Bourne Archive:
BAEM: Dyke Fen
http://boar.org.uk/ghiwxs7BAEM(pic5DykeFen.htm Latest edit 10 Jun 2010.
Text, page
and picture ©R.J.PENHEY 2010.
The Bourne Archive Gallery
Dyke Fen, from the Bourne Abbots
Estate Map.
This is a detail, in two overlapping parts, covering the
area of Dyke Fen in Bourne Parish, taken from the Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825.
The contrast in the
picture here is enhanced to reveal what in the map itself, is often very faint.
This has enhanced the mark passing through William Dove’s field, which appears
to have been a continuation of Twenty Drove to its south, included in error and
erased.
The parish of Bourne had three sets of open
fields; one set each for Bourne, Cawthorpe and Dyke. Those of Dyke were named Moor, Wath and Nutto
fields. Dyke also had its Fen, Meadows and a group
of small enclosed fields called Dyke Haws.
Boundaries: In the BAEM, the three former open fields are delineated
by a brown line but the other lands such as the Meadows and Fen are not, so the
boundaries relevant to the nomenclature are not always obvious. Here, the area
to the west of the Scotten Dike, the roughly
north-south blue line, is included with the Fen because, apart from Wath Field,
it is not named. However, the Exeter Estate Book (EEB) names it as Dyke Meadows. Dyke
Fen therefore was bounded in the west by Scotten Dike
(which the BAEM names very faintly), in the north by the parish boundary with
Morton, which is to say, by New Dike (here unnamed) and in the south by what is
here called Bourn New Dike and by Dyke Drove, on the dike’s north bank. Bourne
New Dike should not be confused with the modern New Dike, which is the (here
unnamed) drain, along the parish boundary with Morton.
Drainage: The Bourn New Dike was the scoured and straightened
successor of the Dyke Eau, which flowed naturally from the Eau Well (TF108221). Langley Edwards’ map the Black Sluice drains and
watercourses (1765), shows it and Leaves Lake, in Pinchbeck North Fen, on one
sinuous line transected by the South Forty Foot
Drain, there called ‘The Double Twelves the New Main
Drain’.
Land management: The lands to the south of Dyke Fen are Gobbold’s Park and
Bourne North Fen. The drove parallel with the Scotten
Dike is named by BAEM as Caldecott’s Drove. The six fields to its west and against Scotten Dike were held copyhold of Bourne Abbots, as was
the small one in the corner of Dorothy Compton’s field (the one in which the I
of DIKE appears). The round spot in the corner of that field of Dorothy Compton
is a fault in the skin on which the map is drawn.
Soil: The soils which are now present in Dyke Fen extend from designation
1024b, fen peat over glacio-fluvial drift at the
western end, via 851a, marine
alluvium and fen peat, to 813g, marine alluvium including clay and, at the very
eastern tip, 812b, deep stoneless calcareous, coarse
marine alluvium (Soil Map). In other words, it appears to extend
across the former fen to the former salt marsh and just to the inland edge of
the Holland Townlands soil formed by an energetic
environment of marine creeks.
The Geological Survey gives a
more detailed picture. The fen peat is Nordelph peat
on Barroway Drove beds which include the coarser longitudinally
disposed deposits of a former large tidal creek. Towards the sea, this has been
overlain by the younger, Terrington beds. All these
are Flandrian deposits. Dyke Fen continues eastwards onto
the late Devensian marine deposits, abbey sand and gravel. The Devensian deposits appear as an ‘island’ rising through the
later ones, left by creek and marine marsh.
Hayes and Lane (pp.130-142) put this geological information into more detailed
archaeological terms. By the Roman
period, Dyke Fen was freshwater wetland with a turbary
extending from the north, onto William Dove’s large (84 acre), triangular field
at the eastern end of Dyke Fen (FIRT Map 3).
Index of samples from the map Archive Contents