‘Overhead the arch of heaven spread more ample than elsewhere, as over the open sea; and that vastness gave, and still gives, such cloudlands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be seen nowhere else within these isles.’
Charles Kingsley, prelude to Hereward the Wake
Kingsley paints a alluring picture of the fens. The landscape in this little-known corner of England, is more often, probably usually, described in negative terms – flat, endless, dull, monotonous, melancholy, alien and so on. Pevsner says, the ‘former fens grow much potato, sugar-beet and other root crops, and wheat, but they have never grown much architecture’ (Buildings of England, Cambridgeshire, 1970)[i]. So that’s it, a vista of huge flat fields without even livestock to lend enchantment to the view; and long straight roads often rendered into switchbacks by the sinking subsoil. It’s a landscape to hurry through on the way to more welcoming places on its fringes – Lincoln, Cambridge, Peterborough and Kings’ Lynn.
I see it differently[ii]. There is a great sense of openness with enormous skies and distant horizons. The region is little built up, a few market towns, like Chatteris and March, scattered villages clinging to islands of stable soil and isolated farms. It feels remote and strange. The land itself has a strong graphic, geometric quality, a plain cut by straight roads, dykes and lodes. The very flatness and the level horizon lend emphasis to vertical elements, pylons, water towers, church towers and spires (most dramatically at Ely creating a truly great landscape), comparatively scarce trees, and more recently wind turbines. The colour palette is shades of green for three quarters of the year; in the fallow season the black peat creates a chequer board.
The fens are an artificial landscape, of course, the result of extensive drainage and the reordering of nature, ‘improvements’, carried out from the 17th Century (earlier, the monasteries managed the land on a much smaller scale). But they are not without elements of a more natural landscape, which provide a welcome contrast to the seeming austerity of farmed fenland – the winding embanked rivers Cam, Nene and Great Ouse, the Ouse Washes, Wicken Fen, Holm Fen and the Great Fen. Such elements add visual delight and aural dimensions to the enjoyment of landscape: reflections and the shimmer of light on water; and cuckoos calling over Wicken Fen in spring, Whooper swans bugling over the Washes in winter.
I’m not sure where my fascination with the fens comes from, nature or nurture? My paternal grandfather, Percy Netherwood Human, was born in the fen village of Isleham in 1873, so maybe there’s a bit of genetics. But it’s more about nurture and learning. My father took me camping and fishing for bream along the Great Ouse. We went birdwatching at the Mepal gravel pits and marvelled at a roost of over two million sand martins whirling over reed beds north of March. Driving around we world stop to buy onions and celery from roadside stalls. Stories of Fen Tigers and bog oaks added to fenland’s mystery. Then, in the early 1970s one of my first jobs in planning was working on a development framework for March, called unimaginatively March into the Future. Our first home (1972-77) was in Witchford, just outside Ely.
This broad interest in the fens resulted in working with Chris Carling to curate the exhibition ‘Fen Archive 1850-1950’ held at the Cambridge Darkroom in 1986. It featured the work of Samuel Smith (1802-1892), Margaret George (1899-1983), Lilian Ream (1877-1961), W. Martin Lane (1906-1973) and photographs from the Anthony Day Collection. The catalogue for the show said: ‘Fen Archive looks critically at the work of a number of commercial and serious amateur photographers working in the Cambridgeshire Fens from the early days of photography to the 1940’s.’ The aim was to explore the archive sources as both photography and history. Its focus was more on the human side of fen life than on landscape, though the final section, Lane’s pictures of the 1947 floods, foregrounded the continued vulnerability of this landscape.
It’s probably inevitable that my involvement with the fens and photography would come together creatively. If it is not a conventionally great or beautiful landscape, fenland’s graphic presence is well suited to the formal qualities of the medium. My earliest recognisable fenscape dates from a single photograph made in April 1973[iii]; and there are unconnected pictures from Wicken, Streatham, Guyhirn and the Ouse Washes over the next few years. The occasional photography of the fens has carried on since then with varying degrees of intent – most often photographs were made opportunistically when I was out for other reasons rather than on deliberate photographic trips. As such, it was not conceived originally as a project, but it morphed into becoming one around 2016 and casual photography has been accompanied by some more focussed expeditions to specific locations that I wanted to explore, Holm, Wissington and Reach, for example. In 2018 I brought some of the photographs together in a short photo book, Fourteen Fen Walks. Looking back at the work, I see a concern with the ever changing sky and the geometry of the land. The overall result is a view of the fens as a place of openness, space and light, of contrasts, surprises and occasional contradictions. It’s a positive view. That’s not surprising given my history: the fens are part of my roots.
Another view of these lands has been made by the photographer Paul Hart in his books Farmed (2016), Drained (2018) and Reclaimed (2020). His fens are a foreign and mysterious place where distance makes the visitor wary; the land is vulnerable and unprotected; the tensions between the flatness and the upthrust of features are metaphors for deeper historic conflicts. Landscape here is a political document a palimpsest of social, economic and environmental change. His work fits within a tradition of British landscape photography that includes fay Godwin, John Davies and Raymond Moore.
My fen photographs are purely personal and reflect a long-term engagement with an area to which I feel I belong. The fascination remains, but it’s time to bring the project to an end, 10 years is long enough. I’ve made three photo books[iv] to round it off: Fenscape 1, an overview of the work; Fenscape 2, a focus on North Fen at Cottenham; and Fenscape 3 marginal fen. The last picture in Fenscape 3, silo’s off Twenty Pence Road, Cottenham taken on 24th April 2026, is the full stop at the end of the this journey.
[i] In as much as the appreciation of landscape is in part subjective, farmers looking out over perfect acres or wheat or beet may well interpret what they see as beautiful.
[ii] In writing this I’m thinking mainly about the southern Cambridgeshire peat fens, I’ve much less experience of Lincolnshire’s silt fens.
[iii] ‘Fenland farming near Ely’, Published in A Study of the Cambridge Sub Region, Part One, 1974
[iv] Little Black Books, see post 10th April 2026