Restoring a lost landscape for people and wildlife

Timeline

This timeline traces the fens from Prehistoric times prior to the last Ice Age, right up to last 500 years.

  • Prehistoric, prior to the last Ice Age

    500,000 BP to 25,000 BP

    Monuments and Finds:

    Irish Elk (Giant Deer) antler and vertebra.

    Monuments and Landscape:

    Various landscapes at different times but the Giant Deer lived in open woodland.

    Natural Environment Fauna and Flora:

    Irish Elk (Giant Deer).

  • Prehistoric

    12,000 BP

    Monuments and Finds:

    Bog oaks

    Monuments and Landscape:

    Post-glacial open landscape (tundra) followed by grasses and bushes and after several thousand years woodland and forest.

    Natural Environment Fauna and Flora:

    -

  • Neolithic

    6,000 BP

    Monuments and Finds:

    Flint arrow heads, scrapers, polished greenstone axeheads, trackways.

    Monuments and Landscape:

    Mixed landscape, forests, fens and open grasslands.

    Natural Environment Fauna and Flora:

    Oaks, yew, beech, pines and hazel.

  • Bronze Age

    4,000 BP

    Monuments and Finds:

    Burials, round barrows, flint tools, a few settlement sites with pits and post holes. Trackways, field systems, ditched enclosures.

    Monuments and Landscape:

    First arable farming.
    Mixed landscape, decreasing woodland cover, increasing wet peat fenlands, open pasture.

    Natural Environment Fauna and Flora:
    • Red Deer.
    • Cereal grasses.

  • Iron Age

    2,700 BP

    Monuments and Finds:

    Pottery scatters, quern stones, saltern sites towards the east, farmsteads and small villages.

    Monuments and Landscape:

    Increasingly open, managed landscape, evidence of tidal influence, peat fenland.

    Natural Environment Fauna and Flora:
    • Red Deer.
    • Cereal grasses.

  • Roman

    2,000-1,600 BP

    Monuments and Finds:

    Coins, pottery scatters, farmsteads, saltern sites, spring-side settlements, roads and tracks, canals.

    Monuments and Landscape:

    Ordered landscape with some wild undeveloped areas such as wet fenland.

    Natural Environment Fauna and Flora:
    • Red Deer.
    • Cereal grasses.

  • Saxon

    1,600-1,000 BP

    Monuments and Finds:

    Pottery scatters, setlement sites, cemeteries, late Saxon churches.

    Monuments and Landscape:
    • Ordered landscape with some wild undeveloped areas including increasing areas of wet fenland.
    • Cultivated fields and late Saxon villages.
    Natural Environment Fauna and Flora:
    • Wild Boar.
    • Beaver.
    • Otter.

  • Medieval

    1,000-500 BP

    Monuments and Finds:

    Pottery Kilns, churches, earthwork remains of settlement, rubbish pits, monastic establishments, watermills and windmills, fisheries, roads.

    Monuments and Landscape:
    • Ordered and fully utilised landscape - extensive areas of wet fenland.
    • Villages with cultivated open fields containing ridge and furrow also meadows.
    Natural Environment Fauna and Flora:
    • Crane.
    • Bittern.
    • Wild Salmon.
    • Rabbits.
    • Reeds.
    • Land rents paid in barrels of eels.

  • Last 500 years

    BP

    Monuments and Finds:

    Manor Houses, duck decoys, farms, barns, dovecotes, shops, public houses, cottages, stables, schools, almshouses, railways, pillboxes, airfields.

    Monuments and Landscape:
    • Increasing drainage of the Fens from the seventeenth. century leading to a fully drained landscape - widespread cultivation oof remaining grasslands.
    • Increased quarrying for sand and gravel.
    • Extensive network of tarmac roads.
    • High production arable farming landscape.
    • 75% loss of peatland soils.
    Natural Environment Fauna and Flora:
    • Loss of many wetland plants and animals.
    • 100,000s of wildfowl taken for the urban markets.
    • Arable crops dominate the flora.
    • Climate change - high atmospheric carbon.