IMPERIAL MUD: THE FIGHT FOR THE FENS

Between the Civil War and the mid-Victorian period, the people of the Fens fought to preserve their homeland. After centuries of often bloody resistance, their culture and community were destroyed, along with their wetland home - England’s last lowland wilderness. In this colourful and evocative history we learn of colonial masters such as Oliver Cromwell and the Dukes of Bedford; eels so plentiful they became a kind of medieval currency; games of ‘Fen football’ that concealed sabotage of drainage works; and a now-vanished ecosystem which sustained the Fennish for thousands of years.