PINCHBECK ENGINE MUSEUM
The story of the drainage of these fens is told at Pinchbeck Engine Museum, at the north-eastern edge of Spalding.
The enterprise began with the Romans in the 1st century AD. Identifying the potential of this marshy land for agriculture, Roman settlers dug banks and dykes to create fields for planting. They also created salt extraction pits, called salterns. Salt was such a valuable commodity for the Roman Empire that its soldiers were paid in salt, hence the word ‘salary’. Having tamed the land, the settlers grew cereals and other crops, and exported them to the continent.
But towards the end of the Roman occupation 300 years later, rising sea levels began to undo much of their work. Flooding created a silt ridge, separating the marshy seawater from the freshwater of the fens.
In the 13th century, a new breed of ‘adventurers’ again realised the agricultural potential of the land, and the process began again. Over the following centuries, engineers dug drains and widened rivers on a colossal scale, reclaiming and securing a vast swathe of the landscape. Crucial to this drainage process were water pumps.
“You could build walls to stop the seawater coming in or to stop a river from flooding,” explains museum curator Graham Morfoot. “But that meant you also had to get the freshwater out of the field and over those walls, and you needed a pump.”
Initially, the fenland pumps were powered by wind, but by 1824, steam pumps were being introduced. One steam-driven pump could do the work of 12 wind pumps, making them vastly more effective. One of them was the Pinchbeck beam engine. It was installed in 1833 on Blue Gowt Drain; a ‘gowt’ being a fenland term for a dyke or culvert. It would run from October to March each year, keeping 6,000 acres of land to the north of Spalding safely drained through the winter. At full power, it could lift 7,500 gallons per minute; the equivalent of 430 bathfuls.
For more than a third of its working life, the engine was managed, mended and maintained by one man: Charles Seymour. He stoked, fired and ran the engine, sometimes for three weeks at a stretch, and undertook all but the heaviest repairs. His duties also included mole catching and weed cutting. In the summer, he and an assistant would crawl into the boiler to de-soot and descale it. Seymour retired at the age of 77 in 1952, when his beloved engine was replaced by an electric pump next door. Today, all 13 pumps across the Welland area are electrically powered, although a diesel backup is kept ready in case of major power outages. “Life here was, and still is, a constant conflict with water,” says Graham. “The beauty of these pumps is that most people just aren’t aware of that.”
The pump house now opens its doors when restrictions permit. Although the beam engine no longer works as a pump, its mechanism can still be demonstrated using an electric motor. It remains an impressive sight.