About Pinchbeck Land Drainage Museum

The Land Drainage Museum - Creating the Landscape. From Saxon times the Fens have been a prosperous area, wealth coming from salt making, wool, agricultural produce, wildfowling and fishing. This wealth financed the building of the fine medieval churches of South Holland. To protect people and property from periodic flooding, embanking and drainage has always been necessary. Drainage was initially by gravity systems. Improved reliability came, first in the 17th century by the introduction of drainage windmills, and then in the 1820s by the development of steam powered pumping engines such as the one on the Pinchbeck site. Visit the Pinchbeck Pumping Engine for a good overview of the story of the draining of the South Holland Fens.