Hitting a low point

There’s no two ways around it: Holme Fen is the lowest point in Britain. This serene silver birch woodland, just south of the village of Yaxley, lies a spectacular 2.75 metres, or nine whole feet, below sea level. If you’ve ever ridden the East Coast Main Line, you’ll have crossed it, because it’s about two minutes south of Peterborough on a speeding train.

Naturally, it was a fen skating hot spot. Even more so prior to 1848, when most of the area around Holme Fen lay submerged beneath Whittlesey Mere, the largest open water in southern England, some three miles across at its broadest point.

But from 1848 onwards, the mere was drained to create agricultural land. And ahead-of-his-time landowner William Wells was keen to measure exactly what the impact of the drainage might be. To this end, he and his neighbours sunk a tall timber post into the mud and clay at the edge of the mere, until the top of the post was level with the soil.

In the decades that followed, the drained earth contracted like a squeezed sponge (exactly as Wells had suspected it might), exposing more and more of the post. In 1851 the timber post was replaced by a cast iron one, reputedly from the Crystal Palace in London, and in 1957 a second post was added. By 2015, the posts had measured 13 feet and one inch of shrinkage.

Today, it’s astounding to look up and see where the ground used to be. Holme Fen makes for a fantastic short walk through the birch coppices, starting and finishing at the Holme Fen Posts (grid ref TL202894). At present, the surrounding waters and farmland make it hard to walk much further. But plans are afoot to return as much of the surrounding area as possible to wild fen, perhaps giving us as close a glimpse as we’ll ever have into how East Anglia looked before it was tamed.

Find out more at www.greatfen.org.uk