Notes on the Fenland

by

T. M^cKENNY HUGHES, M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S., F.S.A.
Woodwardian Professor of Geology

with

A Description of the Shippea Man

by

ALEXANDER MACALISTER, M.A., F.R.S., M.D., Sc.D.
Professor of Anatomy

Cambridge:
at the University Press
1916

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, Manager
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CONTENTS

  Geography of the Fenland.

The Fenland is a buried basin behind a breached barrier. It is the "drowned" lower end of a valley system in which glacial, marine, estuarine, fluviatile, and subaerial deposits have gradually accumulated, while the area has been intermittently depressed until much of the Fenland is now many feet below high water in the adjoining seas.

The history of the denudation which produced the large geographical features upon which the character of the Fenland depends needs no long discussion, as there are numerous other districts where different stages of the same action can be observed.

In the Weald for instance where the Darent and the Medway once ran off higher ground over the chalk to the north, cutting down their channels through what became the North Downs, as the more rapidly denuded beds on the south of the barrier were being lowered. The character of the basin is less clear in this case because it is cut off by the sea on the east, but the cutting down of the gorges pari passu with the denudation of the hinterland can be well seen.

The Thames near Oxford began to run in its present course when the land was high enough to let the river flow eastward over the outcrops of Oolitic limestones which, by the denudation of the clay lands on the west, by and by stood out as ridges through which the river still holds its course to the sea—the lowering of the clay lands on the west having to wait for the deepening of the gorges through the limestone ridges. A submergence which would allow the sea to ebb and flow through these widening gaps would produce conditions there similar to those of our fenlands. So also the Witham and the Till kept on lowering their basin in the Lias and Trias, while their united waters cut down the gorge near Lincoln through a barrier now 250 feet high.

The basin of the Humber gives us an example of a more advanced stage in the process. The river once found its way to the sea at a much higher level over the outcrops of Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks west of Hull, cutting down and widening the opening, while the Yorkshire Ouse, with the Aire, the Calder and other tributaries, were levelling the New Red Sandstone plain and valleys west of the barrier and tapping more and more of the water from the uplands beyond. The equivalent of the Wash is not seen behind the barrier in the estuary of the Humber, but the tidal water runs far up the river and produces the fertile estuarine silt known as the Warp.

The Fenland is only an example of a still further stage in this process. The Great Ouse and its tributaries kept on levelling the Gault and Kimmeridge and Oxford Clays at