Celery planting, Burnt Fen, 1940s

Rural Life and the Fens

Explore the people, landscapes, villages, waterways, and working lives that shaped rural Cambridgeshire and the Fens.

The Cambridgeshire Fens are a landscape shaped by water, agriculture, engineering, and strong local communities. Across villages such as Isleham, Haddenham, Horningsea, Swavesey, Burwell, and Waterbeach, generations of people worked on the land, travelled the waterways, and adapted to a constantly changing rural environment.

Life in the Fens could be harsh and isolated, particularly before large-scale drainage transformed marshland into productive farmland. Agricultural labourers, farmers, boatmen, railway workers, shopkeepers, and families all depended upon seasonal work, transport links, and close-knit village communities. Churches, pubs, schools, causeways, bridges, and waterways became central to social and economic life.

Oral histories, photographs, buildings, and local memories preserve evidence of both everyday life and major changes brought by mechanised farming, railways, wartime food production, and industrial development. The entries below explore different aspects of fenland and rural history across Cambridgeshire.

Farming and Agricultural Labour

Agriculture shaped both the landscape and the daily rhythms of village life. Seasonal labour, fruit growing, harvesting, and wartime farming all played an important role in fen communities.

• Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village (Isleham)
• Women’s Land Army in Cambridgeshire
• Chivers and Sons, Histon

Rivers, Drainage and Waterways

The Fens were transformed through drainage schemes, waterways, locks, bridges, and embankments that controlled flooding and enabled trade and transport.

• Hobson’s Conduit
• Baits Bite Lock
• Denver Sluice

Village Communities

Village life centred on churches, schools, inns, and shared public spaces which formed the social heart of rural communities.

• St Andrew, Isleham
• The Fox, 2 North Street, Burwell
• 31 Station Road, Church End, High Street, Swavesey, The Merchant’s House, The Swan, The Swan with Two Necks

Roads, Bridges and Travel

Roads, bridges, and causeways connected isolated fenland settlements with market towns and Cambridge.

• Clayhithe Bridge, Waterbeach
• Aldreth Causeway
• St Ives Bridge

Railways and Rural Change

Railways transformed transport, employment, and trade across Cambridgeshire during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

• Cambridge Railway Workers
• Great Eastern Street
• Mill Road Depot

Riverside Communities

Riverside settlements depended upon navigation, tolls, fishing, trade, and river management.

• The Conservators House, Horningsea
• Bottisham Lode
• River Trade by Enid Porter

Rural Work and Industry

Many rural communities combined farming with food processing, brewing, transport, and local trades.

• Burleigh House, Star Brewery, 13–15 Newmarket Road
• The Chequers, Pampisford
• Horse and Groom, Isleham Fen

Memory and Oral History

Oral histories and local recollections preserve the voices and experiences of fenland communities across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

•  How it was – Memories of life in the Fen Country
  A very substantial compilation of oral histories covering farming, village customs, floods, travelling people, childhood, wartime memories, mechanisation, horses, and everyday work across the Fens.
•  Bog Oak Country: Fenland Oral Histories from Villages Around Ely
  Traditional fenland life before mechanisation, including horse work, farming routines, folklore, village identities, and social memory from places such as Haddenham, Sutton, and Witchford.
•  “Village Voices”: Stories and Memories from the Cambridgeshire Fens
  Personal recollections, humour, dialect, local characters, shops, chapels, village rivalries, and community memory across multiple fen villages.