We first came to these Broads about forty years ago. Not too much appears to have changed, tho 'the Broads' themselves are visibly shrinking and under threat. The Norfolk Broads are ponds, channels and marsh areas that were actually made by men over a thousand years ago. As the first settlers moved into East Anglia they chopped down what trees were there, so when they needed firewood they discovered that the marshy black ooze beneath their feet, when dried, became a slow burning fuel, peat. So, they set about designing sharp tools, shaped them to shovel the earth out in neat even bricks of peat, then lay 'peat logs' out in stacks to dry in the sun. When winter came they had fuel for cooking and for warmth.
And for the monks at the Abbey in St Benet upstream, who burned thousands of peat turves each year, and the Priory Cathedral folk over Norwich way, these peat diggers became increasingly busy carving themselves out a living: chopping deep and wide holes into the Norfolk Marsh as they drew out the smelly earthy black peat that had become like gold to them. Then the sea rose, and filled their deep broad peat holes with water. And so the Norfolk Broads came to be.
Over time the broadwaters filled with fish, filtering reeds topped with butterflies, and waterbirds. So, the descendants of the peatmen took to slashing the reeds and sedge from invading their waterways and put them to good use as roof thatching. They set about catching eels and marsh fish and trapping ducks and water birds. They spent much time digging canals to transport their products further afield. Until the Industrial Revolution made all their efforts increasingly redundant.
Nowadays, it is pleasure boatmen, hobby fishermen, seasonal holidaymakers and occasional icecream vendors who throng the shores of The Broads. Many of these folk don't realize that The Broads are even under threat. They are decreasing in size. They are dying in parts. Mother Nature is silting up these ancient waterways, and when she isn't hard at work, Man is doing his bit to kill the Broads with his sewage and chemical effluents, the chief offender being household detergents.
It remains to be seen if any government purse will be large enough to stretch to returning the Broads to its canal rich days, or whether, over time, it will revert to the boggy fens of dark ages past.
oooOOOooo
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| Norfolk Broads, another marshland |
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| Laying peat turves |
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| Miss Bec almost lost in the grasses of the Broads |
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| Mother Nature and Man are reducing the Broads |
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| Flowering marsh plants were once harvested |
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| Harvesting would let in the sun |
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