Redundant clay barges at Roswell Pits, Ely, Cambridgeshire.
The lake is part of Roswell Pits, created by the digging of gault clay which was used for strengthening and lining river banks in the southern fens after Cornelius Vermuyden changed the Fenland landscape in the mid-17th century. His big new drains and straightened rivers lowered the water table but also shrank the land, eventually leaving rivers – into which drained water was pumped and still is - well above the surrounding fen, making strengthening and lining of the banks more necessary as the process continued. This particular source, with boat access from the river, was well placed to allow clay to be boated around the waterways direct to the point of need. Shifting the clay was typically done by a gang of three men known as “gaulters”, with five barges like this one, 36’ by 8’5”, each carrying eight 8 tons. The Drainage Board provided the barges but the gang had to supply a horse to tow them and shovels and barrows for handling the clay. There is a record from 1810 of Robert Fletcher & Co being paid £7 3s 6d for delivering 246 tons of gault to Burnt Fen District, a rate of 7d (3p) per ton. Gaulters ceased to be employed by the District after 1920 when the Ouse Drainage Board was formed and took over responsibility for the banks but clay continued to be dug at Roswell until the mid-20th century. A few more barges survive and are tied up, without trees growing through them, in another part of the lake complex, the quarries otherwise long since colonised by wildlife and by Ely Sailing Club formed there in 1946. But the importance of the clay wasn’t finished because the deposit is part of the north-eastern end of a ridge of fossil-rich Kimmeridge clay which runs all the way from the eponymous coastal village in Dorset where it forms part of the World Heritage Coast. The Roswell diggings had revealed a nationally important group of fossilised creatures from the Late Jurassic, including Sauropod dinosaurs (giant four-legged reptiles) and Pliosaurs
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Photo credit: © John Worrall / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 17th, autumn, bank, barges, cambridgeshire, century, clay, cornelius, ely, england, fen, fens, gault, gaulters, great, ouse, pits, reinforcement, river, roswell, strengthening, uk, vermuyden
