|
|
Article: ENVIRONMENT: How our shrinking Fens are revealing so much about the past.
- Article from:
- Peterborough Evening Telegraph (Peterborough, England)
- Article date:
- February 22, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Johnston Publishing Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
IF you happened to be sitting in a window seat on the train between Peterborough and London over the past few weeks, you might have noticed some mysterious shapes emerging from the trackside fields as you passed through Holme Fen.
A series of jagged stumps rise up from the black peat soil like a forest of ghosts, and in some ways that is exactly what they are.
For these bizarre objects are bog oaks, and until they were uncovered by a farmer's plough, they had lain under the earth for thousands of years.
They were once part of a thick blanket of oak forests which covered this part of the world, until the land began to flood.
Large ...