Читать книгу Taming the Flood: Rivers, Wetlands and the Centuries-Old Battle Against Flooding - Jeremy Purseglove - Страница 25

North-east of Oxford lies Otmoor, four square miles of damp land cradled in a basin of low hills and watered by the river Ray. It is ringed by villages known as the ‘seven towns’, which for centuries were sustained by the rights of common they enjoyed upon Otmoor’s lush pastures. In 1815 an Act for the enclosure of Otmoor was passed, at the instigation of Lord Abingdon and George, duke of Marlborough; and in 1829 the enclosure awards were complete.⁴⁴ Those smallholders who were not directly excluded by the awards lost their shares in the common indirectly, since they were unable to pay the prohibitive legal and fencing costs of securing their small allotments. In 1829 and 1830 the river Ray, which had been subjected to massive engineering works in order to drain the newly enclosed moor, began to flood the land beyond Otmoor. The farmers affected broke up the new flood-banks, and after being arrested initially, were released on the grounds that the enclosure commissioners had exceeded their powers in constructing the drainage works. This was the signal for the general discontent to erupt into action. The dispossessed commoners, invoking the battle-cry ‘Otmoor for Ever’, blackened their faces and went out on to the moor by night to destroy the commissioner’s works. On the night of 6 September 1830, more than 500 of them were out there breaking up bridges, hedges, and ditches. The yeomanry arrived and carted forty-four rioters off to Oxford gaol. By a fatal miscalculation, the guards had chosen the day of St Giles’ fair. An angry crowd attacked the troops, and rescued the prisoners, and their cattle were loosed again upon the common. Only in 1835, after intermittent rioting, subsequently suppressed by the Coldstream Guards, did the magistrates cautiously suggest that unrest had ended, ‘Otmoor, being now it may be hoped in a state of permanent tranquillity’. Vain hope. In the 1970s and 1980s, Otmoor has been the controversial subject of vigorous campaigns fought against both a motorway and an extensive drainage scheme for the river Ray proposed by the Thames Water Authority.

Otmoor and its seven towns before enclosure.

Otmoor after drainage and enclosure.

George Stephenson’s ambitious but never realized plans to embank and reclaim the estuaries in Morecambe Bay.