“Vermuyden 400” – vermuyden400.org.uk

July 2, 2026

Thirty-One Battles: Nathaniel Reading and the Long Reckoning

The Isle of Axholme, 1651–1719 By the summer of 1651 the Sandtoft settlement lay in ruins, the Participants’ tenants had fled, and the commoners of the Isle of Axholme held the land they believed had always been theirs. They had won, for now. What followed was not peace. It was six more decades of conflict. The Restoration and Reading’s Return...

Opposition to Vermuyden's Drainage Comments: 0

June 25, 2026

‘They Would Stay Till the Whole Level Were Drowned’

The Civil War, the Snow Sewer, and the Fall of Sandtoft, 1642–1651 After the Star Chamber proceedings of 1631 and the Exchequer Award of 1636, a tense and uneasy quiet settled over the Isle of Axholme. The commoners had not accepted the settlement. They had been compelled, temporarily, to live with it. They were waiting. In 1642, their moment came....

Opposition to Vermuyden's Drainage Comments: 0

June 11, 2026

The Killing of Robert Coggan

Friday, 15 August 1628: Armed Men at Haxey Carr Two days after the stoning of John Kitchen, and the wider violence of Wednesday 13 August, the situation at Haxey Carr had not calmed. It had hardened. Vermuyden’s work crew had spent Thursday recovering, regrouping — and rearming. When they returned to the carr on Friday morning to resume the damming...

Opposition to Vermuyden's Drainage Comments: 0

June 4, 2026

The Women of Haxey

Wednesday, 13 August 1628: The First Day of Riots on the Isle of Axholme In the early afternoon of Wednesday, 13 August 1628, an English labourer named John Kitchen was walking along the road to the village of Haxey. Kitchen worked for Cornelius Vermuyden, the Dutch engineer commissioned two years earlier by King Charles I to drain the great fenlands...

Opposition to Vermuyden's Drainage Comment: 1

May 9, 2026

Cornelius Vermuyden’s Fortified Camp at Sandtoft

When Cornelius Vermuyden arrived in the Isle of Axholme in the 1620s, he brought with him workers from across the North Sea. The transformation of Hatfield Chase and the surrounding marshlands required skilled labourers, surveyors, craftsmen, and administrators, many of them Dutch, many of them strangers to the landscape they were about to reshape. Their base of operations became Sandtoft,...

Vermuyden's Drainage Scheme Comments: 4

April 9, 2026

Vermuyden’s Subsidiary Drainage Works – sasses and sluices.

1629 – Court of Sewers appointed In 1629, the Crown appointed a new Court of Sewers to oversee the “Level of Hatfield Chase,” a move intended to mark the completion of Cornelius Vermuyden’s great drainage project. This court was charged with maintaining the new network of drains, banks, and sluices that had reshaped the wetlands and opened large areas to...

Vermuyden's Drainage Scheme Comments: 0

April 2, 2026

Vermuyden’s Drainage Scheme – Phase 2

Draining the Levels – Vermuyden’s Second Phase (1628-1631) By 1627, just two years after Cornelius Vermuyden and King Charles I had signed their fateful contract, Vermuyden reported that the first phase of drainage works was completed so that a commission could be appointed to allot the land and commence its work. The 1627 Commission was appointed to begin the process...

Vermuyden's Drainage Scheme Comments: 0

March 20, 2026

Vermuyden’s Drainage Scheme – The River Torne

The River Torne presented a significant challenge to the drainage of the Isle of Axholme. Its original course ran from the west, around Wroot, to the River Idle at Ben Intake (a location now known as Tunnel Pits). Unlike the Don and the Idle, it was not possible to divert the Torne along an existing watercourse, meaning it had to...

Vermuyden's Drainage Scheme Comments: 0

January 17, 2026

Before Vermuyden: Drainage and River Management in the Isle of Axholme

Long before Cornelius Vermuyden arrived in the 1620s with his grand Dutch-engineered drainage scheme, the Isle of Axholme was already a landscape shaped by centuries of human effort to manage water. The Isle’s rivers, meres, and artificial channels were central to life, economy, and identity — and the people who lived here developed sophisticated systems of communal and manorial governance...

Axholme before Vermuyden Comments: 0

December 30, 2025

Axholme Before Vermuyden – The Land and Its Lords – Manor of Epworth

Before the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden arrived in the 1620s, the Isle of Axholme was a patchwork of manors, commons, and ancient rights. The main manors in the Isle of Axholme were Epworth, in the centre, and Crowle in the North. Lords of manors held sway over land and law, but when titles lapsed or estates were forfeited, ownership reverted...

Axholme before Vermuyden Comments: 0

Tag: “Vermuyden 400”

Thirty-One Battles: Nathaniel Reading and the Long Reckoning

‘They Would Stay Till the Whole Level Were Drowned’

The Killing of Robert Coggan

The Women of Haxey

Cornelius Vermuyden’s Fortified Camp at Sandtoft

Vermuyden’s Subsidiary Drainage Works – sasses and sluices.

Vermuyden’s Drainage Scheme – Phase 2

Vermuyden’s Drainage Scheme – The River Torne

Before Vermuyden: Drainage and River Management in the Isle of Axholme

Axholme Before Vermuyden – The Land and Its Lords – Manor of Epworth

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