ABSTRACT
The seventeenth century, therefore, witnessed considerable progress in both the productivity of English agriculture and also in the extension of the cultivated area. The important development in agricultural practice, which first appeared towards the end of the sixteenth century and took firm root in the seventeenth century, was the 'floating' of water meadows. This was a process of irrigation, which involved the construction of a complicated system of channels, drains and sluices which enabled a stream to be diverted into a meadow thereby covering the whole of the surface with a thin sheet of floating water. Among the important technical innovations in farming practice in the seventeenth century were those concerned with improving the quality of livestock. Before 1700, the ground surface had fallen so much that windmills were introduced to raise water into the drains and during the eighteenth century they were found everywhere in the Fens, adding a new and distinctive feature to the landscape.
