwood set out to drain Martin Mere in Lancashire, employing 2,000 men.³⁵ In 1755 storms destroyed the floodgates he had built, and renewed efforts to conquer the mere in the 1780s were crowned with permanent success only as a result of the use of steam power in the following century.

Meanwhile, a less visible, but no less powerful, strategy for combating the waters was being devised. Every farmer knows that engineers may lower the levels of rivers for all they are worth, but that, without a follow-up operation of underdrainage in each saturated field, the real rewards for agriculture will never be harvested.³⁶ Open ditches and such ancient techniques as ridge and furrow are of limited effect.

Upstream from Leamington Spa, the river Leam flows lazily among water-lilies and tall bulrushes. Scraps of sedge and meadow rue still cling to its margins, the last remnants of a marsh which must once have inundated the whole valley floor. It was here, in 1764, that a Warwickshire gentleman made a discovery of the greatest significance. Mr Joseph Elkington of Princethorpe was faced with a problem. His sheep were suffering from foot-rot, and however many ditches he dug, he could not get the water off his fields. He was pondering his dilemma when a servant stopped by with an iron bar for making sheep hurdles. Mr Elkington rammed it into the bottom of one of his ineffective ditches and, to his astonishment, water burst up like a geyser. He had discovered a method of intercepting springs, and, using stone to seal his drains, he and others like him set about spreading the gospel of effective underdrainage.³⁷ Very soon farmers were using clay tiles, which, stamped with the word ‘drain’, were exempted in 1826 from the tax on other clay products. The clay tile and its descendant, the plastic pipe, were to take their place alongside the plough and the axe as among the major agents in the settlement of England.