Rare Fen Cottage given Grade II listed status
Heritage experts at East Cambridgeshire District Council have been working with Historic England to help ensure Fen Cottage at Wicken Fen has finally been recognised and protected.
The humble fen dwellers’ cottage has been preserved by the Trust as a visitor attraction showing how fenlanders live and worked.
Originally built in 1700s with later phases added, it has now officially been granted Grade II listed status.
The cottage is described as “a rare surviving example of a fen-dweller’s cottage” built using clay bats, peat blocks, sedge thatch and willow branches.
It would have been one of many such cottages in the hamlet of “the Lode” built outside Wicken village.
Lodes are man-made waterways dug out in medieval times to control the water levels of the fens and later also used for transporting goods. The fen dwellers made their living by cutting sedge, mainly for roof thatching and digging for peat and clay. They would have also gathered buckthorn, which was used to make gunpowder, and hunted for birds, eels and fish.
Four generations of the Butcher family lived in the cottage. The last residents were Alice, and her disabled son Reggie, who lived there until 1972, when Alice died, aged 93.
In the mid-20th century, a bedroom had been added to the ground floor for Reggie, who was unable to climb the ladders to the sleeping loft.
Cllr Lucius Vellacott, who represents Wicken and Soham South, and is the Heritage Champion for the council, said: "I have visited Fen Cottage at Wicken Fen many times and it is a great piece of preserved history. We place strong values on the heritage of East Cambridgeshire and working closely with Historic England and the National Trust it has been fantastic to see this humble cottage, which was first identified through East Cambridgeshire’s local list, finally receive the national recognition and protected status it deserves."
Photo: National Trust
