3-008-587 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Inundation in the Fens: scene from the drain bank, above the Coffer Dam, 1862. 'From the summit of the Middle-Level railway-bridge almost the entire extent of the flooded country was presented to the view. Far as the eye could reach on each side, some seven or eight miles in length, the dreary waters have spread over the fen...Immediately before us the railway, for a distance of two miles and a half, was submerged. The water had risen to about half the height of the signals and telegraph posts...Here and there were to be seen the upper windows of some farmhouse, or the thatched roof of an humbler cottage - the tenants of which are now homeless, and in many cases ruined. There, too, were barns and haystacks, like solitary sentinels mounting guard, and the tops of hedges and trees of small growth could also be distinguished...A spectacle more mournful in itself or one more fraught with melancholy reflections has rarely been witnessed...a deluge had rushed in, and in a few hours destroyed the labours of years and the comfort and prosperity of an entire community. The boundary-lines between farm and farm are now obliterated; chapels and schoolhouses are submerged; and two hundred families have been driven forth homeless wanderers'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.