Elements of the Landscape: People in the Ouse Washes Landscape

Elements of the Landscape

People in the Ouse Washes Landscape

Photography by Pete Johnstone E

Elements of the Landscape

The concept behind Elements of the Landscape was to ind the ‘hidden’ people of the Ouse Washes Landscape, to take their photograph and to tell their story through images.

The people in the photographs hold a diverse range of skills and knowledge of the landscape and include farmers, wildlife experts, water managers, artists, poets and volunteers – all of whom hold the fabric of community life together and who work hard to maintain and improve the unique heritage of the Ouse Washes.

Elements of the Landscape was undertaken during the winter of 2015 through to summer 2016. The project has included a regular blog, photo book printed on archival paper and an exhibition held at the WWT Welney Wildfowl Centre.

Clif Carson, Middle Level Commissioners I am very conscious too that I have missed people who could have told an equally good story and who would have been great to photograph, but alas they will have to wait for another time!

A big thank you goes to all the people who willingly allowed me to take their photograph without murmur or complaint and who have helped me put this collection of photographs together.

Pete Johnstone July 2016

Elements of the Landscape is supported by the Ouse Washes Landscape Partnership Scheme with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Sara Marshall and Amy Tillson of the Ouse Washes Landscape Partnership

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Fred Ingrams, fenland artist

“The fens have changed my life “said Fred, an artist who has a passion for painting the fens landscape. “I will be painting a scene when a farmer will come up to me and tell me some amazing stories, there is a certain quality about the fen people and landscape which is unique and not to be found anywhere else”.

Boon’s Farm in painting and picture.

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Robert Smith, farmer, Ferry Burrows Farm

Robert goes above and beyond what’s often expected through his agri-environment scheme: his Jubilee Woodland, planted to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, covers 1 ha and is home to 1100 mixed native trees and 500 metres of hedgerow. “I've always wanted to put a wood in as a way to remember me and what I've done on the farm. I did enjoy doing it and felt like it made life easier”.

Robert, a third generation farmer, grows sugar beet, potatoes, peas, wheat, onions and oil seed rape on his farm.

Robert with Gemma Wells, RSPB adviser

Along with several other farms in the area, the farmers manage at least 3% of their land for the beneit of wildlife. Agri-environment schemes from Natural England and advisors from organisations like the RSPB encourage farmers to install and look after “features” that help wildlife thrive alongside their farms’ produce.

Ferry Burrows has many of these nature friendly features, including bare patches known as skylark plots, reed-illed ditches and plants that are left in seed for birds to feed on over winter.

Gemma is a Community Engagement Oicer and her role is to boost public support and awareness of nature friendly farming and to put together a Nature Friendly Zone within the Ouse Washes.

Ferry Burrows Farm, near Chatteris.

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St Mary’s Church, Mepal.

Elizabeth Stazicker, Churchwarden

“As Churchwarden I am responsible for the fabric of the church building.

Luckily it is a tiny church, well and sympathetically restored in the middle of the 19th century and again in 1903-06, and well maintained by my predecessors since, but it now needs a good deal of work, including making the bellcote and gable safe so that we can ring our bell again.�

Elizabeth is also a keen historian and chairman of the Ouse Washes Landscape Partnership Board.

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Elizabeth Stazicker

“I never cease to be amazed at the magnitude of the engineering eforts which created and have since maintained the drainage of our fen area, and at the extent to which it changed the lives of local communities.

The completed drainage and award of lands to investors was celebrated in a map of the whole area, made by the Company's surveyor, the mathematician Jonas Moore, in 1658, but the original map now survives in only one copy, at the National Archives.

The Bedford Level Company achieved its aim of a detailed well-surveyed map, which it used for the next 200 years; but Moore's aim to gain prestige from the coats of arms with which he embellished it failed totally; within two years, the Restoration of Charles II rendered such names prestigious no longer�.

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Elizabeth on the bank of the 100 Foot Drain at Mepal.

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Dan Pollard, Manager, Denver Complex

Dan’s main job is to stop the cities of Ely and Cambridge from looding. This is done by maintaining the level in the River Great Ouse and River Cam by opening or closing sluices at the complex. Over 1000km of river levels are controlled upstream of Denver Complex.

The tidal surge of 5th December 2013 saw the Tide level about 4.1m higher than the main river level.

“I have noticed a small decline in the number of boats using Denver Lock and a change in the boating season. We used to busy from Easter through to October, but the season has got shorter. The Bank Holiday weekends are usually quite busy, but the spring traic is slower than it used to be almost to the point that the May Bank Holiday is the start of the boat season”.

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Dan Pollard

Relief Channel, sun gauge, 100 Foot Drain and River Great Ouse River/10 Mile Bank.

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A distinctive landscape but one that is far from natural.

Jenny Furlong, Chatteris Museum

Jenny is the volunteer Curator of Chatteris Museum; a post she has held for 15 years.

One of the exhibits in the Museum is on Cornelius Vermuyden who, in the 1650s commissioned by the Crown, directed major projects to drain the Fens and it was Vermuyden who constructed a system of ‘washes’, to allow periodic looding of the area by water.

It was the 4th Earl of Bedford who engaged the Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden to construct the two Bedford rivers. The purpose of the new rivers was to facilitate drainage of the River Great Ouse between Earith and Downham Market.

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Clif Carson

Artiicial kingisher holes being bored into the metal revetment.

At irst glance the Fens landscape surrounding the Ouse Washes does not feel like a place that is rich in wildlife. Indeed it is has a strong farming heritage and is well known in the UK for growing salad crops, root vegetables and wheat in the low lying fertile soils. However, I was to learn something diferent when I met Clif Carson, the Environmental Oicer for the Middle Level Commissioners, the organisation that manages the lood defence and water levels in the Ouse Washes area and beyond.

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Over the length of the day, we visited pumping stations to inspect on bat boxes and barn owl boxes that Clif had constructed over the last ive years. In fact, 92 barn owl boxes to be exact, erected in barns and on the sides of pumping stations. These boxes are well used and are really important for the breeding success of the owls as there are precious little natural nesting sites for the birds in the area.

The kingisher is another species that has had a helping hand – here Clif has bored over 150 holes at over 80 locations in the metal revetments to create artiicial nest sites. Clif has spent time perfecting and deepening the holes to get the right angle, so that the kingishers can ly up from just above water level into the nest hole.

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Clif has spent over 30 years with the RSPB at the Ouse Washes reserve and more recently 10 years with the Middle Level Commissioners.

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Mary Livingstone, Fenland Poet Laureate

Mary recently became the Fenland Poet Laureate for 2016, and is fascinated by the changing and complex nature of the fens, and by how their inhabitants relate to the landscape.

As poet laureate, Mary will use her poetry to raise environmental and social issues facing the fens, and to encourage others to write and to share their work.

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Frames of half built houses on the banks of the Old Bedford River.

Stand in the empty frame at the edge of the ields... (extract from the poem Exposure by Mary Livingstone).

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Louise Clewley, WWT Welney.

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Louise Clewley Warden, Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust, Welney Wetland Centre

Digging the drains to make it wetter for the wading birds is the priority of the moment, with the water coming from the tidal 100 Foot Drain.

The water gives some protection to the nesting birds from land predators such as badgers. And this strategy is working to the extent that breeding pairs of avocets have increased in numbers from 22 pairs just a few years ago to 51 breeding pairs today.

The ditches at WWT Welney are one of the Special Protection Area features and the specialities include the scarce chaser dragonly and water parsnip. The cetti’s warbler also like the ditches with the dense scrub and reed cover that they can provide.

Cetti’s warbler numbers are up from just 2 pairs in 2006 to 17 pairs in 2016.

The Ouse Washes are of international importance for wildlife.

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Sara Marshall and Mark Nokkert, community ‘activists’

Admittedly not the correct titles for these two people, (actual titles; Countryside Engagement and Marketing Oicer and Programme Manager) but it is they who keep the Ouse Washes Landscape Partnership Scheme going and who generate community and heritage interest in the area.

The Ouse Washes Landscape Partnership Scheme is a 3-year project largely funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The scheme focuses on the promotion of the area surrounding the Ouse Washes, the heart of the Cambridgeshire and Norfolk Fens, and on encouraging community engagement with the area’s diverse heritage.

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Peter Gardiner and Paul Fox, Welney Residents Rec and Green Spaces Users Group (RUG)

Welney RUG is a community action group that was formed in 2014 and established as a charity in March 2015. In April 2015, RUG took over the lease of Sandgate Corner – a large overgrown ield in the north of the village. Welney RUG are in the process of turning the area into a community greenspace and wildlife area, with orchard, sensory garden and play area.

Peter Gardiner, RUG, Welney Peter, a resident of Welney for almost 17 years and a member of RUG, has recently retired and has spent some of his spare time helping with the selection, planning and planting of the orchard and native trees.

The young fruit trees will require yearly pruning and with this in mind Peter attended a pruning course with the East of England Apples and Orchards Project to learn the necessary skills required to maintain the new fruit trees.

Sandgate Corner Community Park and Meadow, Welney.

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History, heritage and culture.

Photography by Pete Johnstone, PJ.elements, 2016.

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