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Francis Pryor
The Fens
Category: History | Published: 2019 | Review Added: 19-03-2020
Francis Pryor is a former archaelogist, well-known in the UK for his regular appearances on the television show Time Team. His most famous project was the excavation of Flag Fen, a large Bronze Age site to the east of Peterborough. The extent and sophistication of Flag Fen gave the lie to the long-held view of the Fens as a historical (and prehistorical) backwater; the Fens, Pryor claims, were as important a population centre in pre-Roman times as the Thames Valley.
For anyone wondering what the and where the Fens are: they are a large expanse of very flat, very low-lying land centred on the Wash, the bay that divides Lincolnshire from East Anglia. The Fens drain many rivers of eastern England, and as a consequence of this, and their very low altitude (they drop below sea level in many places), they are naturally prone to flooding. Yet in drier seasons, they offered rich farmland based on peat and silt, and so from quite early in Britain's past, people settled on their fringes, extending their activities during the warmer months to the fertile lands that were submerged in winter.
Pryor devotes half this 400-page book to accounts of the excavation of prehistorical sites in the Fens. It's very interesting reading, although perhaps a little more than the lay reader can fully take in. One learns a lot about both Bronze Age Britain, and the practice of archaeology, but starts to wonder whether the book might more accurately have been titled, "My Life as an Archaeologist in the Fens."
Fortunately, when the reader's appetite for prehistory is about to be saturated, Pryor moves on to historical times: the arrival and exit of the Romans; the lives of the Anglo-Saxons; the construction of Ely Cathedral; the draining of the Fens in the 17th Century; the architecture of unusual settlements like Thorney and Wisbech; the advent of a rich intellectual life in some of the Fen towns in the Eighteenth Century. Though not a historian, Pryor has done his research, and with evident commitment: his passion for the area shows through, and gives the book a natural cohesion.
Pryor currently lives as a sheep farmer in south Lincolnshire, and thanks to his knowledge of the land as one who works it, he can present a vivid picture of both its atmosphere and its detail. The very personal tone of the book isn't as self-indulgent as one might expect. The author comes across as a likeable cove who, by his own admission, has a "geeky" fascination with detail. His enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. The Fens are my own home turf, and it was particularly interesting to read about the background of places I know well.