Encyclopedia > Ouse Washes

  Article Content

Ouse Washes

The Ouse Washes are an area in the Fens of Cambridgeshire, England. They cover the area between two tributaries of the River Great Ouse: the Old Bedford River and the New Bedford River (also known as the Hundred Foot Drain).

In 1630, Charles I of England granted a drainage charter[?] to the 4th Earl of Bedford who engaged the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden[?] to construct the two Bedford rivers. The area between the rivers is 20 miles long and almost 1 mile wide and acts as washland[?], i.e. a floodplain during the winter and, increasingly, also in summer.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Jordanes

... was a 6th century historian. He was an Ostrogoth and was a notary of Gothic kings in Italy. At the time of Justinian, he was a Christian and possibly bishop of Croton. ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 25.7 ms