History of the River Little Ouse (Brandon River)

The Fens cover an area of some 800 square miles, and are so low that the highest point is just 50m above sea level. Some parts have dropped below sea level entirely.

As the River Great Ouse made its way to the North Sea, it deposited huge amounts of silt over time. Most of the Fens today actually consists of this reclaimed marshland. But despite the Romans' attempts at draining the land, the area remained swampland for many generations - and records show that the area was still 'waterland' as recently as the 17th century, when the Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden embarked on his mammoth project to reclaim the area. It was only when the underlying peat shrank over time, and the levels were gradually seeped off into new channels and waterways, that the waters moved from being deep lakes into the myriad of shallow channels that they are today.