Pode Hole and flood doors

Typical of the cuts which drain the Lincolnshire Fens is Counter Drain, running in a dead straight line. It looks almost navigable, doesn't it? But the map will tell you that it starts as a ditch near Market Deeping, other ditches run into it, there are lots of sharp bends and bridges, presumably low ones. And there's an obstruction at water level by the flood doors.


Below is a poor photo of Vernatt's Drain at Pode Hole. This joins the tidal Welland at Surfleet Seas End, the other side of Spalding; the Welland runs into The Wash, The OS map doesn't indicate the nature of the junction at SSE, whether there's a set of flood doors so that the drain can drain into the Welland at low tide. These things are best discovered on the ground!

There's more to Pode Hole than I thought

This is where I parked up for my coffee on Tuesday (hot water from flask added to coffee grounds in cafétiere). The building on the right is the original Pode Hole Pumping Station, but I didn't realise that at the time.


I did, however, take a photo. The building used to house a beam engine, and is now, apparently, a museum.


On the side, unmissably, are the bye-laws of the Deeping Fen Trustees dated 1876 (or, as the bye-laws themselves put it, the 18th year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria). They are almost legible if you click to enlarge the photo.


Under the window in the centre of the photo is another thing I didn't spot at the time: the keystone of Sharps Bridge, dated 1806. Perhaps the bridge was demolished when the pumping station was built, and the keystone incorporated as a memento.

Pode Hole Pumping Station

On a long car journey yesterday I stopped at Pode Hole in the Lincolnshire fens for a coffee break.


Pode Hole is the location of three pumping stations built to raise water from Deeping Fen and Pinchbeck South Fen into Vernatt's Drain (info from Wikipedia).


The newest pumping station (I think it's the newest) has an interesting weather vane on its roof which I saw only after I'd loaded the photos into my computer.


From the left: a drain with water and a bank; a tree and a house below the water level; a tractor working the drained land. I'm not sure why there are two wavy lines indicating water - just the top one would have worked better, I suggest.