THE ORIGIN OF THE NORFOLK BROADS

"Each is suggestive, and together they are almost conclusive."

"The Devil's Foot", Conan Doyle.

Direct evidence proves that it is perfectly possible today to dig a small pit by hand to the same depth as the broads, and then extend it with daily digging and very limited hand bailing, such are the impermeable qualities of peat. It would, therefore, have been equally possible using this same method in medieval times, to dig up turves in quantity from deep in the fens without the aid of elaborate bailing devices or pumps,  provided the work was concentrated into a continuous period on a more or less daily basis.

"Turf digging then, as now, was probably a seasonal operation for the summer." (Smith, 1960)

This was an agricultural society; the lives of the people in it were governed by the strict imperative of the cycle of the seasons. The turves had to dry before they could be used, so nobody would be digging peat in the winter; people would have been too busy with other tasks in the spring and autumn. They would have dug up all the peat they needed for the next twelve months during a short period in the summer, perhaps between the first and second haysel.

"A good day's digging in nineteenth century Broadland yielded 1000 turves, according to R.F.Carrodus." (ibid.)

"If each of the twenty eight villages which now share the broads within their parish boundaries had twenty men working for three weeks of the year in the turf-pits, and producing at this rate of output, the required volume of turf could have been removed in approximately three centuries with no waste." (ibid.) 

Smith hypothesises a work force of around seven hundred.

"The great bulk of turf production went, one supposes, to feed local hearths and thus for the most part must have gone unrecorded."  (ibid.)

Smith estimated the annual requirements of an average household at eight to ten thousand turves, 

Carrodus also stated that the the normal turf or 'hover' in nineteenth century Broadland was three and a half inches square by two to three feet long.

"That one medieval Norfolk turf was approximately a quarter of a cubic foot seeems a reasonable and conservative assumption."  (ibid.)

Digging to a depth of ten feet in a modest dole within a turbary, it would have taken two men five days to dig up ten thousand turves, (thereby creating a pit about two hundred and fifty square feet in extent). This pit would have slowly flooded in the following months to the level of the water table in the surrounding fen. Returning next year for more turves, why would they have wasted time and effort trying to bail the water out of the previous year's pit? Could they anyway have afforded complex devices for this purpose?

• They would have left a bar of uncut peat, no more than three feet wide, and dug a new pit.

"The demesne turbaries, such as those in Stalham Hall in Burgh, were worked in part by labour services in the thirteenth century. The bond tenants of the manor owed their lord a total of 23 days' labour in the digging of turves. An extent of the manor of Burgh in 1328 recorded the liability of customary tenants to 14 days' digging in the turbaries or the payment of 14d. in lieu thereof. Similarly, labour services, or commuted payments were taken at Martham, South Walsham and Hoveton and probably elsewhere, Wage labour was also used. Ten men were paid in kind for the digging of turves at a place called Witemore in Neatishead in 1240."                          (ibid.)

The largest recorded annual production figure from a single turbary is 265,000 turves in 1272-3 at an unidentified location associated with Norwich Cathedral Priory; the manor of South Walsham Hall, with 253,300 in 1270-71 comes a close second.

• The more people digging and bailing in the same pit, the faster the peat is extracted and the bigger the pit can be.

Ten men digging and bailing for twenty days could have dug up 200,000 turves to a depth of ten feet, creating a pit over 550 square yards in area, (a size which bears comparison with Martin George's limit of a few hundred square metres for his 'fairly small' pits). Again, in the following year, why would anybody have bothered to try to bail out previous years' diggings?

"Most of the turf was for subsistence, and much of the turbary in Burgh, Rollesby, and Martham was held in strips of an acre or less which were an integral part of customary holdings."                  (ibid.)

At the start, the annual peat diggings would have created this sort of picture:

". . . . .; afterwards the turves would have been stacked above the excavation to dry, before being barrowed away"         (George, 1992)

There is documetary evidence that turves (and probably the bulk peat) were carried on "baskets", three of them being purchased for this purpose in 1383 for 4d. These could have been basket-weave platforms, supported by a pole at either side in the manner of a stretcher, a method suited to the conditions, and in accord with local tradition.

"Poling the Marsh Hay" from P.H.Emerson's "Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads", 1886.

Emerson's companion, T.F.Goodall, commented:

"This picturesque mode of conveyance is adopted because the load had to be carried over ground so soft that cart or barrow would be worse than useless.

Alternatively, conforming to known traditional turbary practice elsewhere and suited to a variety of difficult surfaces, something more literally a basket, such as these photographed in a bog peat turbary on Skye, could have been used.

• No conveyance with narrow-section, wooden wheels would have been practicable;  the surface of the broadland peat fen is now, and would have been in medieval times, softer than that of modern bog peat turbaries, where barrows are still used.

Wheel-barrows may be consigned to the same destination as bailing devices. There is, however, direct, unequivocal evidence that boats were used for transporting turves within the confines of the turbaries:

Hemsby - "in making and ferrying turves" - 3 examples.

Martham - "for the making of 2 lasts of turves with ferrying"'

                - "In ferrying and making turves".

Scratby - "In ferrying turves" - 2 examples.

Elmham - "In digging and ferrying turves".

Hoveton  - see under "The Mystery of the Abbot's Boat".

There is evidence from the Thurne valley that, as well as the peat deposits, boulder clay was dug and removed in Whiteslea, Heigham Sound, and parts of both Horsey Mere and Martham Broad. While some chunks of estuarine clay were found, accidentally dropped or deliberately discarded, on the bottom of Salhouse Broad, the substantial quantities of this substance which must have been dug up to access the deeper layers of brushwood peat are otherwise noteable by their absence from Lambert and Jennings'  analysis of what lay on the bottom of the basins. It seems, therefore, highly likely that both forms of clay had a use and required transport.

• Clay is heavy; boats would have been essential.

So it seems likely that, as the annual diggings progressed further into the turbary, the picture would have changed to this:

 Other considerations apart (see under "'Dydays', 'Laggying', and 'Baggerbeugels'."), they would have  removed the bars or baulks between the pits in each strip to allow the use of small boats, or even primitive rafts, to ferry the bulky stacks of turves and lumps of clay to the edge of the turbary, progressing to this:

As reserves began to run out, the lateral walls were removed in some turbaries and the peat converted into turves, creating broader areas of open water. In others, all these lateral walls were removed for fuel, leaving only essential boundary markers.

Here are the fisheries for which there is clear evidence  in former turbaries from the late fourteenth century onwards; there is also evidence of the existence fisheries at unidentified locations from earlier centuries.

Finally, the passage of time and dredgers  produced something more familar, where boats could freely sail. On some broads, it seems that this may have  taken rather longer than on others.

"As you approach the entrance to Barton Broad, the bottom becomes muddy, and the broad itself is full of mud; there being large hills where the water is not more than two feet deep. The navigable channels wind between these hills, and are marked out by posts."    G. Christopher Davies, "The Handbook to the Rivers and Broads of Norfolk & Suffolk", Jarrold & Sons, 1882.

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